Living in a country where you do not speak the language is a challenge. Fortunately for us, enough people in Poland speak English; when English is not an option, using hand gestures to get the point across (pointing at something and indicating I want two of them) or writing numbers for the costs of a purchase works out well. I have even used my piddly little amount of German to communicate (yes, three years of high school German almost 25 years ago still sticks with me enough to communicate... and many people said it would not be useful since I was living in California).
Where the lack of language becomes an issue is when you are outside of the major city areas. We found some difficulty when we were visiting Szczawnica, but we managed to make everything work out okay.
A more significant issue is when you are riding the bus into town and it stops. Why? What's happening?
This has happened to me twice so far.
- Once, the bus was in an accident (a car tried to pass the bus and had to hit the bus to avoid a head on collision). Many stayed on for a while, then some started to leave. I did not understand what the driver was saying, but I figured everyone was leaving because they knew it would be a while to continue it's route... so I left the bus and walked much of the way home from there.
- The second time was a week ago. We were taking the bus to Church and it stopped... everyone left the bus after the driver's announcement. We did not understand; however, we fortunately overhear someone say in English "the road is closed ahead". Time to walk to the next major stop with a tram that will take us to further along. After we go to the tram stop and waited a little while, Melanie noticed a sign that we could not read, but enough information told us the Krakow Marathon was interrupting this tram, also.
Getting lost when you speak the language is not too bad... getting lost when you cannot expect to communicate with everyone is really a drag.
No comments:
Post a Comment