ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN KRAKOW WILL NOT BE A POLISH JOKE
by Scott Young, copyright 2000
It would be unfair to compare Scott to HST, but the farther you get into this article,
I think you'll start seeing the similarity. Can you say "Bowling"? :-) --Christine O
This St Patrick's Day, spare a thought for the Poles.
They have the Morgan clan pouring their drinks. And these boys pour them straight and hard and fast.
The Morgan's chain of pubs started in brutally ugly Warsaw seven years ago, when a bankrupted 55
year-old Irish scallywag named Ollie Morgan opened the doors to what soon became expat headquarters
in the Polish capital.
Today Ollie is still rollicking behind the bar, under a framed photo of
him pressing the flesh with Gerry Adams*. After hours, he'll occasionally roll up big spliffs in
the backroom for pals and special guests. "You never seen a 62 year old smoking the
mother nature before, have you?" Ollie's expansion plans have been easy to follow.
He has as many pubs as he has sons to run them. Oldest boy Thomas is more frequently at
the helm in Warsaw, while in Poznan, Sean keeps the business-convention visitors tanked.
In Krakow, city of Schindler and John Paul II, 25 year-old Maurice Morgan, lad-male glamour
incarnate is considered number-one health risk for the small
but hardcore group of almost exclusively male English language teachers, transported students,
consular officials and businessmen that can't resist the call of 'down to Maurice's - just for one'.
And of course the Poles themselves need no encouragement to get sideways, or
lessons in giving it a nudge, (even from locally based representatives of the Irish,
New Zealand or Floridian Olympic Drinking Teams). There are something like 150 underground
bars crowded around the main market square (Europe's largest) and it's not unusual to
come staggering out of one in the blinding light of a new day.
Maurice may not be a raving intellectual, but he certainly has social skills. It took him just
a few months pulling pints in his old man's pub before he was speaking Polish, a notoriously
difficult language; short on vowels, long on declensions, conjugation and consonant clusters like czy's,
wyp's and the like. Advertising hoardings in Poland look like the aftermath of a marathon scrabble
contest. But it's a well known fact that men will do anything to get their leg over, and unlike Prague,
Hungary or even Warsaw, English is not widely spoken in Krakow; particularly by young women who were
studying hair and make-up and boys in school, and passing notes all through language class.
Often it's not that young Poles can't speak English, it's that they won't, for fear of getting
the grammar wrong - which you'll agree, is a great way to improve your proficiency.
Mind you, this is a country where entire days on talkback radio and newspaper front-page stories
are devoted to the state of Polish grammar. After a few months here, you might imagine you
know where all those jokes stem from. And then you'd have
to ditch your western-bred arrogance,
give the Poles their due, and remember that out of all the FSU (former-Soviet Union) countries,
it was Poland who had the most gumption when it came to combating Soviet tyranny -
and Nazis before that.
Which explains why so much of Poland is a scrappy, concrete-industrial mess. Everything was bombed,
Warsaw was flattened, and the only city of consequence to retain its architectural beauty was Krakow.
A medieval and baroque city, both dainty and mighty, nestled under the shadow of the mighty Wawel Castle… and there I'd be lapsing into Conde Naste Traveller copy, were it not so true.
Indeed, to say that Krakow is the new Prague is the byline of many a lazy, expense account-buffeted
Travel Section editor. Not from this barstool it isn't. In Prague, the expats form self-regarding,
mutually exclusive, cooler-than-thou cliques; in Krakow we're just developing cirrhosis.
(Though with a slick new bowling alley just opened, we're of a mood to start a bowling league,
'The Big Lebowskis'; you either play for Jesus, or you play for The Dude).
I'm a semi-respectable guidebook writer, yet in nine months in Krakow,
I have been thrown in the drunk tank, then driven 100 miles an hour through back streets with
basically the same guys that put me there - and both incidents stem from long sessions at O'Morgans,
as the Krakow operation is quaintly known. I've hung with visiting US State Dept. officials who
just want to get closer to 'that goddamned Polish pussy', and heard true tales of local mafia
that would curdle your Guinness.
A tamer example: Ollie Morgan on meeting a mob boss, "So your man there's a black belt is he?
Well, can he catch bullets with his teeth?"
I've also been thrown off a train in Slovakia in the middle of the night, as a New
Zealander who didn't possess a transit visa. I'm not sure how this relates back to
Maurice's pub, but I'm sure somehow it must. In Budapest for a while, and drying out,
I am simultaneously dreading and relishing my return to Poland's Ancient Royal
Capital, (to employ brochure-speak). For I know as soon as I step down from
the platform my cell phone will ring and it'll be Maurice's maniacally cheerful
voice enquiring, "Any chance of getting pissed?" And then there's St Patrick's
Day to look forward to. God help us all.
*President of the Sinn Fein
