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Post by pjotr on Mar 7, 2017 1:33:16 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Mar 7, 2017 1:27:23 GMT 1
The same view from my front door with snow
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Post by pjotr on Mar 7, 2017 1:11:19 GMT 1
Thank you Bo, I simply spoke my mind and feeling about the somber wet rainy winter weather in the Netherlands. When it rains for days or weeks you get kind of depressed. Only work, social contacts and social activities make you forget the grey dull and cold wet weather and think about spring and summer. I prefer snow and a little bit colder temperatures, because that feels less cold than the wet cold. Funny theory about the primitive tribes that moved from the Eastern steppes to the West. I believe there is some truth in that when I see some primitive behavior of angry Dutch people in traffic jams or awkward traffic situations. Behaving themselves like Neantherthals, primitive brutes with shouting, vulgar guestions, agression, impatience, and acting if they are the only important ones. And the Hooligans, low lifes, white trash of rednecks (or the Duch kind of hillbillies) and other particular strange individuals and groups that just seem to have come out of the stone age or the Migration Period in the middle of the first millennium AD. When Germanic, Slav and Romance tribes travelled great distances all over Europe. The time of the Barbarians, Romans, Huns, Franks, Goths, Visigoths and Celts. The images below here are images I made iat the back of my apartment with a view on Arnhem city and from my balcony on the front of the apartment with a view on the industrial zone and the Rhine river area in the distance. The Third photo is an image of the road from Arnhem to Oosterbeek in the West Monday morning. I you look at the imagery of the first two images and imagine the sounds at night you can maybe hear the noises I was talking about. The Rhine river and Industry side of my apartment in the front of the apartment building, fourth storeThe North side of the apartment building with a view from my front door to the Balustrada walkway to the elevator and stairs to go downstairs with a view on the city center of Arnhem.The road from Arnhem to Oosterbeek in the West Monday morning
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Post by pjotr on Mar 5, 2017 2:07:53 GMT 1
In the province of Gelderland, near ArnhemSomewhere in the Veluwe forest region in the provinice of Gelderland (near Arnhem) tall tree braches blocked the road and had to be removed by the fire brigade
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Post by pjotr on Mar 5, 2017 1:49:45 GMT 1
An image of typical Dutch stormy weather, you see Arnhem below the middle, under Zwolle, Februari, 23, 2017 An image of the Dutch North sea during a stormTrees hit cars in the Netherlands too in Frebruari 2017Storm and human errors cause a lot of damage on Dutch highways, roads and boulevardsIn the Vossenalley in the Dutch city Nijmegen a large tree fell down. It hit a car of a local inhabitant. His neighbor from across the street just escaped from the falling tree when he passed the car of his neighbour. He was lucky and unharmed.
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Post by pjotr on Mar 5, 2017 1:41:27 GMT 1
Bo, The weather in the Netherlands is a typical North-West-European, North sea climate, weather. Stormy, nasty winds and water cold weather. Not freezing, but more nasty, close to zero and a lot of damp in the atmosphere and on the soil, so wet city streets, walls, vegetation and houses and buildings. The long rainy days make the atmosphere outside rather grey with all the grey, white and anthracite clouds. The wind creates noises of rattling windows, clapping flags or advertisment banners on their aluminium flagstaffs, the lisping sounds of trucks, cars, vans and busses driving over wet streets and boulevards, and the sharp whistling sounds of the wind that forces itself around buildings, tall trees and constructions like bridges, street lights, metal fences and traffic lights. We have those noises all year round, because in our flat lands the wind is master. But in the winter the wind is more nasty and it's tone more harsh, because you don't have the soft gentle whispering sound of young leaves and tree branches of the spring or the full tree brances of the summer. Like in a poetic Russian movie. Some people in the North of Europe suffer from winter somberness or depression. Lot's of people from Nordic countries like the Netherlands, Northern-Germany, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries above Denmark go to warm destinations in the winter, Portugal, Spain, the Canary Islands, Thailand, Greece, Turkey or Egypt, Israel, Ibiza or Mallorca. I hear the rain and wind at night (and the noises I described), because I live in the periphery of the city, inbetween a Industrial zone and a old neighbourhood. Lot's of industrial and civilian neighbourhood elements that can catch wind and therefor make all kind of noises. This next to some industrial and construction noises at night, because a large firm of road construction materials (gravel, sand and cement, concrete, ground/soil, and other materials like metal, synthetic materials and etc.). Trucks driving in, receiving their load and moving again, cranes putting the materials in the trucks and etc. Road construction work and train track construction work often happens at night in the Netherlands. The minimum temperature in Arnhem, Sunday, March the 5th 2017 is 5 degrees celcius, and the maximun temperature is 11 degrees celcius. So better than last week. (mo, Tu, Wed, Thursday and Friday). In the morning it will be dry with lightly overcast, and in the afternoon there will be more clouds and rain again. www.weeronline.nl/Europa/Nederland/Arnhem/4057527Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 20, 2017 17:29:25 GMT 1
I am Polish with a grain of doubt. Why did you mention San Diego and not Miami? It is true that one of my textbooks had a text about San Diego and none about Miami but still, the legend is a legend.... Well, I have not actually been to either place, but from what people tell me, Miami is hot and humid, with afternoon rain showers frequently, but San Diego apparently has perfect weather every day... And I didn't realize Miami is legendary...what's its legend...good weather??? Suffocating in the heat is not my idea of good weather... We'd get along fine, then, if we had to work together...it's not that I'm unsociable exactly, but I just don't like to talk unless it's about something meaningful and interesting. I'd generally rather listen than talk, so some people see that as being unsociable, but I don't. I can join your club, I am not a weather discussion chap either. And with the lot's of rain in the Netherlands my compatriots have a subject of complaining. I like to talk about other things than the weather. About cultural things, interesting subjects and about photography and art with other people who have an interest in that. Recently people in Vale Gran Rey, La Gomera, Canary Islands, called me the silent guy. You don't talk a lot they told me. I like to walk around, to observe things, and take my drawing book, I-phone and draw and write some stuf. If a conversation starts it is often other people (strangers) who start a conversation, and I will reply in a friendly and polite matter. If the discussion is about the weather or some other uninteresting subject, the conversation will be short to very short. Because in that case I will have nothing to say substantial. But in La Gomera I had great and interesting discussions with German, Austrian, British, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian and Dutch people I met while mountain climbing, walking along the small road that was cut through the mountains to the town, and at a restaurant and a bar. Meeting people of different nationality or culture is a great opportunity for a conversation about the purpose of there travel, their background and about the quality and the interesting aspects of the place you are at. For instance the from the Scottish people I learned about the Moderate Scottish nationalism, that they really want to leave Great-Britain, that the EU is important for them, that Scotland has rich resources and that they really want Independence. Actually it was a English guy who had moved to Scotland and married a Scottish woman and gradually had turned into a Scot. He was pro-Independence too. In the Netherlands I have professional contact with my tv and radio colleages, political contacts with the local politicians, family contacts with the family and social contacts with friends. I will not easily start a conversation on the street with strangers about the weather or a traffic situation for instance. Abroad there can be a subject for a conversation. The fact that others come from ohter places and travel to an interesting destination, read an interesting book or just are interested in a chat with a stanger (me) who is seated next or opposite to them. Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 8, 2017 7:00:03 GMT 1
In the Eastern Netherlands there is a nasty combination of cold, wet snow and general greyness. I am glad I can escape to some warmer territory and warm up a bit. I prefer dry snow, and a stabile winter in staid of these wet cold winters with a lot of fog, wet snow, snow and cold rains. It makes you gloomy. But good work, good friends and ceetainly good girlfriends can cheer a poor old bachelor like me up!
