Today, instead of buying “Abfallsäcke 35 Liter” (35 liter rubbish bags), I asked a very serious looking sales assistant for “Apfeltasche 35 Liter” (apple strudel). The lady stopped being serious and was laughing out loud for 5 minutes….

Last year, I went for a “Moneyhoon” (Honeymoon) to Punta Cana.

I need to write more of these things down, one day I will create my own dictionary – and I do love languages and linguistics 🙂

My friends remember a story when I came to work completely red with just white prints from my skiing goggles. Not only did I not put any sun cream on my face but also… I started sunbathing without taking my goggles off.  My colleagues spent hours making jokes of me and sending me photos of red pandas to my mailbox. As funny as it was, it was also a pretty painful experience.

Do not think I learnt my lesson. I did it again this weekend. I went to Nice and as stubborn as always, I thought 30 minutes without any sun cream would not make any harm. And I was wrong. Again… And again I did not take off my sunglasses.

At least I can put a new term to English dictionary: I will replace the expression “burnt like a lobster” by “burnt like a red panda” – my new sunbathing (or sun burning) style 🙂

It has been a while not writing anything. The cause might be very trivial – I become pretty lazy when it rains. I then just wanna drink hot beverages and watch movies…

Anyways, last Thursday, I was a witness of an act of big honesty. Therefore I decided to cheer up everybpdy during this non inspirational weather by writing this positive post.

6 weeks ago, I went with my friend Ewa to a restaurant in Dübendorf to celebrate her first week of a new job. Just before going there, I bought a bag of popcorn (as I was super hungry and had to eat something before the meal) and 3 packages of butter (as I wanted to bake a cake during that week). The dinner was great, we left the restaurant in a good mood. We forgot about my shopping bag…

I noticed my loss 1 day later, but as Eryk and I were leaving for a trip, I thought I would sacrifice my small shopping and leave it with nice waitresses from the restaurant.

24 days later, I came back to the same restaurant, with the same Ewa 😉 The waitress recognized me and returned my bag. I did not expected somebody remembering about my groceries and returning it to me. Dear waitresses from “Il Faro” in Dübendorf – your decency and excellent client service made my day 🙂

As summer is over, it’s time for a quick sum up of our Honeymoon in the Caribbeans.

To start with… officially my German overtook my Spanish… Yep yep, my Spanish friends will be disappointed but my German teacher and friend Ewa should be proud of me. When communicating with the locals, I sounded like that “Si claro. Vamos von hier nach…”. After German, I need to seriously revise my Spanish 😉

Merengue, bachata and salsa are the new dances that Eryk showed me during this trip. It was super nice to dance again, we will definitely subscribe to new dance courses in Zurich soon.

Caribbean specialties include coffee, cigars and rum. We bought some of these products as a souvenir of our stay. Interestingly my husband, who has never smoked in his life even a small cigarette, got obsessed with buying many cigars. I have no idea why… He said we will invite our friends to our flat for rum and cigars and tell them stories from our Caribbean trip. OK then, please come guys, we have about 50 cigars to smoke 😉

We drove in Naples, where the guides say it’s risky and we liked it, so we decided to drive in Dominican Republic as well. Again, we survived and it was pretty cool. Although we saw some motor cyclists who drove wrong way, but you can get used to it 🙂

Isla Saona is one of the most beautiful places we have seen. As I am color blind, I won’t tell you which color is the sea, but it is definitely breathtaking 🙂

Fauna and flora of the island is amazing. I absolutely adored starfish, dolphins, parrots, toucans, monkeys, turtles and more. My favorite ones were Rhinoceros Iguanas (also called Goliath Dragons). Everybody is afraid of them, as they can measure up to 1.5 m. But these iguanas are unarmed and herbivorous so when they see you, they behave like that:

The trip to Dominican Republic was the most amazing time we’ve had. It’s very difficult to come back to reality after that. What remains us are beautiful photos and also some pirate stories that I started reading, as I became very fond of Caribbean culture. It’s getting late so I’m shovin’ off Mateys. Yo ho ho!

Do you know how you can recognize that I really need holiday? One of symptoms is that I start dropping things, forget to close door or… that I make the bottles explode.

