It was 1993. I was 10 and was always wearing jeans and baseball caps. I spent hours watching and playing football and going to arcade games venues full of classics like Street Fighter, Space Invaders or Contra.
One day my Dad was sitting in the video gaming room with me but talking to another guy who was there with his son. I just ran out of coins and approached my father asking for more money so I could buy new coins. Here is how the conversation went:
Kasia: Daddy, can I have more coins? I need to finish this game!
My father: Yes sure, here you are.
A guy talking to my Dad: What a nice child you have – plays football, likes arcade games. But why is your SON wearing long hair??
Yes yes. Until I was 15 and started being friends with my sister, who showed me how to do my make up and how to party, my world was only limited to sports (especially football of course) and spending my pocket money on arcade gaming.
20 years later…. I still love watching football and I like playing video games. I talk to my friends about sports and computers. But..I also love shopping (especially for clothes and shoes 😉 ) and I often call my Mom to ask her advice about cooking recipes 😉
Any nice souvenirs from your childhood which are still relevant now when you are little bit older?
It was year 2008. We were living together with my boyfriend since more than a year, we moved to a different country, I met his whole family…. It was a good time to change his wardrobe completely. He had this geeky style from the eighties. What is even worse, he was attached to everything and was not eager to throw away things (maybe because of his dislike to changes he survived with his girlfriend 10 years and decided to marry her despite her craziness 🙂 )
I started throwing away his old t-shirts gradually so he does not realize it. But a lie has no legs… One day I saw him looking for something everywhere at home and then he shouted in panic:
“KASIA!! Where is my t-shirt with Einstein? It was my favorite and I cannot find it!!”
“I have no idea, I only threw away some old, dingy white T-shirt.” I answered relieved. If there was any image on it, especially of this famous scientist, I would have remembered.
“WHAAAAAAT! THAT WAS THIS T-SHIRT!! My white t-shirt with a faded image of Einstein that you cannot see anymore. But that was my favorite Einstein T-shirt. HOW COULD YOU???” said Eryk even more hysterically.
It took me 10 years but here it is… A brand new t-shirt with Einstein for my husband on the 10th anniversary of this traumatic incident. I bought it in blue on purpose so if it starts being worn-off, I remember not to throw away any t-shirt in this color 🙂
How about your favorite clothes? Were they thrown away by your wives/husbands? Let us know 🙂
SPOILER ALERT: This post is not for people who like cars…
I already complained a few times that Swiss car parks are not big enough. Although taking into consideration my parking skills (or lack of them), none of car parks would be large enough for me.
Every 2-3 months, I get back home with a new parking souvenir on our car. Eryk got used to it. It’s always the same story: he tells me, I am not very talented in driving, I start crying that I am, I go to work by car to prove him wrong and then I get back with a new scratch…
But today, I showed the very best of my talents. I spent my lunch break on going back and forth for 40 minutes on my parking space trying to oscillate between an orange wall and another car. In the end, I celebrated my almost successful parking by scratching our handle on the left door three times.
How did I not destroy the mirror, but succeeded in scratching the door handle only? Eryk claims, it is almost impossible to accomplish. He wants to see what angle I used to do it and proposes my achievement as a nomination for Noble prize in geometry… 😉 Even though there is no Nobel prize in mathematics… I fully deserve it.
Have you ever followed a wrong group of people or sat down and started talking to a stranger thinking it is your aunt and realizing your mistake only after a few seconds?
If not, don’t worry – it only means we are not related. As these kind of mistakes are common mostly in my family.
Last Tuesday we were supposed to have a call within my company. Sometimes instead of sitting separately in front of our desks, we go to one conference room, dial in and listen to all speeches together. On Tuesday I saw our 2 managers going towards one of conference rooms just before our call so I just followed. Then I saw about 10 people that I did not recognize and I thought to myself: “Gosh I did not read what the call is about, maybe we will be also talking to some new strategic partners of the bank. Oh well, I’d better take a seat.” Just after installing myself I saw one of my bosses with a big smile on her face saying: “Kasia it is a management meeting, of course you can join if you want, but I think you wanted to participate in a different call.” 😀
As talking to wrong people is apparently genetic, these situations happened a lot to my sister or myself. One day she was waiting for her boyfriend who was supposed to come in a white Renault Kangoo. When she saw the car, she just jumped into it and wanted to give him a good morning kiss. Just then she saw he was very hairy and thought to herself “Hmm! I need to tell him diplomatically that he should shave more often.” But then she saw a surprised but also an amused look on her boyfriend’s face just to realize it was not him 🙂
If you did not recognize these symptoms yet. there is a big chance they won’t happen. It all starts in an early childhood, e.g. I once confused my uncle with my sister’s (and 6 years later also my) music teacher realizing it when I was already on his kneels wanting him to tell me one of stories from his sailor’s trips.