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Post by pjotr on Feb 7, 2017 21:42:44 GMT 1
And I have to agree with Jeanne. Your photos are my window into Poland and beyond too! It might seem I am more active in writing on the other Forum, but you can't see how much threads I have read and watched over here. Especially Polish art (old and new), history, culture in general, architecture, infrastructure, cities, towns, people, customs and religious subjects (both Roman-Catholic and Jewish) fascinate me and I have learnt a great deal visiting this Forum just reading, going through old and new conversations of other Forum members (you, Tufta, Jeanne, Mike and etc.) and going back to history via both your black and white and colour photo images.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 7, 2017 18:32:45 GMT 1
Dear Bonobo,
You are doing a fine job and I understand very well that you I don`t have time to do such checks and recall what was already posted or not. I work with large quantities of Adobe Premiere Pro Video interviews, newsflashes and programs on my tv station. And maybe it isn't exactly the same as your Forum photo upload task, but I have also some limitations.
I hope you don't have the technological server problems I have sometimes professionally uploading tv versions and youtube version of our work. Our external broacast system company who puts our work online to air for TV often has technical problems. And therefor (very annoying) deadlines for tv streaming sometimes aren't met. When you have to air a new tv news on 18:00 hours you want it to play at 18:00 hours and not at 19:00 or 20:00 hours or not at all. (In the worst case scenario).
In your case with this Forum, realise that your visitors are already very happy with al the photographic material that is already present. Fellow Forum members know you have a teaching job, your family and your new farm somewhere in the Polish countryside. You must use your time efficiently and act pragmatic as a father and educator.
I will contradict or object to one of your statements. You do not bore me to death with hundreds of photos at all. I am a photographic freak surrounded by friends (about 50% of my friends is professional photographer) and photography all the time and I love it. I love the sociographic, historical, anthropological, cultural way you post images of towns, cities, villages, hamlets and rural area's and Polish infrastructure.
You do your job well.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 7, 2017 8:05:27 GMT 1
Yes, Americans are sick of politicians that do not address things directly. The talk "around" things and end up saying nothing of substance about an issue. That way they cannot get in trouble for their views, plus no one can actually know what their views are because they speak so obscurely!! No danger of that with Donald T....if he's anything...he's blunt...usually blunt to a fault! Read more: polandsite.proboards.com/thread/4578/president-trump-news?page=1&scrollTo=33742#ixzz4Xym50joRDuch people are sick of politicians that do not address things directly too. The politicians talk "around" things and end up saying nothing of substance about an issue usually. Or they say or promise one thing and do another thing when they get elected. That way they cannot get in trouble for their views, plus no one can actually know what their views are because they speak so obscurely!! Maybe it has to do with the heritage of pilarization, the multi-cultural society (they have to address a lot of different ethnic, social -class- groups and cultures. And that's why populist policitcal parties like Geert Wilders PVV and the new party Denk ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denk , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%C3%A7uk_%C3%96zt%C3%BCrk , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunahan_Kuzu , www.bewegingdenk.nl/ ) are so popular. These rightwing populist and leftwing populist parties of native Dutch and migrants address the needs of their constituency. If Geert Wilders is anything...he's blunt...usually blunt to a fault! He won't let himself be stopped. Only prison or assasination would stop him he himself said once. For the killing part, I am not an advocate of that. I am not in favor of political violence ofcourse. Two political assasination left mental marks in the Dutch political spectrum and toughened the Dutch political climate. To a certain point the political assasinations of Pim Fortuyn ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn ) and Theo van Gogh ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director) ) made Geert Wilders possible. Geert Wilders is created by 911, migration, integration and assimilation problems, international terrorism in Europe, the USA and Canada and the assasinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in 2002 and 2004. 2001 (the 911 attacks on New York, Washington DC and the crashed plane in Pennsylvania,- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93 ), 2002 and 2004 changed the Netherlands. In 2005 Group Geert Wilders emerged in parlaiment, that group later became the PVV (Freedom Party). Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 22:04:41 GMT 1
Sometimes some aspects of my old circle of artist/culture friends reminded me of a seventies Woody Allen movie, Italian movies of Fellini or Pasolini (the art and culture world has a great variety of people, characters and personalities with all kind of ethnic, cultural and sexual backgrounds; straight hetrosexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and people who are something inbetween. People with Dutch, German or Felmish heritage, and people with Austrian, Swiss, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Kurd, Moroccan, Surinamese or Dutch Antillian Black, full blood Indonesian, Indo-European or Moluccan [Amobonese] background, Persians, Bosnians, Romanians and even Russians and Ukrainians. But most of them are Dutch with a rich variety of regional backgrounds -Frisians, Brabant and Limburg people with their Southern charming soft G language -I am a standard Dutch tough G -Holland region/Western - Dutch speaker, Eastern Saxon people from Gelderland, OverIjssel, Drenthe or Groningen with their nasal -tough N sound- dialects or accent. And I can get along with all these kinds of Dutch people, but here in the Saxon Gelderland East I prefer the Western Dutch Holland import people from Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. Most of my friends are import [Holland] people, with some Southern Brabanders and Limburgers amongst them. I have a few Saxon friends of the Eastern-Gelderland Achterhoek border region. I like their farmer, hard working and direct mentality, which is in contrast with the more introvert local Arnhem town or city people, who are more rigid, reserved and distrusting. But like Jeanne said, I can talk in stereotypes, but in the same time you can find people of all these sorts I described over here who don't fit in the regional description I gave here. I talk about loners, characters and personalities of individuals who can be different from the dominant group they belong to. But fact stays that almost 100% of my social circle in Arnhem is made of people who weren't born and raised in Arnhem. Real Arnhem people (echte Arnhemmers) like Arnhem people would say it. That expression always irritated me. ' Real Arnhem girl', ' Real Arnhem guy', ' the real Arnhemmer' are people who speak in the heavy Arnhem dialect/accent, and have the Arnhem mentality of ' I really belong here, because I was born and raised here, and I don't come from Amsterdam -like Pieter-, or Nijmegen.' Nijmegen-the arch enemy neighbour city, a soccer match between the Arnhem and Nijmegen soccer teams is like the derby Wisła Kraków- KS Cracovia, a civil war or Holy war ( Derby Krakowa w piłce nożnej). Walking in a Vitesse (Arnhem soccer club) jellow black training jacket or t-shirt could cause you your sudden death in Nijmegen. The same would be the case if you walked in a Arnhem workers hood with the Nijmegen NEC Red/Green/Black colors in Arnhem. Rotterdam and Amsterdam people have a traditional dislike or hatred for eachother. A real Rotterdammmer don't likes to visit Amsterdam. He is proud of his harbour city. THe Hague people are mocked by both Amsterdam and Rotterdam people because The Hague is a village without city rights (Town privileges or borough rights). And etc. etc. The pillarisation created some divide between the Roman-Catholic (Limburg-Brabant) South and the Protestant West and North. Class differences and class struggle played some role in the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th century. Under the Dutch monarchy lay old Republican layers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_States_Partyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriottentijden.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Republic ( pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republika_Zjednoczonych_Prowincji ) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtholder ( pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadhouder ) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_and_Cod_warsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War ( pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojna_osiemdziesi%C4%99cioletnia ) Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 21:26:00 GMT 1
