Life in a metropole: Maskotka

Born and raised in a village of 9500 in the Netherlands, Neede. With capital Amsterdam having a population of around 800k.

Warsaw, metropole, 2 million inhabitants. Officially. It would not surprise me if the actual figure is a million more.

Rat race

I never expected to settle so easily here. Metro-, tram- and train lines. Skyscrapers, hypermarkets, super cars, thousands and thousands of taxis; the wealthy, the homeless, tourists, alcoholics, beggars and believers on the streets.
People in a hurry while having a next bus coming in 5 minutes. The rat race...

But that is not my life, in fact it is not much different compared to Neede. The district where we live, Ursus, is located at the edge of the city. It is calm, it is green. With approximately 40,000 inhabitants it is not that much bigger than Neede. Just 4 to 5 times. It does have more and higher apartment blocks.

I made the below photo recently, I could see our block from the airplane (circled).

Local retail
Apart from that it is pretty similar to life in a village. Just small local retail close around us, like I like it. It is funny because it is most of the times the same people working. In the beginning I barely spoke Polish so it was difficult to communicate. From the time I started to talk a little Polish it really started to be funny. People recognize me and in most shops I do not even need to ask something anymore.

I will translate to English how these little conversations went:

Supermarket seller: "One time Rothmans blue, hard box?"

Me: "Yes please"

Bakery personnel: "We have your oat rolls today."
Me: "Super."
Bakery personnel: "How many today?"

Me: "4 please"

The pharmacist as well, one of the friendliest people I met in my life. Bless him. Genuine friendliness, which we all need to cherish. And return.

Mascot
My wife calls me their Mascot ("maskotka"), as I was always responding very happy (read: "relieved") when they assisted me in their own way. I guess it is also nicer for shop personel to also have non-standard customers in their shops. Or it was just funny for them as I talked Polish like a four-year-old child.

But nowadays I try to speak like a local, so not expecting too much of help of the shop personnel. However, humans like to stick to certain habits so also some of the workers in the shops where we regularly come.

My first months here were pretty hard when going to shops. I practiced sentences in my head when walking to a shop, which I instantly forgot when it was my turn. Also I really was under the impression that almost all personnel was grumpy and fed up with their job. In some cases I do believe that it might be the case, working in a small supermarket will get you a very low salary compared to the Netherlands and other jobs here. And you have to deal with a lot of weirdos daily.

After some time I came to the conclusion that for most of them it also had to do with the fact that many Poles are less open to "strangers" compared to the Dutch. Nothing wrong with that though. You just need to get to know most of them a bit better before they open up, most of them are just very nice people.

Just like in my Dutch village.