Katowice: Polish courtesy and shopping mores

As we've written previously, Katowice was a base for our day trip to Ogrodzieniec castle. And with two shopping malls located within 10 minutes' walk of our accommodation (the refurbished train station was connected to a roomy four-storey one), we spent much of our time there indoor. With precious little sightseeing done, it is an opportune time to collect and share our thoughts on the courtesy we've received in this country.

Below: Galeria Katowicka, where we spent much of our time in Katowice and one of a number of malls we visited in Poland.

Shopping mores

Malls have been important revictualling stations. Our list of possessions damaged within the first fortnight of this trip reads like a lamentable litany. The catch on my camera tripod leg snapped on Day 1 in Tallinn (it hobbled on until another broke in Ogrodzieniec). On Day 4, Mary dropped her beloved Desigual shawl and unbeknownst, tragically, to me until evening I tore a gash between my trouser sleeves. Yes, I was wearing it. A week after that, the pocket lining on my five-year-old snow trousers suffered the same fate. Most of these were replaced in a mall.

It was also heartwarming to find at least one bookshop in every mall we've visited, coming from a country where bookshops are apparently declining. I don't have the statistics on hand, but there might be a bigger market for Polish-language books in Poland than there is for English-language ones in Singapore and Malaysia combined (verification of this is very welcome).

Yet shopping in Poland has been a mixed experience. Service standards are tepid at best and polar wintry at worst. We've seen many sales assistants blanch the moment we stepped into their shop. We could very well have been the Chewbacca or R2-D2 to their uncomprehending (and, for some, unsympathetic) ears. Many of those approached (which we did with please in Polish) and who spoke no English simply shrugged indifferently and afterwards redoubled their efforts at their previous errand, as if it would make us vanish.

Since we're on the topic of English-speakers, we should also share our two encounters with Jehovah's Witnesses in Poland. There were too many similarities for these to be merely coincidental. Both took place in malls, involved a team of two approaching us with the innocuous opening of hello, do you speak English? We'd like to practise ours. It went beyond that, of course, and we engaged them in earnest conversation. Our appearances marked us out as obvious targets - Chinese people usually aren't the first you'd approach to practise English.

Courtesy from Pole to Pole

While most of the Polish people we encountered were undeniably kind, the exceptions (some of which we alluded to previously) plumb new depths.

Most of our journeys between cities in Poland were on buses run by the company named Polskibus. All the buses were fitted comfortably with wifi and clean toilets, and our rides were mostly smooth. Boarding each time, however, was Thermopylae all over again. Nobody queued, nor was one enforced. Passengers massed like hoplites at the door, a phalanx singular in its purpose of getting through but at odds with one another. We dubbed it the Polish press. Gaps between travelling companions were prized and prised, and the less alert were often pushed down the pecking order.

There were two other courtesy-related incidents which stood out for the involvement of youthful protagonists. We've already met the Polish girl on the train in Malbork who refused to lift her jacket from an adjacent seat, even when it was evident that all her friends had boarded and standing space grew scarcer. At a crowded McDonald's in Krakow, a boy raced to the recently vacated two-seater next to us, narrowly throwing himself into the chair ahead of an astonished mother and her young child. She was calm about it, and promptly turned to find another seat. The boy pumped his fist with an exultant yes, returning our glances with smugness.

It was important for us to remember that we've also met wonderful people in Poland - most notably Dorota from Sanok (which we've not written on yet), whose house we spent the night in, who met us at the bus station on a rainy night with her good-natured Alsatian named Bono and the old man in Malbork who provided advice on where to get off.

It would have been nice to not be reminded that every society contains a spectrum of temperaments.  Just as well that societies rest on regulated coexistence. Without that we might each be drawn to punching the teeth out of the next snob we come across.