Dear Jeanne and Bonono, Jeanne is correct that in my work as a local (humble) tv journalist (cameraman, editor and camjo = camera journalist- by the way I am typing this right now in the RTV-Arnhem tv edit room) I am quite neutral, objective and try to be fair and frank. I treat all political parties equal over here, the national and the local ones, the left, right and centrist ones. If you count culture, fine art, art photography, painting/drawing, an ecclectic taste in music, general history and art history, art academy fine art education, philosophy, an interest in architecture and city life, an investigative mind (my job is to interview and film people and sometimes to do a lot of work to convince people to allow me to interview them and research them and ask critical questions they don't always want to answer), love for forests, other countries and cultures (and thus travelling), an interest in most slavic cultures (the other slavic cultures next to Poland), a main interest in Poland (that's why I am here), Polish culture and Polish people, and next to that a fondness of Enlgish language and German press and media (because they have more info about Poland than the Dutch ones) and a great cinematographic enthousiast and a person who like the international climate of places where people with a lot of different nationalities meet (that's why I love Amsterdam, Warsaw, Berlin and Krakow) then you have me or know me. I moved away from art and culture the past decade, but this weekend the world of art and culture came back to me when I filmed an art exhibition. I can move away from drawing, painting, thinking about art and writing about art, by working as a journalist with regional economical and financial subjects, politics, society, education and health care news issues, but art and culture will catch up with me. My background and old connections are still these arty (artistic) people from Amsterdam, The Hague and Arnhem. All these friends with their variety of jobs, photographers, painters, ICT specialists, graphic designers, architects, health care people. All these people in my personal circle of friends have what you would call in Poland a cultural intelligentsia background. Literature, poetry, quality music, fine art (contemporary art), politics, pyschology/sociology, the civil society, subjects like ethics, philosophy, wildlife, ecological food (fair and environmentaly safe produced food), yoga, meditation, mindfullness, (Zen) Buddhism, spirituality, quality press (good news; good articles, good essays, good columns, good letters), art house cinema, alternative pop music (what they call Indie music in the USA), traveling to non-touristic destinations, wildlife and sport (healty living) and dancing, good pubs and restaurants are important to these people. There are also musicians, dancers, fashion designers, theatrical playwrights and actors/actressesd and teachers/couches amongst them. How would you describe them in Polish and American terms Bo and Jeanne? Liberals, progressives, libertarians, free thinkers, intelligentsia (because most of them have a vocational university or university academic background), adventurers, creative professionals. My world consist mainly of people with creative cultural professions, health care jobs, idealists, dreamers, people with probably more leftwing leaning ideas. Sometimes it feels like I am traditional, conservative or even rightwing if I am with them, because I like some old fashionate things and like to conserve them while they don't care and are more attached to progressive change. Everything changes and you can't stop it they say to me. I am fond of them, I love them, they are my best critics, my comedians, my loved ones, my comrades, sometimes tiresome, sometimes annoying (in their difficult, complicated arguments, disagreements and thus discussions - I admid that I sometimes or often don't have an appatite for these discussions and than they call me a stubborn, grumpy, introvert, cheerless, irritated chap - If my mood is good I will jump into one of these deep discussions and drown in it or fight until the end for my thesis, opinion or personal ideology, philosophy or statements). I love woodwork (cutting trees), making fires (amongst friends, a Holistic group I attend regularly and family I am the fire maker), walking for hours in the mountains or woods (love climbing), gardening (if I would have a garden, and therefor in my parents garden in Zeeland), cycling fast though Dutch towns and cities, but also the country (I cycle every day to my job and don't have a car), and love to swim, row and surf. I love the Veluwe forest region around Arnhem. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeluweWhel Jeanne and Bonobo, I have tried to be honest, this is what I can tell you about myself and my private life. I should probably draw, paint, walk and cycle more, but filming (TV camera), editing (Adobe Premiere Pro) and Television interviews (and being part of the Muncipality and region press of RTV-Arnhem, de Gelderlander Newspaper -colleages of the written press-, the local news blogs Arnhem Direct and Ik hou van Arnhem and the larger competitor Omroep Gelderland -Gelderland Broacast corpoartion- keeps me out of the woods and holds me back from drawing and painting). I hope that I will find time again for painting, drawing and cycling and walking more (in the sense of sport). Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 20:32:07 GMT 1
Bonobo,
It is hard for me to explain. Polish for me is a nearly intimate, personal, physical, connecting, heart touching, deep personal language even though I can't understand, read, or write and thus think in it. But the sound, tone, atmosphere, feeling and cultural, social and family meaning of Polish as a language is very clear to me. It is part of my life if I want it or not. I can't ignore hearing my mother singing Polish songs in my parents kitchen when she cooks and can't ignore the fact that she still looks things up in her old Polish language encyclopedia. I see that encyclopedia and see the Polish sentences and words written in it. I can't blame my mother she didn't manage to tought us Polish, because my sister said she tried to learn us Polish as kids, and later as an adult when I started to try to learn Polish again in Arnhem in a Polish language course, she really put an effort in helping me.
I think the main culprit was my Dutch family and the Dutch environment which was quite language puristic or dominant. A typical West-Germanic linguistic culture, inbetween the German, English and Frisian languages. My mother was in the Netherlands since 1967 and I was born in 1970. As a baby and toldler my mother probably used Polish coddle words and expressions for me and my sister (who was born in 1971). We had a Polish nanny as little children and she also will have used Polish words or must have spoken Polish with my mother. And like I told you my Polish babcia sometimes spend long periods in our family home in the Netherlands. If my babcia wasn't in the Netherlands I was used to the familiar sound of my mother and babcia speaking Polish with eachother every day, day and night (in the morning, in the afternoon, in het evenings and during the weekends when we were together with the family).
I had or have the strange habbit to watch Polish movies with subtitles, or even watched Polish movies without subtitles to look at the images, and feel the atmospher and let the imagery tell the story. I only know a few basic words of Polish, not enough to understan a conversation. During the Polish lessons by a Dutch Gymnnasian teacher (a quite sophisticated old lady) I really got impressed by the Polish language and the sophistication and culture of that language due to the Latin orthography. Incredible difficult that Polish spelling with it's 7 grammatical cases, and these male, female and plural versions of words and expressions. I have to say that I am quite basic in English and German (some terrible Dutch coal accent German, but accepted and understandable for German, Austrian and Swiss German people), and probably have a terrible Dutch accent in English too (It is a very personal thing that I don't like German with a Dutch accent or English with a Dutch accent).