But if you already had these kind of funny stories, please share with us, maybe you are one of our lost cousins as there are not as many crazy families causing as many commotions as ours 😉
I read recently an article in BBC talking about a motivational sentence in Polish that helps people to take risks (“Jakos to bedzie” which we can translate vastly as “In the end it will be allright”). It motivated me to write a post about my observations about Polish language since 2006.
I am not one of people saying “Hi, I am Polish but I started forgetting this language as I only speak French/German”. But it is true that there are some linguistic phenomena that I do not witness and find out about them either from my always up-to-date sister (she teaches at school so has lots of contact with young people) or some other friends when we visit Poland.
One of first that we learned is an oldie already but we did not know it for about 2-3 years so when started using it, it was already outdated. It is a saying “Oj tam, oj tam”. It is hard to translate but it would mean “Oh don’t exagerate, it wil be fine” or “Come on, relax”. You see it is very difficult to translate many nuances in your mother tongue.
Another one is “Taka sytuacja” which I did not know. It literally means “The situation” and some people would write it under a photo that they posted on Facebook to say something like “See what happened below”.
Last month we had a visit from our Polish friends. As they were travelling by car and it is a long route, they dressed comfortably into a training suit that in Polish you would call “dresy”. They started making fun of these clothes as in Poland if you were them, you are called “Polski dres” or “Polski drehol”. You were “dresy”, you drink a cheap wine and do some acts of vandalism. And then I found out about “slowianski przykuc” which would be a position you take when posing to these kind of photos in “dresy” and about “kolczan prawilnosci”. I am still not sure what it is. Maybe these words existed long time before but I was really not aware of them.
What I like about our local Polish (between my husband and me) is that we also play with all the languages that we know and put it to Polish. No, not in this barbarian way pretending we are forgetting our mother tongue. But e.g. in French “la gare” is “a railway station”. In Polish “gar” with the same pronunciation would mean “a large pot”. We often use the sentence “Spotkajmy sie w garach” which would be translated into “Let’s meet in large pots”. 🙂
We are still improving our German, but we started playing with it too. In Polish “walizka” means “a suitcase”. We leave near a town called “Wallisellen”, So always when packing, my husband asks me where I put our “wallisellen”. 🙂
To not only practise Polish, please check out below 24 new words in English that you should add to your dictionary.
And put away your cell phone, don’t be so “Cellfish”
But before that, tell us about some new words in any languae you know. Share your linguistic experience (lingsperience 😉 ) with us.
Remember we travelled to USA this year. Big outlets, big natural parks, big beaches, big everything. Also cars and car parks.
In Switzerland – different story. Wherever you go, whatever you do – car parks are too small for you 😉
Our Tiefgarage in Dübi is already testing your manoevring skills. But what I saw this morning when visiting a Tiefgarage for near my work place – I think even Clio drivers or Smart owners would have issues to park there. I accepted this challenge and tried to park our Volvo V40 there. It resulted with a smashed lamp of the right mirror and almost a heart attack of my husband… 😉
So, I am looking for:
– a new husband who tolerates scratches on brand new cars 😉
– an indoor car park near CS Towers in Oerlikon.
Anybody anything? Ah and please the husband needs to be super patient with my craziness. The car park has to be big enough so I don’t scratch any mirror of ours…
A tragicomedy about spooky soups cursed by Roman Polanski
SCENE I:
Didaskalia: Action takes place on October 2nd, 2017 during Zurich Film Festival during the premiere of the movie by Roman Polanski “D’après une Histoire Vraie” (“Based on a True Story”).
Protagonists:
AganieszKa – my wine and movie comrade, a famous blogger and jogger
Kasia S. – myself, a talented and ” supposedly positively crazy” linguist, recruiter and blogger
Vodka Wyborowa – we do not need to introduce this protagonist
La Bouillabaisse – an extremely dangerous soup I
Bullion – an extremely dangerous soup II
Roman Polanski – a famous director and creator of a soup course
On October 2nd, I went with a friend of mine Aga for the premiere of the newest movie by Roman Polanski “D’après une Histoire Vraie” (“Based on a True Story”). I will not tell you the whole story but soups play crucial roles in the movie (apart from outstanding Eva Green and Emmanuelle Seigner). There is always something scary happening after one of main characters eat a soup.
