{"id":3797,"date":"2018-04-03T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T14:54:34","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T18:54:34","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-poland\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Poland … Featuring Ola @ Ola Reads Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Kenya … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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<\/span> I found a couple months ago that I’m a quarter Polish (This explains my love for borscht and pierogies), so this post is super timely! My great grandparents came over from Poland, so I’m super excited to learn more about this country!<\/span>
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Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts is as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/p>\n

(None of the Images are Mine)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nI\u2019m Ola and I\u2019m from Poland. I live in Warsaw, which is a capital city of Poland. I moved here to study and stayed after I graduated for work. My hometown, where I was raised and where my parents still live is in the north-west part of my country, not far from a seaside. I work in a technology department in an international banking corporation. I love books and traveling. I prefer traveling to northern countries, like Finland and Iceland.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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\nWhat I believe is unique for Poland is how we celebrate, we often have some very elaborate traditional ways to celebrate weddings, Christmas and Easter, and there are differences to these celebrations depending on the part of the country. I was brought up in a region that is considered \u2018plain\u2019, which means that we don\u2019t have unusual traditions, food, language. etc. specific to us. I believe that’s the case because most the f people living here are not native to this region. My grandfather for example was displaced from Lvov (which at the time was part of Poland). <\/span><\/div>\n

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\nBut back to the celebrations \u2013 Easter Monday for us is a \u2018Wet Monday\u2019 (in Polish \u2018Lany Poniedzia\u0142ek<\/i>\u2019 or \u2018\u015amingus Dyngus<\/i>\u2019), where we throw water on each other. Also, on Saturday before Easter we go to church with baskets full of food to have it blessed. During Christmas, the most importnt day for us is Christmas Eve, this is the night when the whole family meets, we share op\u0142atek<\/i> (that\u2019s a sort of thin wafer) which each other and sit at a table with twelve dishes (no meat allowed).  This is also the day when we get the presents\u2013depending on part of the country the gifts are brought by Santa Clause, Jack Frost, or Baby Jesus. <\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nWhat is brilliant about Poland is the location\u2013we have access to the sea and mountains. So without living a country you can go skiing and swimming in the sea. For Americans, it may seem normal, but this is not the case in Europe. We also have a beautiful Lake District, but I\u2019ve never been there and cannot say much about it. I cannot say much about Poland\u2019s environment and my favorite places because I haven\u2019t traveled a lot within my country and I\u2019m not an outdoorsy person.<\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nPolish cuisine is full of fat and meat. Pork and beef are really popular in the traditional dishes, but if you look a bit deeper into the history of Polish food then you\u2019ll find a lot of poultry dishes. Potatoes and cabbages are popular. My favorite traditional Polish dish is pierogi, those are dumplings with various sweet or savory stuffing. My favourite stuffing is mashed potatoes, fried onions, and quark. When it comes to modern Polish food, what regular people are eating, we are very much up to world\u2019s trends, with vegetarianism and veganism trading right now. <\/div>\n
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\nTell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nIt\u2019s tough to compare absolutely two different languages. Let\u2019s start with the alphabet \u2013 Polish has eight letters that are not in your alphabet, and we don\u2019t use x and v. Extra letters we have are: \u0105, \u0107, \u0119, \u0142, \u0144, \u00f3, \u015b, \u017a, \u017c. In speech letters \u00f3 and u make the same sound, but in different words you must use either first or second letter. We also have seven grammatical cases, so one word can have all different variations based on the noun, adjective, pronoun, and whatnot. For example, word book \u2013 in English in singular form it is always spelled the same. In Polish, however we have: ksi\u0105\u017cka, ksi\u0105\u017cki, ksi\u0105\u017cce, ksi\u0105\u017ck\u0119, ksi\u0105\u017cko. <\/div>\n
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