It is a fact that my parents considered the language French (they are both Anglophile and Francophone, but more Francophone than Anglophile. French chancon music, French cinema and French art and French cuisine was quite appreciated and promoted in our home. Fact that we had our holiday house in the French speaking part of Belgium, in the Ardennes mountains in the Walloon region, ad to that fact. We spoke french with the locals there, also when we played with Walloon Belgian kids over there. French in the supermarket -Supermarché-, boulangerie, Boucherie, le Café des Sports, the local restaurants and shops over there. We had that holiday house from 1978 until 2002, so for almost 24 years I spoke French there). Polish always was present in the background in our home, because my mother calls with old Polish friends in the USA and Poland (Warsaw and Poznan) and even after 50 years outside Poland she still speaks Polish with these people. Sometimes searching for words and using half Dutch sentences and words (without noticing it herself -which can be quite funny -, sometimes I whisper to my mother during these long phone conversations, mom "I don't think she understands Dutch", but my mother still speaks Polish with these Polish and 100% ethnic Polish Polish-American family members -who were raised by two Polish parents who spoke Polish at home - and that is the reason why my American cousins speak Polish and can read and write in Polish. Not as good as Polish Poles, but anyhow they can do it, which is great.
Bonobo, I know that Polishness, Polish culture and Polish identity for a large part is connected to the Polish language, the Polish linguistic culture of music songs, poetry, literature, Polish philosophy and the Polish lithurgy of the Polish mass. That's why I have something with the Polish language. My Dutch grandmother considered Polish to sound very delicate, elegant, sophisticated and nice. Like French, but then a Slavic version. Sophisticated academic Dutch people with some intellectual luggage often considered my mother to be French for some reason. My mother was asked several times if she is French. Funny fact is that in the town of my childhood we had Polish-French neighbours. My sister and I were carried around like living dolls by the French brunette (dark hair and dark eyes) daughters of this Polish-French neighbours (Expats in the Netherlands who worked for a French Petro-chemical firm in our city). In that expat street were not only French expat people, but also Belgians, Spanish and Greek-Italian expats. Therefor next to the Polish nanny, my mother and my babcia I was used to foreign languages as a child. But I was to dumb or to less skillfull in languages to learn Polish. I have to admid that in my Polish class (filled with Dutch NATO military personel who worked in Poland and Dutch guys with Polish wives or girlfriends) in Oosterbeek (a small town next to Arnhem, with some Polish Market Garden heritage) I found out that Polish is a difficult, complicated and sophisticated language. I really had great difficulties with the Latin orthography. I thought that German and French class was hard at my highschool. But French and German were nothing compared to Polish. Maybe Polish would have been less complicated if I would have had Gymnasium as highschool with latin and Greek. Polish probably would have been easier for me if I had learned latin at highschool.
Polish touched something in me, and if I hear Polish somewhere on the street, at a mneeting/gathering or at a cultural event I immediately recognise it and feel a connection. My intelligence goes that far that I can hear the difference between Czech, Polish and Russian. This weekend in Arnhem I saw a huge group of young people in decent suits and dresses walking through the city center. I heard that their language was not Russian nor Polish, so I asked a young man polite which language they were using? The young man replied Czech. We had a large group of Czechs who visited Arnhem this weekend. I loved to watch Kieslowski's Polish television drama series Dekalog, due to the Polish language, Polish atmosphere and acting of the Polish actors in that excellent ten one-hour films.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 1:35:40 GMT 1
Dear Jeanne, For some reason I have witnessed that many homosexuals felt attracted to the Roman-Catholic church. In my opinion often because Mary is important for them. Through the years I have witnessed several homosexuals who converted to the Roman-Catholic faith. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_ReveNotable lesbian, gay and bisexual CatholicsA number of influential Italian Catholic artists of the Renaissance and the Baroque who were notable for their religious paintings and sculpture were considered to have been homosexual or bisexual. These include Donatello, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In addition, Michelangelo Buonarotti was noted for painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel under which popes are elected to this day. Andy Warhol greats Pope John Paul the 2nd in RomeAndy Warhol was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art; and whose homosexuality strongly influenced his work. He was a Ruthenian Catholic and regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York to practice his faith; describing himself as a religious person and regularly attending mass. Andy WarholIt is considerably frustrating that Mr. Warhol was an ardent, believing, and practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic. Such an immense failure of the intellect makes him impossible to idolize in precisely the manner we wish to idolize him: As a new-age, secular artiste, champion of unexamined homosexuality and all things hip, enemy of the repressed, the medieval, and the ancient. Now truly, Mr. Warhol was openly, undeniably gay, a laudable feat in a time less friendly to men with same-sex attraction. But to fashion the Wigged Wonder into our 21st-century, objectified caricature of a homosexual does him violence. According to the wonderful book The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, by Jane Daggett Dillenberger, the man remained celibate, a fact revealed by his own declaration of virginity and at his eulogy, where it was recalled that “ as a youth he was withdrawn and reclusive, devout and celibate, and beneath the disingenuous mask that is how he at the heart remained.” He deliberately concealed who he was to the public — famously answering questions with “ uh, no” or “ uh, yes” — and he certainly concealed the fact that he wore a cross on a chain around his neck, carried with him a missal and a rosary, and volunteered at the soup kitchen at the Church of Heavenly Rest in New York. He went to Mass — often to daily Mass — sitting at the back, unnoticed, awkwardly embarrassed lest anyone should see he crossed himself in “the Orthodox way” — from right shoulder to left instead of left to right. He financed his nephew’s studies for the priesthood, and — according to his eulogy — was responsible for at least one person’s conversion to the Catholic faith. Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–89) was an American photographer. From 1977 until 1980, Mapplethorpe was the lover of gay writer and Drummer magazine editor Jack Fritscher. He was brought up in a Roman Catholic household and despite later "lapsing", Catholicism continued to suffuse his art - particularly in the area of Catholic guilt and eroticism. Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti SmithIn Britain, a number of late 19th-century authors who converted to Catholicism were gay or bisexual, among them Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Lord Alfred Douglas, Marc-André Raffalovich, Robert Hugh Benson, Frederick Rolfe and John Gray. These male writers sometimes found, in their Catholicism, a means of writing about their attraction to and desire for relationships with other men. Wilde, who had Catholic tendencies throughout his life and converted on his deathbed, wrote himself in De Profundis, during his imprisonment and hard labor, as akin to Christ embodying suffering, and invoked Christ's transformative power for the oppressed. Wilde's sometime lover, the poet John Gray was also a Catholic. Raffalovich compared the physicality and the ecstasy of devotion to Christ to same-sex erotic desire; Hopkins's work as well is strongly marked by physicality and eroticism in its religious references, and the poet, who was reminded of Christ by other men that he found beautiful, dwelt on the physicality of Christ's body and intimacy of his comfort and love. Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, was also a convert to Catholicism. Joanne Glasgow writes that for Hall and other lesbians of the early twentieth century, such as Alice B. Toklas, the church's erasure of female sexuality offered a cover for lesbianism. Marcel Proust was one of the first European novelists to feature homosexuality openly and at length; and was himself considered to have been homosexual. Tennessee Williams was an American playwright and author of many stage classics. He believed that his work was full of deep Christian symbolism, and admitted loving " the beauty of the ritual in the Mass"; yet nevertheless thought the tenets of the Roman Catholic church themselves " ridiculous". David Berger (b. 1968) is a German theologian, author and gay activist. He taught as a professor at the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. However, since May 2013 he has been editor-in-chief of German biggest gay lifestyle-magazine MÄNNER (Berlin). Eve Tushnet is a lesbian Catholic author and blogger. She converted to Catholicism in 1998, and is celibate due to the Catholic Church's ban on sex outside heterosexual marriage. British conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos is a practicing Catholic and sexually active gay man. AcademicsJohn Boswell was a prominent historian and a professor at Yale University, and gay. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of religion and homosexuality, specifically Christianity and homosexuality. Daniel A. Helminiak (b. 1942) is an American Catholic priest, theologian and author. He is currently a professor in the Department of Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology at the University of West Georgia, near Atlanta. From 1975 to 1978, he served as teaching assistant to Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904–1984), the philosopher, theologian, economist, and methodologist whom Newsweek styled the Thomas Aquinas of the 20th century. Singers and musiciansJeanine Deckers (d. 1985) was known as The Singing Nun or Sœur Sourire. She was a Belgian singer-songwriter and was at one time a member of the Dominican Order. After leaving the order, she remained a practicing Catholic. Some 14 years later, she began a lesbian relationship with a lifelong friend. Vaslav Nijinsky performing in a ballet in Paris, 1911.Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. He was romantically involved with Sergei Diaghilev. Pope Pius Receives LiberaceThe pianist and entertainer Liberace was recognized during his career with two Emmy Awards, six gold albums and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He had a four-year relationship with Scott Thorson. Described as a devout Catholic, he was received in a private audience by Pope Pius XII. Josephine BakerJosephine Baker was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, or to become a world-famous entertainer. She was bisexual, having had relationships with men and women. In her later years, Baker converted to Roman Catholicism. Francis PoulencFrancis Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. He was predominantly gay, yet struggled with his sexuality. Following the death of a close friend in the 1930s, he rediscovered his Roman Catholic faith and replaced the ironic nature of neo-classicism with a new-found spiritual depth. Ricky MartinThe musician Ricky Martin has sold over 70 million albums and has had 95 platinum records. Mika (born Michael Holbrook Penniman, Jr.; 18 August 1983), stylised as MIKA, is a British singer and songwriter.The Lebanese-British singer-songwriter Mika has acknowledged his Catholic upbringing but has written about his conflicting relationship with the Catholic Church and its stance on homosexuality in his music. He still considers himself Roman Catholic, and has indicated that his song " The Origin of Love" is about religion. " It's about the Roman Catholic Church, which I love dearly – even though I’m not a bigot and I’m not in denial of the human condition. Yet, at the same time, it's a very strange thing, ’cause I’m very respectful of that world." Steve GrandAmerican country music singer Steve Grand is openly gay and a practicing Catholic. Actors and directorsJean CocteauJean Cocteau was a celebrated French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. After a long absence from the Church he returned to practicing his Catholic faith in his later years, and was known to be particularly very devout. He designed and painted murals for the Church of Notre Dame de France in London. Pier Paolo PasoliniPier Paolo Pasolini (1922 – 1975) was an Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual. He was openly gay. He described himself as a " Catholic Marxist"; although elsewhere insisted he was an atheist. His film The Gospel According to St. Matthew was a re-telling of the New Testament story, part-financed by the Catholic Church, and dedicated to " the dear, joyous, familiar memory of Pope John XXIII". The film won the Grand Prize at the International Catholic Film Office. Lucio DallaLucio Dalla was a popular Italian singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He was outed as gay after his death (having had a long-term partner, Marco Alemanno) He was a practicing Roman Catholic, and was given a funeral mass in the cathedral at Bologna. Franco ZeffirelliFranco Zeffirelli is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He remains a practicing Catholic and believes that " Catholicism is the only [religion] that comprehensively meets the needs of mankind." Furthermore, he has spoken about the making of the film Jesus of Nazareth as representing an important turning point - giving " the opportunity to draw closer to the mystery of Christ". Pedro AlmodóvarPedro Almodóvar (b.1949) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. He is openly gay. Many of his films contain strong Catholic imagery. His film " Dark Habits" (1993) features a mother superior in a convent who is also a lesbian. The 2004 film " Bad Education" deals with the theme of the sexual abuse of children at the hands of Catholic priests.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 1:19:59 GMT 1
Dear Bonobo and Jeanne,
I probably feel more Dutch when I see 100% ethnic Polish family members, wether they are Polish or Polish-American. I am 50% Dutch by blood and 50% Polish, but linguistically and culturally I am more Dutch than Polish due to the reality of life. I Poland part of me felt at home. I felt more connection then I felt in the Czech Republic (Prague), Hungary (Budapest), and other Foreign nations. That was because I heard my mother and babcia speaking Polish as a child and teenager (my babcia died when I was 17 in 1987). And I also heard my Polish aunts, uncles and cousins speaking Polish with eachother and ofcourse all the Poles around me when I was in Poland. So having been in Poland several times as a kid and the fact that my Polish grandmother stayed at our home in the Netherlands sometimes for a couple of months made the Polish language sounding for me quite natural. I didn't understood it or understand it today, but it was the familiar sound of my babcia and Matka speaking Polish with eachother, made it one of the four (or five I have to say) languages which was spoken in gatherings of the Polish, Dutch, American and Danish family in Poland. At the international family gathering in the state hotel Orbis in Poznan I heard Polish, Dutch, English, German and probably the Danish of the Polish-Danish family delegation. I was a 14 year old boy who was rather childish back then for his age and who looked at the international gathering with amazement. Not being used to a large city like Poznan and not knowing large çommunist state hotels either. My sister and I played with our two younger cousins from Poznan (two girls).
In the sixties and seventies when some old aristocratic elements of the family were still alive some of the old folks spoke French at the family gathering with my Dutch grandma. So next to English, German, Polish and Dutch also French was spoken. For me these international family meetings had something diplomatic, sophisticated, complicated and rather unusual. But very nice, friendly and exciting. Nationality didn't matter, genes, dna and blood mattered, we were all family. I remember great church masses with thousands of people. It was the time of Solidarność. The Polish Roman-Catholic church and their own Roman-Catholic faith gave the Poles inner strength, the warmth of spirituality, connection to the faith community and a connection to the Polish culture which was and is rooted in Roman-Catholicism and their Western-Slavic linguistic and ethnic identity. Not narrow minded nationalism but healthy Patriotism existed. Pride of their own culture and heritage and respect for other cultures and people. We foreign branches of the Diaspora family branches always felt welcome. Poland always was a warm bath of hospitality, cosyness and togetherness.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 6, 2017 0:11:51 GMT 1
Graham GreeneHenry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991), better known by his pen name Graham Greene, was an English novelist regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or " entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective. Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair; which are regarded as " the gold standard" of the Catholic novel. Several works, such as The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, and The Human Factor, also show Greene's avid interest in the workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. Personal lifeAfter meeting his future wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning, Greene was baptised into the Catholic faith on 26 February 1926, and they were married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, North London. The Greenes had two children, Lucy Caroline (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936). In his discussions with Father Trollope, the priest to whom he went for instruction in Catholicism, Greene argued with the cleric " on the ground of dogmatic atheism", as Greene's primary difficulty with religion was what he termed the " if" surrounding God's existence. He found, however, that " after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable", and Greene finally was converted and baptised after vigorous arguments initially with the priest in which he defended atheism, or at least the " if" of agnosticism. Late in life, however, Greene took to calling himself a " Catholic agnostic", or even at times a " Catholic atheist". Beginning in 1946, Greene had an affair with Catherine Walston, the wife of Harry Walston, a wealthy farmer and future life peer. That relationship is generally thought to have informed the writing of The End of the Affair, published in 1951, when the affair came to an end. Greene had left his family in 1947, but in accordance with Catholic teaching, Vivien refused to grant him a divorce, and they remained married until Greene's death in 1991. Greene had also had several other affairs and sexual encounters during their marriage, and in later years Vivien remarked, " With hindsight, he was a person who should never have married." He had remained estranged from his wife and children, and remarked in his later years, " I think my books are my children." Greene had suffered from manic depression( bipolar disorder).