Our Dear Roman Polanski destroyed my love for soups. I would survive without la Bouillabaisse (fish soup) – I enjoy eating fish but the view of cooked parts of fish mixed here and there was never appealing to me. But our Polish/French director destroyed also an image of bouillon (Polish rosol) and I could not forgive it. Of course, he washed his sins by introducing a Polish accent to the movie (vodka Wyborowa) and creating a great movie so I decided to face my fear and eat some soup…
SCENE II:
Didaskalia: Action takes place on October 8th, 2017 in the apartment of one of protagonists called Marcelina A.
Protagonists:
Marcelina A. – a famous scientist and a talented hostess
Eryk S. – my life comrade tolerating craziness of his wife, a talented scientist who has no time to be famous because of the craziness of his wife
Kasia S. – myself, now too dynamic and then toothless and in pain
Pumpkin cream soup – an insidious and almost lethal soup III
An opportunity to face my soup-phobia appeared not even one week after the soup curse. We were invited by our friend Marcelina to her new flat. As a starter, she served us pumpkin cream soup. At first, I was afraid but…. what the heck! Nobody, even an Oscar winner will tell me what I should eat. Our moods were great. We finished the soup, nobody choked, Poland was winning 2:0 against Montenegro.
“The curse was gone” – that is what I thought… I noticed a funny picture of almost toothless Theresa May drinking a Polish beer on our common friend’s wall (yes Mr. Sequoia, you are also a part of our spooky story!). Led by a treacherous energy shot caused by an insidious soup, I started going towards Marcelina…
What happened then was the consequence of a deadly soup. I did not see the doorstep, fell directly on my smiling face. A phone call, a quick trip by car to the University Hospital of Zurich, a head tomography, an x-ray of my wrist, knee, fingers and spine, a loss of significant parts of my 3 front teeth and a sick-leave for 3 days because of head injury are the harvests of the lethal pumpkin soup…
Dear blog followers. Please do not be in a rush, do not run at home or when it is slippery and please…. be mistrustful when eating any soup…
P.S. This post is dedicated to the following people:
Roman Polanski – even if he cursed all soups, I hope he will one day talk to us during a new Zurich Film Festival and will allow us to talk to him per Romek 😉
AgnieszKa – for her encouragement to visit cultural events and to taste wine culturally
Marcelina A. – for being a great hostess saving me with frozen pumpkins and giving me some cake for the road
Przemyslaw A. alias Mr. Sequoia – for giving me a lesson that nothing on facebook is more interesting and exciting then your own real life
Eryk S. – for saving me many times in my life and for his patience in being my Husband
Sylvie C. – for keeping the secret from our Mom till we knew that the curse did not kill me and for being the best Sis
For all soup maniacs, family and friends who support me during my soup injury…
The main protagonist and cause of all drama – THE soup.
– “Ich war in der Post und mir fehlte 2 Franken für Abfallsäcke und du weiss was?? Dieser Mann von der Kasse hat mir 2 Franken gegeben.”
– “Oh neeeein, noch diese Zürich. Dieser Mann war nett, unglaublich!”
Das ist wie haben wir ein neues Kapitel gestartet: unsere Freundschaft mit Züri. 😊
Na ja, es war nicht einfach fur uns von Genf nach Zürich zu ziehen. Ohne gute Deutsch (ich muss noch mit mein Deutsch herumschlagen aber ich hoffe es ist immer besser 😊), ohne Wochnung und mit viele andere ernstliche Probleme.
Nach 2 Jahre kann ich endlich sagen: Züri isch huere geil! Wir haben schon wunderbare Freunde hier, die Landschäfte sind atemlose und wir haben die gute Restaurants fur beide Z’Mittags und Z’Nachts gefunden. Ganz zu schweigen von dem Tanzen…
Und wenn wir unsere Freunde von Romandie vermissen dann… Sorry Gschpönli, ihr musst uns in Züri besuchen 😉
“It was 1980 something and it was awesome.” That is how many episodes of the series “The Goldbergs” ends. I am not here to promote this show (although I do love it and I think this show is great, you should watch it😉), but this show reminded me about the past I wanted to take a small trip back to this period.
Everybody has different memories from the eighties. I have so many that I cannot pick up the favorite one but one of the best were movies, music and games. Some of memories are from eighties/nineties as in eighties I was still only 6-7 and could not watch or do many things.