3 days ago, I was closing my locker at work when I noticed an almost empty bottle with some lemon/ginger lemonade rest at the bottom. Before throwing it to the bin, I wanted to empty it. I started opening the bottle lid and then… it just exploded. Fortunately, it was about 5:30pm and not many people at the office, but still… Some witnessed it and consider me even crazier then they used to think. Fortunately, nobody was injured 😉

A similar story happened 2 years ago on Sicily. I dropped a bottle of Coke, which exploded and made brown spots everywhere on the ceiling and on the walls. The funniest was my conversation with our social insurance in France. Eryk scared me that the hotel might want to charge us lots of many for destroying the walls. I started crying, as I thought I would have to pay for the beverage till my retirement. Then I called my insurance to see if they cover this kind of risks. Here’s how the dialogue went:

“Hello. Can you please tell me if my insurance covers damages after an explosion of Coke?” I asked with a sad voice whilst sobbing.
“Do you need us to send a plane for your repatriation?” asked the lady on the phone.
Suddenly, I stopped sobbing and Eryk saw my big eyes.
“Yyyyy…. Repatriation??!! Why?” I asked amazed by her proposal.
“You said there was an explosion.”
“I talked about an explosion of a bottle of Coke.”
“A Coke? Oh, so why are you crying so much if there are no casualties?!”
I am sure this conversation is registered somewhere and was broadcasted in French television among the dummiest phone calls ever 🙂

By the way, the story ended well. We went to the reception (I kept on crying about thousands of euros I was supposed to pay). The receptionist called a cleaning lady – Francesca, who cleaned it very fast. She saved our money. Grazie mille Francesca 🙂

My husband have many similar socks (grey, black or dark blue). And every time I put them into the washing machne in pairs, some of them come back as single… No idea how it works but I have many single socks. Why don’t I get rid of them, you would ask… It’s simply because I love socks… But let’s leave socks for another post. No matter how much I try – I put some colorful threads on it, I put them all into one basket… Every time there is a lundry day and Eryk helps me to hang the wet things on the dryer, I hear the same sentence “Again?! Why did you mix all of the socks and why some are not matching?”. I have no answer to this question…

P.S. This story was inspired by my husbands’ struggles every morning to find 2 matching socks as well as one of posts of my friend Agata. One time Agata mentioned on facebook, that she puts many strange things to the washing machine e.g. the lighter or car keys… Thank you Agata for another inspiration 🙂

‘Well… At least we finally know where all those missing socks from the dryer went.’

‘In another universe parallel to our own.’

“Who would you save first, if you were in a burning house?” – asked my friend when we were coming back from Hen’s Party in Paris. (It was an amazing day, but let’s get back to this day another time.)

The question was a part of the “matching game”. My, then still husband to be, had to answer some questions that Kris asked him via email and then I had to answer them, bearing in mind what he would answer to see if we were matching.

My answer was very simple: “Of course I would save only myself. That is definitely what Eryk thinks”. My friends asked me to tell more details.

In 2014 we went to Sicily for holiday. It was an amazing summer time. Of course we had to see the volcano Etna. We were travelling by car, it was my old car that I got from my dad. It was a VERY old car, and the fact we were in super high temperatures and encircled by mechanics, who did not care that much and spoke only Sicilian (not Italian, Sicilian!), did not help. Something broke, our mechanic couldn’t help and even made it worse and we ended up driving by car that was boiling inside. To cool it down, we were putting on heating. Heating in more than 40 degrees made us feel like boiling eggs…

Anyway, back to the point. the car was in a very bad state. But we finally made it to the top, where you have to park the car and take the lift closer to the volcano. Eryk stopped the car and then suddenly…. we heard a BIG explosion, there was lots of white smoke… So what Kasia did in this situation? I run out like in the cartoons, just leaving lots of dust behind me, leaving  Eryk with big eyes opened. I didn’t even say a word.

So now he claims, I would never save anybody. I say it’s not true, but when I think back I remember… It is actually true. I remember once my Mum was reading some newspaper on the bed and I was playing Gameboy just next to her. There was a huge dragonfly that flew to our room. And I did it again, just run away without saying a word.