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 23:56:42 GMT 1
Jeanne,
Evelyn Waugh's novels wouldn't have the approval of the Roman-Catholic clergy or believers, because it has an underlayer of homosexuality or bisexuality. My father liked Brideshead Revisited (1945) and the Brideshead Revisited (TV serial), which he watched with my mother. Impatient and stubborn teenage kid I was I didn't like the TV serial and read the novel with some difficulties for my Enlgish list for highschool. In the Netherlands you have to read several novels of a foreign language subject you have. So I read Brideshead Revisited, but didn't make a great impression on my English teacher who examined me about what I understood of the novel in my final English exams. Maybe I was to imature for the novel back then. I liked Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness (1899) better. That was one of the other English novels I read for my English oral exams.
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (/ˈɑːrθər ˈiːvlɪn ˈsɪndʒən wɔː/; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–61). Waugh is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. The son of a publisher, Waugh was educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford, and briefly worked as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends, and developed a taste for country house society. In the 1930s, he travelled extensively, often as a special newspaper correspondent in which capacity he reported from Abyssinia at the time of the 1935 Italian invasion. He served in the British armed forces throughout the Second World War (1939–1945), first in the Royal Marines and then in the Royal Horse Guards. He was a perceptive writer who used the experiences and the wide range of people he encountered in his works of fiction, generally to humorous effect. Waugh's detachment was such that he fictionalised his own mental breakdown, which occurred in the early 1950s. After the failure of his first marriage, Waugh converted to Catholicism in 1930. His traditionalist stance led him to strongly oppose all attempts to reform the Church, and the changes by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) greatly disturbed his sensibilities, especially the introduction of the vernacular Mass. That blow to his religious traditionalism, his dislike for the welfare state culture of the postwar world and the decline of his health, darkened his final years, but he continued to write. To the public, Waugh displayed a mask of indifference, but he was capable of great kindness to those whom he considered to be his friends. After his death in 1966, he acquired a following of new readers through the film and television versions of his works, such as the television serial Brideshead Revisited (1981).
Conversion to Catholicism
On 29 September 1930, Waugh was received into the Catholic Church. That shocked his family and surprised some of his friends, but he had contemplated the step for some time. He had lost his Anglicanism at Lancing and had led an irreligious life at Oxford, but there are references in his diaries from the mid-1920s to religious discussion and regular churchgoing. On 22 December 1925, Waugh wrote: "Claud and I took Audrey to supper and sat up until 7 in the morning arguing about the Roman Church". The entry for 20 February 1927 includes, "I am to visit a Father Underhill about being a parson". Throughout the period, Waugh was influenced by his friend Olivia Plunket-Greene, who had converted in 1925 and of whom Waugh later wrote, "She bullied me into the Church". It was she who led him to Father Martin D'Arcy, a Jesuit, who persuaded Waugh "on firm intellectual convictions but little emotion" that "the Christian revelation was genuine". In 1949, Waugh explained that his conversion followed his realisation that life was "unintelligible and unendurable without God".
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 23:49:27 GMT 1
Bonobo,
I have to correct my previous post with some self criticism. I don't believe you are a Polish version of me, because you have traveled through Poland and photographed many parts of Poland far more than I ever did in the Netherlands. My traveling through my country is far more limited and often limits itself to the triangle Arnhem-Amsterdam-Vlissingen.
This Forum showed that through the years you traveled to many parts of Poland and took images of the most important cities, towns, regions, mountains, rural country life, lake area's, religious life in Poland, Polish folk culture, political demonstrations and Polish history. For instance the historical images of Polish churches and synagogues.
It would take me years or decades in the Netherlands to catch up with your travel experience in your own home country Poland. Cause of that in my case is the fact that I spend many holidays, vacations, student trips and city tours and vacations abroad in other countries. We Dutch like to escape our densly populated country to travel abroad.
Fact is that you can easily find less densly populated and more quiet regions in the Netherlands too. But it seems that Dutch people do not only want to escape from the densly populated area's, but also from Dutch culture, people and atmosphere every now and then. Rest means in the Dutch perspective being in a German-, French-, Spanish-, Greek-, Italian- or Turkish speaking environment.
I have a few decades left to examin all the regions and provinces of my own country and more cities and regions in the country of my mothers birth. I would like to see more places than Poznań, Warsaw and Kraków in Poland. These are the three places I have been to in Poland and I love them. But it would be nice to see Łódź, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Lublin, Białystok, Toruń and the Masurian Lake District (Polish: Pojezierze Mazurskie) one day too.
In my profession and background it would be great to make a documentary about Poland with television. Doing TV camerawork or photography in Poland. Using some knowledge about Polish history, culture and politics. A fair, balanced and good image about Poland. As a person you are allowed to have dreams and Utopic ideas which are harmless. My dream or Utopic idea would be to make a documentary about present day Poland for the VPRO broadcast corporation.
