Tim Dobson's Blog

on sunday we got up quite late because of thwe late night before. unfortunatly because of a fish tank being in the room i was sleeping in, which had a thing airroating the water which sounded really loud when you are trying to sleep hence i woke up at like 8 etc whic was really annoying.
Anyway we got up really really late and we were due to have lunch at my correspondate's with his family so we jumped on the bus there.
when we arrived i jumped on my laptop and my correspondante started talking to his mother. suddenly my correspondate shouts out "tim do you eat fish"? i replied no, and then his mother comes into the room and says "you dont eat fish?" i again reply "nie" and with a face really upset she said "why?".
eventually my correspondate explains to her that i dont eat meat OR fish. I felt reall really bad because i didn't mena to cause that amont of trouble.
then my correspondate's grandparents arrived and i managed to greet them using informal greetings which under usual circumstances isnt something you would do. however fortuantly they laughed it of.
At dinner, the whole family sat down for it, the first time i had seen it happen. the mother of my correspondate had kindly cooked up some spaggetti for me with some tomato sauce. i was then faced with the dielemma of eating spagetti in a polite way, something which is difficult, probably inpossible at the best of times, in the end i asked my correspondate how he would do it and he told me just to use m fork.
after dinner we went to see wisla(pronounced VisssWaa) krakow play PGE GKS Belchatow at stadion wisly krakow. The tickets cost £8 each. thism was a unique experience for me. to start off when we went into the ground, i was methodically pat searched for weapons, just like everyone else. there were hoards of riot police walking around and i became anticipant about what the levelof violence was expected to be.
the match was different from the Man U vs Birmingham match i went to a few years back. to start off with, instead of football shirts, everyone had scarves. i suspect that 30 years ago british footballer supporters had scarves instead of shirts but it was an intersting contrast.
in addition, the stadium was considerably older and more run down that the stadiums i am used to seeing on UK TV. I suspect it was at one point a symbol of national pride when poland was socialist/communist. today it has been modernised quite a lot, but there are still things which indicate it has a long and varied history.
the attitude was totally different to the united match, instead of everyone obsessivly watching the football, the chanting and shouting louder than the other team's supporters is the most important bit. Also in contrast to british football, the chants were lead by a guy at the front on a stand up in the air facing the supporters with a mike backed up by two guys with drums. therer was no rest for the fans who spent the whole time on their feet chanting one thing after the next. the tunes they were singing the chants to, varied wildly, including aug lang syne, the animals went in two by two, god save the queen as well as covering traditional chants, with polish lyrics, for instace "here we go".
apparently the teams were relativly badly matched and wisla won relativly easily, 2-0.
After the match we walked into central krakow due to the public transport being crammed with chanting football supporters.
We then went to a pub where it happened to be karioke night. this turned out to be great fun. after the singsong on the bus on the day we went to zackupane i was confident that we had the ability to do it. however, none of the people who should have been doing it had the nerve, so i volenteered to break the ice with help from my correspondantes g/f by singing "the bad touch" by the bloodhound gang with her. it was really good fun and we pulled it off really well and kickstarted the group into the karioke which turned the evening into something which was really great fun.
In the end i ended up singing several songs, helping sing several songs(eg. tribute - tenacious d, wonderwall - oasis), massacring several really good songs (eg. "don't stop me now" - queen, alabama song - doors) which was really good fun. i also heard for the first time the song "manchester" by the beautiful south. this is a really funny song and plays manchester straight up to its stereotype in a very humourous way.
Through out the karioke, it was a little bit more interting because there was a guy from reading who happened to be in the bar while on a long weekend, and happily engaged in conversation with us resulting in a really good atmosphere.
then we went back home and slept, knowing it would be auchvitz tomorrow.