Number of times I watched “Back to the future” ever since I watched it, or “E.T.”, “Never Ending Story” … These movies did not have special effects like movies nowadays. But they had a soul and a brilliant idea that many movies do not have nowadays. Who did not dream of driving a DeLorean, befriend an extra-terrestrial and help him to go back home or travel on a giant dog. 😊 These movies are like a masterpiece and we still watch them to remember old times but also as they had an amazing plot.
I remember also the series “Dynasty”. This series represented what we did not have in Poland – big cars, expensive whisky, caviar swimming pool in the house… It was broadcasted on Sundays at 5pm. I remember watching it with big eyes. Of course, some scenes I could only watched in nineties when I was already older, but I still remember sitting on the carpet in the living room (or hiding just near the arm chair if my mom said I could not watch some scenes 😊) and just gasping at colorful life of USA. I was lucky enough to be in a family where our life was colorful with many things from America that my friends could only dream of. Anyway, it was not only about this series but also the whole ritual of sitting together and watching it. And of course, the battle scenes between Kristal and Alexis (especially the one in the swimming pool) were also epic. 😊
Other memories include great musicians that I listened to (or first copied my dear sister who was this popular girl in high school and I wanted to be just like her) – Queen, A-ha (“Take on me” is the song that always reminds me of my sis and mom dancing), Prince, Depeche Mode – virtuosos of the eighties/nineties music that I still listen to today. Or even some more “embarrassing” bands like New Kids on the Block or Kris Kross. They were not that embarrassing as I think they still had their style 😉
Most people know I really like video games. Sure, I really enjoy nowadays graphics in Assassin’s Creed or GTA. But games on old Nintendo or Atari were the best… I remember hours spent on Nadral, Baloons or River Raid…. I absolutely loved it. I had an old Atari on cassettes so you had to pray your father does not step into the room when it was loading, if he did you had to install it once again but it was so worth it.
The first portable game was the old and most popular Russian game – “Nu,pogodi” in which you as a wolf had to catch all eggs and get points of it. I also remember when my brother in law went to Italy to visit his sister and I asked him if he could buy me a new Nintendo Game Boy. When he came back I was the happiest. Even if the first game they included was Othello – a board game! And I wanted Mario Bros! Eventually I got Mario and played it all the time.
Another memory from my childhood involves going with my father to Arcade Rooms where you had all machines (Polish we named them flipery) and I spent hundreds of coins on them. I remember one time I run to my Dad in a baseball cap and asked for more coins when he was talking to a guy he just met. The guy said, “Your son looks super nice, but why is he wearing long hair?” 😉 That was one of moments I started realizing I should also hang out more with girls and start wearing more feminine clothes as well talk about lips sticks etc. It was already 1993 and I was 10.
In the eighties, we did not have mobile phones or fancy computers. But we were connected to our friends and neighbors much more than we are now as we had to make an extra effort to contact them. We did not expose ourselves on Facebook and still were able to organize the best events and discos and even if the clothes we wore were sometimes embarrassing, it was the best time ever…
Do not get me wrong, I am still not so old to be grinchy about the new times. Everybody knows I love new gadgets and I do appreciate today and tomorrow with amazing discoveries and progress we are making. Just sometimes I would like to come back to easier times when I was just 8 and my only problem was that I missed an episode of “Alf” or lost a level in Nadral.
I hope when time comes and my kids are 8, I will also show them some great stuff from the eighties. And I know they will love it. And Adam F. Goldberg – thank you for sharing your memories and for reminding me about Eighties Awesomeness 😊
Photos from eighties with my awesome sister and awesome clothes. 😉 Some hawk eyed players will spot a great game on the right side. 😉
P.S. I just received on fb a post from my nice friend Ewa, who was born only in the last year of eighties but also remembers its awesomeness. She mentioned this video, which I did not know beforehand but I am sure you will also enjoy, especially my compatriots. The video is by a Polish band Rebeka and the clip’s title is “Today”.
It was 4567,7 miles of pure happiness and adventure. We saw the largest living organism on Earth, survived 49 Celsius degrees and walked atop the largest super volcano in North America. We had some thrill when almost stepping into a rattlesnake or driving in unpredictable California.
I will describe these memories and more on a new website. Check out for some new links, hopefully very soon after my jet lag and catching up with our old Europe 🙂
and thought to herself “Hmm! I need to tell him diplomatically that he should shave more often.” But then she saw a surprised but also an amused look on her boyfriend’s face just to realize it was not him 🙂
The main protagonist and cause of all drama – THE soup.
BLO(N)G 