A lot of CNN, Deutsche Welle, International - SPIEGEL ONLINE, Euronews, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, my own Dutch NOS, France 24, ZDF, ARD, WDR, Al Arabiya, I24, RT, VRT (Belgian Flemish public tv), and other Western chanals all give short sided, cliché images of Poland. I would like to talk to all sides in Poland and show all opinions in that documentary. I would have to have a reliable Polish network of contacts, people from the Polish diaspora in the Netherlands, and the backing of the VPRO or another Dutch broadcaster to make such a documentary.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 22:09:08 GMT 1
Dear Bo, I love provincial, rural towns and villages Bo and hamlets too. I come from a nation with a lot of provinces, regions, and a lot of small towns, villages and hamlets with a strong regional character. A large variety of dialects, regional languages and regional identities. The latter is so strong that you can hardly talk about real Dutchmen. You can talk about Hollanders (West of the Netherlands), Frisians (Northerners), Brabanders and Limburgers (Southerners), Zeelanders (South-Westerners), Saxons (people from the Eastern provinces Gelderland, OverIjssel, Drenthe and Groningen), the Islanders (Zeelandish islands, South-Holland Islands and the Wadden Islands or Frisian islands in the North). Many small towns and villages have their own identity, dialect and pride. Probably there comes my fascination with little and unimportant towns, villages and hamlets. I experience the same in Flanders (Belgium) and in the Ardennes mountains in the Wallonia region of Belgium where we had our holiday house from 1978 until 2002. I spend there a lot of holidays in that holiday house in a small Wallon Muncipality Ferrières, in the village Burnontige. I loved the insignificant hamlets and villages in the neighbourhood with their ancient farms and farm castles (a typical Belgian phenomenon). Insignificant hamlets and villages like Tier de Férrières, Villers-Saint-Gertrude, Ernonheid, Izier, Le Trau, Vieux-Fourneau and Ozo. In the Zeeland Rhombus shaped Peninsula of my youth Walcheren I loved and love the small insignificant villages and hamlets like Dishoek, Koudekerke, Biggekerke, Hoogelande, Buttinge, Poppendamme, Meliskerke, Aagtekerke and Groot Valkenisse. I like the local diversity, the farmlife, small town people next to the large city culture I am more connected to due to my parents Warsaw and Rotterdam city roots. In my first 20 years in Zeeland I learned to know the farm, fishermen, harbour and sailor (commercial navy people) next to the local workers and middle class. I crossed the Westerschelde several times with my bike on the ferry to Breskens and cycled through Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (Part of the Dutch province of Zeeland) to Belgium to visit Brugge, Knokke-Heist and the costal town of De Haan in West-Flanders, I loved to cycle through that part of Zeeland and Belgium through many hamlets, villages and towns. And to stop in many of these places to rest, eat and drink and enjoy the view of farms, town houses, local churches or old villa's and buildings. In the case of Żnin I am probably more interested in the Polish ladies, but the combination of the charm of a small town and local beauties can be refreshing. Cheers, Pieter Dear Bonobo, I do believe you are a Polish version of me. You did and do the same in Poland. You also travel through the country and visit a lot of cities, towns, villages, urban agglomerations, hamlets, rural area's, wild life parks, periferies of cities, and have a particular interest in infrastructure, old and new buildings, Graffiti and murals, local people and etc. In your case you have your background as a dedicated father and familyman, teacher and student counsellor, and as a person with interest in the Polish society you live in and the culture, people, politics, psychology and sociology that go with that. I am a dualist in nature, and that dualism is radical. One side of me is impatient with the provincial Eastern city I live in (Arnhem) and loves cosmopolitan Metropoles (like Warsaw, Berlin, New York, Cape Town, London and Paris), or larger Dutch cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. (Like the Cracovian Bo who likes and admires Warsaw) The Cosmopolitian in me is an internationalist, progressive, radical liberal, multi-cultural, pluralistic and 'modern'. The other side of me loves nature, rest, contemplation (I have a nearly Monk, hermit side in me, which reminds me of Narcissus, the young teacher at the cloister school in Hermann Hesse's novel Narcissus and Goldmund (German: Narziß und Goldmund; also published as Death and the Lover), the solitude of a disciplined provincial life, tradition and a conservative mindset. This conservative provincial side of me loves rural life, old churches in tiny hamlets, monastries, contemplation, silence, woods/forests, mountains, castles, old ruins, archeology, Old Dutch and Old Polish culture and maybe, amybe is partly polarized in the Dutch sense, in the sense that I have some roots in the Roman-Catholic Dutch pillar and also roots in the general, liberal conservative, secular-humanist (Free Thinking) Bourgeois pillar (Grand Burgher) in the Netherlands (due to the social group and class my father family comes from). I live with this complex dualism, but can coop with it. I can't live without both the big city and the silence of the rural countryside, woods and the traditional side of the Netherlands of the villages, hamlets with a few old tiny farms and small towns. But if I was forced to choose I would only be able to live in a large city, because I don't have the small provincial town mentality. I am not a provincial chap (I have Rotterdam and Warsaw genes and dna ) That is the typical *unrest or quintessence of people of mixed heritage. (Dutch and Polish in my case and Danish-Frisian/German in Karl's case in the other Forum) The constant interaction between genes, families, nations, interests and sometimes conflicting interests. Certainly the case in the situation of the Netherlands and Poland, which have different positions and affiliations in Europe. In my view Poland is much more monolythic, more a one culture nation with one dominant religion and one dominant majority. The Netherlands is linguistically, social-cultural and geographically more divided. The Dominant Holland and Utrecht regions in the West and Center forming the Randstad are an identity inside the identity the Netherlands. The succesful Brabant cities in the South (Eindhoven, Den Bosch, Helmond, Tilburg and Breda) are another financial-economical, technological and cultural entity. The Northern provinces form some unity and my own Gelderland Province forms an Eurregion with Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia) in Germany. The Dutch language, infrastructure (Highways and railways), education and press and media keeps us a little bit together over here. But in general a Eastern Gelderland Saxon person has little in common with a Western Hollander. The Hollander is the dominant, direct, slightly arrogant, dynamic and typical Dutchman, foreigners see as the typical Dutchman. Jeanne met them and described these Dutchmen. I can deal with their intractability, insolence, lack of manners, impatience, direct -sometimes confrontational- sense of humor and the fact that they are very present wherever they are. Flemish Belgian people don't like that Hollander directness. The Western Holland (Northerners for the Flemish) people are the fast speakers, the assertive people, cunning, dominant and arrogant people. (The Flemish people do not distinghuish and therefor all the Dutch people get the same label as the Western Hollanders I described above here). I wonder if various Slavic people also have the same opinions about Slavic neighbours? From Polish family I heard that Warsaw people have some opinions about Poznan people. Poznan people are disciplined like Prussians, very well organised, trade and business oriented, in the eyes of the Warsaw family. Poles will have certain opinions about other Poles from certain regions. The Gorals of the Polish highlands, Silesians, Kashubians and the Ukrainians from South-East Poland? I wonder how Poles think about Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Russians, and further away the Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Slovenes. The West-Germanic Dutch people have their opinions and visions about other Germanic peoples; the Germans, Belgian Felmish, Belgian Walloons -a French speaking Germanic people-, Austrians, Swiss Germans, English people, and Scandinavian people. Poles will have the same thing with other Slavic people. The anti-thesis between big city people and rural provincial townsfolk you have in any nation. In every country restless, creative small town boys like me move to the capital or other large cities to study, live, go out and work. People from all parts of Poland moved and move to Warsaw to start a new life, or move to Krakow to study at the university there. They do the same as I did in the Netherlands. Going back to my roots in the small Zeeland town of my parents is always a journey back into time (1970-1990). Amsterdam (1990-1992), The Hague (1991-1992 one year art academy study there) and 25 years in Arnhem (1992-2017) changed me completely. To say or state that that is an entirely Dutch phenomenon or development is nonsense. Travels to Poland in the seventies, eighties and in 2004 and 2006 changed me too, because they showed me the DDR (East-Germany we had to travel through to get into the Polish Peoples Republic) and Poland. Bonobo, you posted several interesting and good threads here about English language education in Poland over here. About your own profession as English teacher, about your highschool pupils and university students, about your colleages and etc. How you teach your sons, and how English is tought in Polish schools. You posted about the famous methodology of prof. Henryk Krzyżanowski of the Poznań University. I was ' positively' infected by the English language and culture due to the fact that my Dutch grandparents from Rotterdam were anglophile people who read British english literature, newspapers and magazines. My father had British literature in house next to French-, German and ofcourse Dutch literature. TV always had to be educational, cultural, educational, informative, instructive. So few entertainment or soap opera's and a lot of Shakespeare theatrical plays of the BBC (On Dutch or Belgian Public tv), historical British tv series (often with rural themes; castles, villages, hamlets, British social life in the small town), British BBC detectives ( Agatha Christie, Midsummer murders, Inspector Morse and etc.). Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and also some American writers like Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin and others were in my fathers bookcase. Next to that there was (thank god) a translated section with Russian and Polish writers. My fantasy and imagination was triggered and fed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Tadeusz Konwicki ( I read ' A Minor Apocalypse' ( Mała apokalipsa) with great dedication and fun. It was tragic, dramatic and hilariously funny in the same time -sometimes I had tears in my eyes of laughter, because the Dutch translation of this book showed a bizar ironical and cynical sense of humor. The Polish anti-communist underground want to make a hero and martyr of the main character of the book the Polish writer with a writers block. The writer is annoyed and don't want to be a hero/martyr and therefor is stuck inbetween the Communist authorities censorship and pressure one one side and the pressure of the Polish underground on the other side, who demands that he lights himself in front of a communist parade in the city with communist party leaders. This was one of the most humorous books I have ever read in my life, and in the same time deeply tragic. This novel and other Polish novels is the reason I would like to be able to read, speak and write Polish. But communicating in German and English with Polish familymembers went well) , Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czesław Miłosz ( The Captive Mind (1953)). A lot of books I read were translated books. I watched and researched carefully if the translators were good and had good critics of the literary press for their translations of the slavic originals. Often these guys were people who studied slavic studies at the universities of Amsterdam or Leiden. Cheers, Pieter * Sometimes you wonder how would my life have been in Poland? Maybe it is a silly or useless question, but that question is there anyhow. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been if my parents had stayed in the same town I was born in in a forest region in the East of the Netherlands ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apeldoorn ).
