First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Radio Alfa, Krakow, 3rd February 2008
As an English teacher in Poland, I should be enjoying a four-week, although unpaid, holiday right now. Not so. I have, in fact, been rushing ‘round Krakow faster than a bout of influenza.
Why? Well, let me first say that there are two ways to get to know any Polish city really quickly. The first is to become a taxi driver. Unfortunately, this involves a command of both the Polish language and Polish roads – both notoriously difficult to navigate and both beset with traps for the unwary foreigner.
The second way to get to know the city is to buy a flat, or at least to see 99 unsuitable flats in the hope that the 100th just might be ‘the one’, rather like speeddating, in fact. It’s Sunday night. You look in your diary at the week ahead. It’s a tabla rasa just itching to be filled with appointments, viewings, and scrambled tram journeys from Krowodrza to Pradnik Bialy, Salwator to Grzegorszki. Then Monday morning and the phone never stops: there’s a flat just for me, apparently; no, this one I’ll like; and then another even better; can I make it at 3? Suddenly the whole world wants to be my friend, or at least to be on speaking terms with my bank balance. I’ve never felt so wanted. Apparently, there are old people who go to strangers’ funerals, pretending to be an old family friend, just to get out of the house, meet people and drink free wine. They probably got the taste pretending to be flat hunters when they were younger. You enter the flat and say ‘Dzien Dobry’, smiles and handshakes all round. For 5 or 10 minutes, you’re the king of someone else’s castle, inspecting and inwardly judging another person’s life. You peer into bathrooms and reemerge smiling politely or, secretly, frowning at the orange and green paint scheme.
The trouble is, I’m very picky when it comes to property. I was in picky in England – where there’s a wide variety of properties – and I’m picky in Poland – a country where Henry Ford could have made a fortune selling flats (any colour you like, as long as it’s grey). Of course, we blame the Communists and the pile-em-high, sell-em-cheap school of architecture. I suppose it makes the business of flat hunting simpler for the average Pole, but I long for a bit of character, some small mark of individuality.
Of course, for the people who live there, the flats are all individual, as the owners are too. And I’ve been on the other side in my time: that unique combination of welcome tinged with suspicion as you open the door to the invited, yet uninvited and unknown guest. And how do Poles feel when an Englishman steps foot inside their hallway? Most, no doubt, see me as nothing more than another in a long line of passing bank accounts; a smiling, nodding head to be endured for 5 minutes? Others may be glad, believing me to have a larger bank account than most, whilst a 55-year-old ex-miner may be smiling through gritted teeth, knowing that by selling his home to a foreigner like me, he is making it even harder for his son and his new wife to afford a place of their own.
But shoot the messenger, and two more will come in his place. Poland has made its decision. The future is now. The European Union, emigration, money coming back from England, the football and the Euro in 2012. These truths point in only one direction: bricks and mortar. It’s as safe as houses, as we say in England.
And so that’s why I continue to run around the city, dividing my days into 15-minute blocks, like a not-so-young man at a speed dating event, hoping that perhaps this will be the last time and he can finally hang up his hat and get off the merry-go-round. If you happen to see such a man jumping on or off a tram somewhere this week, say hello, won’t you? Unless you’re an estate agent, that is, ‘cos I’m not sure I’d believe you.
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