Seven to nine years ago, I commuted from the U.S. to Poland to court my now-wife Gosia, and she did the same in reverse, meeting me by turns in Alaska and Indiana. We were good friends for two years before getting hitched, although I assure you that we both were interested.
I was interested in getting married. She was interested in remaining single.
Almost nine years later, you see how it turned out?
My Polish didn’t get a whole lot better even after I spent a sabbatical semester in Poland. My six years of Latin helped me a lot with Spanish and French, but not one bit with my Polish.
But I have my pride, and when visiting Warsaw, I insisted on barking my own orders for java in coffee shops. Things went well except when a barrister struck up a conversation, and then I’d have to cry for help.
“He only knows about 300 Polish words,” Gosia usually told the confused servers.
Gosia worked days as an account manager, and when I wasn’t writing my sabbatical book, I was out getting in trouble due to my poor Polish.
I always took public transportation because Gosia was sure a small-town guy couldn’t use her car to navigate a metropolis of over three million people, especially when street signs were all Greek — er, Polish — to me. Anyway, public transportation for me at my age was free, and so I didn’t need a bus ticket. Anyone not of age who got caught by authorities without a ticket paid a hefty fine on the spot.
I always sat behind the driver to have more time to translate the street signs, and one day two uniformed men got on the bus and questioned me in rapid-fire Polish. By the time I figured they wanted proof of my age, the bus had reached the next stop. So, I got out my wallet and flashed my American driver license. By that time the driver had opened both bus doors and three-quarters of the passengers zoomed out front and back without detection and a fine. I was the Warsaw hero-of-the-moment, although not to the ticked-off investigators who slammed shut their ticket books and stormed off the bus.
Another time I entered a bus with a cup of coffee and stood with it because the vehicle was crowded with elderly female passengers. The driver slammed the brakes so hard, I nearly lost my cup. He opened a side door and came around from his glass cab and screamed at me in Polish, pointing to a sign I could not decipher.
His screech was accompanied by scathing words from the Polish elderly passengers who recognized an American criminal on caffeine when they saw one.
In short, I left the bus in shame while the irate driver pointed to the open door.
Coffee was forbidden on Warsaw buses because you might scald a fellow passenger? Who knew?
Speaking of coffee, have you heard that Alaska Airlines announced plans to partner with Stumptown brewers to serve a new blend of coffee that tastes stronger in the air than its previous brand?
Since most of my outbound flights with Alaska Air to Indiana seem to depart between 1:30 and 7 a.m., I greet this announcement with skepticism.
At that ungodly hour, I’d still find my eyes barely opened to half-mast even if the flight attendants served me a case of Red Bull.
Like the average American, I drink about 20 gallons of coffee a year, perhaps 19 gallons of which I guzzle just after getting on planes.
So far, unlike that Polish driver, no pilot has ordered me off the plane for bringing aboard my own cup of java.