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 1:03:13 GMT 1
Dear Bo,
I love provincial, rural towns and villages Bo and hamlets too. I come from a nation with a lot of provinces, regions, and a lot of small towns, villages and hamlets with a strong regional character. A large variety of dialects, regional languages and regional identities. The latter is so strong that you can hardly talk about real Dutchmen. You can talk about Hollanders (West of the Netherlands), Frisians (Northerners), Brabanders and Limburgers (Southerners), Zeelanders (South-Westerners), Saxons (people from the Eastern provinces Gelderland, OverIjssel, Drenthe and Groningen), the Islanders (Zeelandish islands, South-Holland Islands and the Wadden Islands or Frisian islands in the North). Many small towns and villages have their own identity, dialect and pride. Probably there comes my fascination with little and unimportant towns, villages and hamlets.
I experience the same in Flanders (Belgium) and in the Ardennes mountains in the Wallonia region of Belgium where we had our holiday house from 1978 until 2002. I spend there a lot of holidays in that holiday house in a small Wallon Muncipality Ferrières, in the village Burnontige. I loved the insignificant hamlets and villages in the neighbourhood with their ancient farms and farm castles (a typical Belgian phenomenon). Insignificant hamlets and villages like Tier de Férrières, Villers-Saint-Gertrude, Ernonheid, Izier, Le Trau, Vieux-Fourneau and Ozo. In the Zeeland Rhombus shaped Peninsula of my youth Walcheren I loved and love the small insignificant villages and hamlets like Dishoek, Koudekerke, Biggekerke, Hoogelande, Buttinge, Poppendamme, Meliskerke, Aagtekerke and Groot Valkenisse. I like the local diversity, the farmlife, small town people next to the large city culture I am more connected to due to my parents Warsaw and Rotterdam city roots. In my first 20 years in Zeeland I learned to know the farm, fishermen, harbour and sailor (commercial navy people) next to the local workers and middle class. I crossed the Westerschelde several times with my bike on the ferry to Breskens and cycled through Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (Part of the Dutch province of Zeeland) to Belgium to visit Brugge, Knokke-Heist and the costal town of De Haan in West-Flanders, I loved to cycle through that part of Zeeland and Belgium through many hamlets, villages and towns. And to stop in many of these places to rest, eat and drink and enjoy the view of farms, town houses, local churches or old villa's and buildings.
In the case of Żnin I am probably more interested in the Polish ladies, but the combination of the charm of a small town and local beauties can be refreshing.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 0:40:22 GMT 1
In the summer of 2016 I met a young woman who was 20 years younger then me to. I fell in love with her. Dated her a while, but considered her to young for me. But we are still friends and I still see her regulary. The age difference is no problem. Love is a strange thing and age isn't that important. Love does not have aging.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 5, 2017 0:36:28 GMT 1
Ryszard Petru hasn't got a bad taste. Instead, he has got little brains. Whether it had been framed by his partner or not, it doesn`t matter now. But he should have predicted that someone might recognise them on the plane. Why didn`t he arrange seperate flights? He is probably a beginner in such affairs .... She looks like a nice former colleage of mine, very handsome, pretty and intelligent too. But ofcourse I am decent man and would never violate the 10 commandments. As beautiful as she was I couldn't start an extramarital affair. But you are not married and she is divorced, so what`s the problem? My former colleage who was Bosnian (Yugoslavian secular Muslim) was fond of me and I was fond of her, but I had a Dutch girlfriend back then and she dated a Turkish guy. So that was the problem. My Bosnian colleage looks very similar to Joanna Schmidt. If I had met her earlier I might have had a chance.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 2, 2017 22:54:33 GMT 1
She looks like a nice former colleage of mine, very handsome, pretty and intelligent too. But ofcourse I am decent man and would never violate the 10 commandments. As beautiful as she was I couldn't start an extramarital affair.
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Post by pjotr on Feb 2, 2017 22:35:38 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Feb 2, 2017 22:34:29 GMT 1
Ryszard Petru hasn't got a bad taste. A beautiful Polish woman with a German name. How exotic can you have it? Joanna SchmidtJoanna Schmidt from Mihulka (b. September 14, 1978 in Glogow) is a Polish politician and manager, a trained economist, Member of Parliament for the eighth term in office, and a member of the board of the Modern party, Nowoczesnej. Curriculum vitaeShe graduated management at the Poznan University of Economics with a specialization in international trade. The promoter of the thesis was Professor Marian Gorynia. This was followed by postgraduate studies at the Academy Trainer operating within the School of Humanities. She worked for the private sector, she worked as director of a interior design export company, she was an organizer of business training and a business coach. In the period 2007-2012 she was an entrepreneur in the business start-up education. She was an activist of the Wielkopolska Employers' Association, was a member of the board of the Polish Chamber of Training Companies, also operated in the Business Leaders Foundation. By 2015, she served as Chancellor of the College of Humanities, renamed in 2014 the Collegium Da Vinci. In 2015 she was one of the organizers and leaders of groups founded by Modern (Nowoczesna) leader Ryszard Petru, and after registering a member of the board of the party. In the parliamentary elections in the same year she ran for Parliament in the district of Poznan from first place on the electoral list of the party. Mandated Ms VIII term of office, she received 35, 202 votes, the highest among all the candidates in this district. In March 2016 she became the vice president of Nowoczesna (Modern).
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Post by pjotr on Jan 23, 2017 22:22:37 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Jan 23, 2017 22:18:02 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Jan 18, 2017 17:26:13 GMT 1
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Post by pjotr on Jan 18, 2017 1:26:36 GMT 1
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