Living harsh. I think this is Poland. Nothing is soft in this society. From the language so chock full of "zh" to shot after shot of vodka and strong bad beer on dirty cement, dilapidation, and angry old women scrambling up from their chairs and lace curtain ensconced hiding places by the bathroom to shriek that you owe them 2.50 zl for the use of the urinal. I need a plush chair, a softly lit living room, and a movie.

I met a Polish guy named Casper this weekend, in the mountains, on a get away trip half Polish half international. We met because he plays guitar, and the conversation started on this subject. The guy is a classic husky Pole. Wide shoulders and a wider face, smoking cigarettes with a thug jacket and a new york gangsta wide brimmed baseball cap tilted to the right. A stocky man if I've ever seen one. He had a bit of a friendly bumbling demeanor, but immediately seemed dangerous. I commented on his hoodie which featured a 1700s painting of hell or somesuch, demons cracking skulls, and dark knights impaling the innocent, it was faded. Joking I pointed to it and said something like 'that hyper violence, hell yeah.' His response wasnt what I expected, he moved in a little bit, dipping his cap over one eye, an enthusiastic and slightly manic smile twisting his wide jowls. "You like the violence? You know, you know, I don't know, but sometimes when things get hard, violence can be good." This was said with a sinister camaraderie that expected my full approval. It gave me the chills.
Shot after shot and smoke after smoke, these people were drunk the entire weekend. We left Wroclaw for the mountains on Thursday by train, a group of about seventy heading for a lodge at Karpacz. The spirit of the trip seemed to be to get drunk as much as possible, and to get as drunk as possible. Police met us as we got off the train, immediately fining one of the Polish boys still holding his beer as he left the train. You cannot drink on the street in Poland. Most of the French, German, and Spanish, and of course Polish, were drunk upon arriving, and continued to drink. I cannot comprehend these peoples tolerance for alcohol and will to drink, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while scrambling up icy slopes on Saturday afternoon, vodka from ladles in the evening.
Good trip though. On Friday we hiked up a mountain for about three hours in the snow. A long line of people trudging ever upwards in the soft light, and white between the spruce trees. Apparently there are reindeer in the mountains of Poland.