Each city is obviously trying its best to impress the world and Wrocław doesn’t even need to try hard. After all, it’s a beautiful, vibrant city, full of history and fantastic architecture.

In its latest promotional video it’s trying to make it easier for foreigners to pronounce the name Wrocław by splitting it into two easy-to-remember (and pronounce) bits: Vrots and Love. (And presumably trying to imply that Wrocław is a city you can easily fall in love with; not sure what Vrots is meant to do though;) ) At the same time, the video shows everything the city is proud of – from its culture to its architecture and lovely people.

So here it is, does it work? I’ll let you be the judge:

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Blacksmith Shop by Czeslaw Milosz - click to view large

Those of you who live in London are probably familiar with Poems on the Underground, a Transport for London initiative to display short poems in Tube carriages. From tomorrow, you will also be able to read Polish poetry on London Underground as TfL is celebrating centenary of Czeslaw Milosz – a well-known Polish poet, writer and Nobel Prize winner.

The latest Poems on the Underground collection features Blacksmith Shop by Czeslaw Milosz himself, but also Nothing Special by Zbigniew Herbert and Star by Adam Zagajewski.

Milosz, who emigrated from Poland and subsequently became an American citizen and a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, translated Herbert’s and Zagajewski’s poems into English. Zagajewski, who also left Poland for Paris, is best known for his post-9/11 poem, Try to Praise the Mutilated World.

Star by Adam Zagajewski - click to view large

Zbigniew Herbert was also one of the most recognisable and most cherished Polish poets. During WWII he became a member of the Polish resistance and in the 1980s he was a poet of the Polish opposition.

Judith Chernaik, the founder of Poems on the Underground, said:

“We hope that Londoners and visitors alike will enjoy this latest collection of poems which celebrate one of the greatest Polish poets of our time.”

The Poems on the Underground programme has been so successful other big cities – including Warsaw – have launched similar initiatives on their respective underground/metro systems.

Nothing Special by Zbigniew Herbert - click to view large

But if you can’t spot any of the Polish poems on the Tube – or don’t travel on the Underground that often – you will be able to pick up a leaflet with the featured poems from five Tube stations: Embankment, Covent Garden, South Kensington, Russell Square and Moorgate. They will be available from June 10th.

UPDATE: Thanks to Transport for London I can now share with you the three Polish poems chosen to be displayed on the Tube. Click on the above images to read the poems. Those of you who want to learn more about the Tube can do so from the excellent Going Undergound’s blog by Annie Mole (who first let me know about TfL’s plans to display Polish poetry).Tweet

Polityka – despite its title – doesn’t just focus on politics, but is a high-quality liberal weekly whose topics span a wide range: from politics to science, from history to culture.

The publishers admit that the reason why they launched the magazine on Kindle – which has just a handful of users in Poland itself – is to reach Poles living abroad. You can buy just one issue for £2.99 or pay £5.99 for a monthly subscription, which actually doesn’t sound bad. However, when you compare to prices paid in US dollars – $1.99 and $3.99 – the Sterling prices sound like a rip-off. But that’s beside the point.

My suggestion is that – if you’re a fairly advanced Polish learner and own a Kindle – you should give it a go. There’s nothing better than learning a language from relatively well-written, real-language sources like newspapers, magazines, or blogs.

The experience is surprisingly good and user-friendly. There are no ads, almost all articles come with images (yes, there are black and white, but still clear enough) and the whole issue is divided into easily-navigable sections and articles. And the good thing about Kindle is the fact it works on any platform – so even if you don’t have the reader itself you can still use the Kindle app on your PC, iPhone, Mac or Android device.

And if you already own a Kindle, you know that most magazines come with a 14-day free trial, which you can cancel at any time.

It would be brilliant if more Polish publishers followed suit, although if you’re interested in Polish ebooks for Kindle and other readers, there’s already plenty of choice and many of titles are available for free.

A good place to start is ebook.pl (in Polish), where you can download samples and/or whole books (including free ones – click on the “darmowe’ tab). There are also some magazines and audiobooks there too.

The biggest Polish bookstore, Empik, has also launched an online ebook shop.

Password Incorrect is a great Polish blog – partly written in English too – with great resources and links for all ebook fans.

Miłego czytania!

P.S. I guess I should get myself an iPad now and see what’s available in Polish there…Tweet

WARSAW. A city with a broken spine, destroyed tradition and ugly, impolite character, deserves respect. There are few authentic trails of the past left, so it’s worth it to look for them and to share with others even more.
This project is a tribute to all the Warsaw street musicians, pre-war composers, and song writers who gave the music spirit to this city…
Legendary street tunes and lyrics were the inspiration to create the tracks described by digital effects, samples, electronic beat and live instruments.
Special thanks and regards to the Chmielna Street Orchestra – the real source of the party-and-music raptures!

I’m fascinated by the cheeky, in-your-face lyrics (“Your wife won’t find out her hubby drank all night to ladies’ health”) accompanied by dark, at times experimental-sounding electronic music. Not sure this will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I guess neither were the original tracks, although they sat at the opposite end of the musical spectrum.

Nevertheless, Projekt Warszawiak seems to be taking Poland by storm. This video has been viewed on YouTube over a million times already and it’s only been up for a couple of weeks.

I’ve seen this clip posted on Facebook more often than any other Polish video over the past few years. And it’s brilliantly done. You can almost smell Warsaw. The real, everyday Warsaw – where the old world, however ugly or fascinating it might be, clashes with its ambitious, pretentiously modern and at times depressing equivalent.

