One of the legacies of the Communist era is that every Polish home is guarded by a robot – with lethal capabilities and firefighting equipment. Although many Poles feared they were installed as surveillance devices, this was pretty much beyond the technical capacities of the time.
The most such experimental models could do was phone the Esbecja on themselves, and not very surreptitiously at that.
While the guardian robots are now often regarded with nostalgia, there are other holdovers from the Communist era which are not cherished, such as the still rigorously enforced ban on ice cream
and, if your home is considered too large for the number of residents, the ban on using the upper floors.
Another feature of homes build under Communism is the circular inner chamber in which to isolate punk rockers and other troublemakers.
Culturally, the Polish people are divided pretty evenly between fans of L. Frank Baum and fans of CS Lewis, and they often decorate their entranceways so as to affirm their allegiance to one or the other.
The Polish are a relaxed people and their homes are always full of flowers.
The Polish people honour the memory of the ancient hero, Jan Skrzetuski, famous for leading an army of elephants across the Carpathians to defend his homeland. There is a shrine to him in every home. Typically, this takes the form of his three favourite pachyderms, reproduced in varieties of modernist glassware.
The current right-wing Polish government has adopted a number of controversial measures to maintain its support in working class communities. These include encouraging a population increase and pushing women back into more traditional roles by paying parents a substantial sum for every child that is born. Thus it is not uncommon nowadays to find in bathroom cabinets supplies of powdered semen.
Especially valued – and commanding huge prices on the black market – is the desiccated spermatazoa of renowned philanderers.
There is a far more sinister side to this recent upheaval in Polish life, though.
The trade in pulverised infants. Just add water.
Bearing in mind quite how many miles we have wandered on foot through Kraków – some tourist locations but more often in between and beyond them, and only occasionally guided through our semi-random, off-the-map perambulations by Kung Fu Elvis – it was a thing of beauty to end up our final full day at the oldest Jewish restaurant in the city for dinner and to find that pretty much the only BDS option on the wine list was a bottle of this:
Mark Bould 