Bill Leidy
This summer, thanks to a FLAS Fellowship furnished through CREEES, I was able to continue my study of the Polish language at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL). Being a veteran of the summer Polish language scene (I attended both Jagiellonian University in Krakow and KUL last summer), this time around I decided to craft an eight-week intensive program at KUL. I had high expectations, and KUL once again succeeded in satisfying them.
Lublin is a provincial capital situated about 170 kilometers southeast of Warsaw. While it might not pulsate with life like Warsaw or teem with tourists like Krakow, there is certainly an unmistakable charm to the city’s Old Town—as one walks down the pedestrian-only street Krakowskie Przedmiescie, the centuries-old architecture of Stare Miasto (Old Town) magically rises up into the sky above the umbrellas of outdoor cafes. In fact, thanks to its location off the beaten tourist track, Lublin provides ample opportunity for the student of Polish to practice using the language.
The hallmarks of the summer program at KUL are a superior level of language instruction, loads of personal attention, interesting lecturers, and a very diverse, international group of students. This last point is what made classes at KUL particularly enjoyable for me. Instead of the usual class composition consisting mainly of American sons and daughters of the Polish diaspora, our group this year contained, among others, a French translator of Polish science fiction novels, a professional organist, a Ukrainian priest who was a spitting image of Rasputin, and a Japanese psychologist. The international flavor made conversations, whether in class, in the dormitory, or in cafes, especially engaging.
Before embarking on the two-month program, I had set a goal for myself to arrive at the point where I could read Polish literature in the original without constant recourse to a dictionary. One major research interest of mine is the oeuvre of Witold Gombrowicz, who has the reputation of being simultaneously one of the most elegant stylists of the Polish language and at times one of the most difficult writers to understand. When I arrived in early June, Gombrowicz was way above my head. When I left in late August, I was reading his Bakakaj i inne opowiadania (Bakakaj and Other Stories) on the transcontinental flight. Another major concern for me was improving my comprehension of spoken Polish. I made an analogous level of progress in this area—by the end of my stay, I could easily understand newscasts, which, as any student of foreign languages knows, are notoriously difficult to follow due to the rapidity of speech.
Though I believe I accomplished quite a lot in a short time, unfortunately, my studies were not without difficulties. For most of the first two weeks, I had limited or no hearing in both ears due to badly swollen Eustachian tubes. I had wanted to spend my $600 economic stimulus check in as unpatriotic a way as possible, so I used it to partially finance a trip to Lake Baikal in Siberia. Perhaps swimming in its cold waters was not the best idea (despite the local legend that doing so adds 25 years to one’s life), because I came down with a nasty cold a few days later. During the flight to Warsaw, I was not able equalize the change in pressure in my ears (the dreaded “airplane ear”), and a prolonged period of deafness was the final result. Attending five hours of foreign language classes per day without the benefit of hearing presented quite a challenge, but as the oft-cited myth about the Chinese character that supposedly means both “crisis” and “opportunity” suggests, I was able to switch my focus and intensely concentrate on vocabulary-building and increasing reading comprehension during this period.
My time in Poland was spent very studiously, but not to the exclusion of some lighter moments on the weekends. The KUL summer program organizes weekend excursions to acquaint students with different parts of Poland and Polish culture. During one weekend I returned to Krakow. Not much had changed since last year—I only noticed two differences. One was minor—a different building in the Main Market Square was surrounded by scaffolding for the purposes of giving it a facelift. The second change was much more significant—some brewery hired a guy to walk around in a giant beer suit, handing out fliers for free beer (“piwo gratis”). Before witnessing how Poles reacted to the sight of a giant walking beer stein, I never knew what a face filled with pure elation looked like. And now I know.
For this and other, much more substantive reasons, I would like to thank CREEES for making this opportunity possible. Dziękuję bardzo, CREEES.