The small details of being Polish (generalizations, I know, but to me they are as real as apple pie):

- Polish men like to talk and tell stories. I mean, you can’t get a word in sometimes, they get so wrapped up in a story. They’re good at it too. Yesterday, on the train back from the mountains I listened to a highlander tell the story of last week’s earthquake – he shook his body to demonstrate, he expounded, elaborated, making it into a one-man show. Then his buddy chimed in. The three hour ride was filled with their booming voices. No one minded. Other passengers chimed in. It was fascinating to watch and listen to. I threw in a comment or two as well, but I was shot down, having had no experience with the earthquake here, loathing to admit that I was then in the States, thus too far to have felt anything.

- Women talk so fast that you, the listener, cannot drift off for even a second or an entire chapter of a life may have been offered and you will have missed it.

- If they don’t shut off the background music everywhere, I will seriously injure someone. Frank Sinatra, loudly, for breakfast. Light pop in the judge’s chambers during my meeting with her. Some odd instrumental twangy twang in the psychologist’s office when I discussed abuse and neglect issues with her. It doesn’t stop the conversation, no, not at all, but why is it there in the first place?

- We need to introduce the slob factor into the dress code in Poland. Coming from Wisconsin, I do not have the habit of dressing up for, say, a train ride. Here I am right now, in a train compartment (speeding back to Warsaw) with three women, all dressed and made up as if they were going to a fine dining place. Me, I am in my trusty comfy cords. At least I don’t have my jogging shoes on. No one here, male or female, wears jogging shoes ever.

- Poles have the endearing habit (shared by those in other countries in Europe) of greeting each other often. You enter a store, it is absolutely obligatory to say “good day” to the sales staff, and then “thank you” and “good bye” as you are leaving. It is rude rude rude not to exchange such greetings. In the States, if the salesperson is obsequious, she or he will say “can I help you find something?” setting up a negative exchange as you are most often forced to say “no thanks, just looking.” If they aren’t helping you find things, you are nothing to them nor they to you.

- Poles are physically initmate with each other in public. Maybe it’s because there’s not much privacy at home, what with all these generations living together, but still – men kiss and embrace the women in public, clap each other on the back, hold hands with their sons, women walk arm in arm together, people greet each other with kisses, they touch! It’s nice.