I could go on and on similar stories but… let’s face it. If there was any risk, I would run only for MY life… What an egoistic wife Eryk chose…

Below a photo from our memorable trip to Etna, which ended nicely, even if Eryk was disappointed by me running away. I must have other values as… 2 years later he decided to still say “I do”. 🙂

It is always highly appreciated when you speak other languages. I love languages and I always admire those, who have perfect accent or grammar etc. But… it’s rare that you make no mistakes at all, even in your mother tongue, when you are tired or in a rush.

I will never forget one story. I will try to explain it in English, although this mistake is from French. A few years ago I was visiting a friend of mine, who was hosting during a few days her Dad. He is a serious man. I was stressed and had no idea what I could speak about with him. French… it’s easy, their cuisine, they are always happy to talk about the food… “Une poele” means “a pan”.  And as he was frying something, I wanted to tell him, I know many one-pan recipes as I like “cuisiner a poele”.

A short notice, Polish language doesn’t use articles. Le, la, les, une, un, des, the, a, der, die, das, ein, eine – these small words don’t exist in our language… And when I studied literature and grammar, I was lazy. I think I could learn how to use them properly but I didn’t bother. Not using articles in other languages, can change the meaning of the words…

So, “a poil” which phonetically is the same as “a poele” means “naked”. Instead of saying “a la poele” I used the phrase without the article “la” and said I love cooking naked. His shocked face and then laugh – unforgettable 🙂

Do you remember the film “What women want?”, a movie starring Mel Gibson? One day he wakes up and can read womens’ minds. One of my dreams was to one time wake up and hear all the languages that I speak from a native speaker perspective. I can hear my friends who speak Polish, what their accent is and what small mistakes they do. But I cannot here my English or French from the native’s perspective.

E.g. once I said to a friend “I will bring vodka” in French. She started laughing and asked if one of my friends is called Vodka as without an article, it can mean I am talking about a person. It’s a pity I will never hear it from this perspective. Although, who knows, my husband is a scientist, I will tell him to work on some kind of “language brain machine” which would enable it 🙂

I am very proud of myself. Today I constructed 3 things I bought in Ikea (a small bench, a kitchen table and a wine bottle cupboard) and… they are all good, nothing is upside down or oblique.

Let me explain. I have something that Eryk calls “Debilizm motoryczny” (Locomotive idiocy). And I am not offended when he said so first time. I really have it… Once I constructed a table for our dining room. It was the easiest (and the cheapest) table on Earth and… I put all the metal things outside. He asked me what I did and I said “Oh, it is supposed to be like this. It is a modern style.”And Eryk said “Yep, it is litttle bit  too metallic-urbanic for me.” It turned out I made it back to front.

So, even if my furniture that I  bought today, are from 10 screws and 4 parts, I am extremely proud and enjoy having my laptop on the small table next to my coach and writing this post. Have a nice Saturday evening everyone 🙂

One of reasons I wanted to write this blog, was my blond intelligence and stories around it. First story below.  This one happened at the doctor’s, but some even more blond stories I will describe very soon, before I forget them. (not only my brain is as small as the gerbil’s one but also my memory – gerbils and Kasia remember things for maximum 3 days 🙂 )

One day, during my studies in Poland I had to have some basic medical exams before starting a job as a teacher.

“Doctor, doctor I need to check my hearing”.

“No problem Dear. So you have to bla bla bla”.

Some of my faux pas or stupid reactions are the effect of me not focusing on the answer. I always have 100 ideas in 1 minute and the simple rules of a very easy medical exam were so easy, that I decided not to listen to them. But of course it was a very easy test and if I were not blond, I would have guessed what I should have been doing.

There was some music being played in my left and right ear. I had to raise my left or right hand (depending on in which ear I heard it) when I started hearing something.

So I am sitting there and hearing some music, then louder and louder and then when I was almost deaf, the doctor started shouting: “ARE YOU NOT HEARING THIS LOUD MUSIC??!!!”.

I had to explain him that I did not understand his instructions. His look was very suspicious, maybe instead of hearing test, he should have sent me to some IQ tests….