Here is “Nie ma cwaniaka nad Warszawiaka” (which losely translates as “No one is as crafty as a Warszawiak”). Pure gold.

For more tracks, see their MySpace page and visit their site here.Tweet

I’ve just come across a site for the BBC National Short Story Awards. It’s not a new site, but I thought I’d share a link to it as it also has a short story by a Polish writer, Adam Kaminski.

According to the site,

“Kaminski writes fiction, plays and literary criticism. He was born in 1978 and lives in Gdynia. His first collection of stories, Alone, was published in 2006 and his latest collection, The High Priestess, is currently in press.”

They’ve posted a link to a story called “The Girl from The Train”, translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who seems to specialise in Polish literature.

The story opens as a Word document. Enjoy.Tweet

Born in Silesia, he spent most of his life working and teaching in Katowice, the heart of the most industrialised region in Poland. Until early 1990s he remained largerly unknown, even in Poland. But his “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”, also known as the “Third Symphony”, composed in the late 70s and released in 1992 to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, made his name famous in Poland and abroad.

Here is how the New York Times described the symphony’s – and Gorecki’s – rise to fame in 1994:

As Communism in Poland crumbled during 1989, so Gorecki’s music spread. By 1990, Symphony No. 3 was being premiered with big orchestras from Brooklyn to Sydney, and several recordings were made. But not until the smooth voice of the soprano Dawn Upshaw, combined with the full sound of the London Sinfonietta under David Zinman on the Elektra Nonesuch label did all the fuss start.

Released in May 1992, the 52-minute recording moved the symphony from a respected piece in the modern repertory to a universally popular work. The recording held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s classical chart for 37 weeks and has sat in the top 25 for 93 weeks. It peaked at No. 6 on the British pop chart. Worldwide sales of the Nonesuch recording were over 600,000 by the end of the year. Orchestras rushed to perform the work as a way of keeping up with their audiences. Naturally, this renown didn’t escape the movie makers. The director Peter Weir chose the first movement of the symphony for the climactic scene in his movie “Fearless.”

Another great Polish composer is gone. But his music, inspired by the beauty and the soul of the Tatra Mountains remains:

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I just got an email from a production company inviting me to watch a video series about Poland called “From Poland With Love”. Yes, it might be a promotional vehicle for a particular sponsor, but it’s also a great series featuring some fantastic and less-known aspects of modern Poland.

In the above episode we get introduced to a Polish hip-hop performer, a ‘country’ band (watch out for their definition of country) and a Warsaw-based sculptor, Pawel Althamer, who relies on his neighbours from a working-class district of the city to help him create his elaborate art.

The series consists of five episodes in which a Swede, Ivar, travels up and down the country to discover places and people you hardly hear about.

You get to meet Edward Szwajkiewicz, a Solidarity member who fought the Communists, but also a modern Goth from Silesia. There’s a lot of clubbing and vodka drinking in Krakow, of course, but Ivar and his Polish side-kick Julita also make sure you get more than a glimpse of the beautiful Polish mountains and meet Trebunie Tutki, a fusion reggae band from Zakopane.

You can watch the entire series here – each episode is 8-10 minutes long and packed with some great stuff.

I loved it. It resonates with the Polski Blog and in a way, I’d like to think the series was made specifically for it…Tweet

Michał talks about his music (in Polish, but with English subtitles) and the clip is illustrated with his fantastic acoustic jazz.

According to his site, his debut album, The Worlds, “was considered by music journalists to be an exceptional debut”.

Now feast your eyes on this great video by Patryk Kizny and enjoy Michał’s music.

Perfect for a hot summer evening.

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“You Poles are so, so…, erm, cultured! Yes, that’s the word, cultured!”

My English musician friend used to tell me that whenever we used to meet in a pub years ago to talk all things Polish (for his benefit) and all thing British (for mine).

What he meant was probably this: most Poles are not afraid of so-called high culture, they see it as an important part of their lives. And I suppose that’s still the case nowadays when Polish TV schedules overflow with numerous variants of Britain’s Got Talent and Dancing on Ice. Being an intellectual (not always synonymous with ‘cultured’, mind) is, unlike in Britain, not a sign of snobbery. It’s a sign of much-admired sophistication. Of being ‘cultured’.

Now those of you who are more interested in poetry, art, literature, non-commercial music etc. from Poland have a great source of the latest cultural news.

Biweekly is a great, recently launched website in English (with a Polish version too) and I like how they justify their existence:

We came upon such a sentence: ‘culture is not an obligation, one can do very well without it’ (Kot Jeleński). And we do not dare to state otherwise.

Yet, there are those, who, for some reason, do not want to live without it. Maybe they do remember Witold Gombrowicz and, just like him, they desire culture without all this juvenility and senile atrophy, butterflies and rainbows, dust and exaltation, patriotic and pseudo-intellectual demands.

The site has great content, very well written and well translated. Its eclectic collection of contributors makes it quite addictive.

Highly recommended. If you like feeling cultured, that is.Tweet

Those of you who use Spotify probably know now that it’s become social and can be linked to Facebook. This way your Facebook friends can browse and subscribe to your playlists too.

That’s how I found out that – to my surprise – my Polish playlist has already 31 subscribers! That’s great!

It’s been modified a lot since I first created it over a year ago, but that’s good as it’s meant to be colleborative and reflect everyone’s tastes.

If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, here’s the link:

thepolskiblog’s Polish music playlist

And if you feel some great Polish music is missing from the list, feel free to add it to the playlist!

(And I’m sorry if you’re reading this outside Europe and wondering what Spotify is. Hopefully it’ll be available in the US and other countries soon.)Tweet