Has anyone else noticed this sign on a recent tube journey?

It's surprisingly hard to take a clear photo while on a moving escalator, so I shall translate: "Are your skills in demand overseas? Visit the Emigrate show." I confess to a level of perplexity and confusion - it's quite an oddly complex piece of work, isn't it? On one hand, it feels like a recession-busting scheme, as in 'Can't find a job here? Then why not shove off and seek employment elsewhere (whilst conveniently bringing down our unemployment numbers in the process, innit)?' Then, as if that's not unsettling enough, there's the sense in which it seems to be suggesting that here is indeed a possibility (wait for it...) that life just might be as good -or better?! - outside the UK.

This second proposition is truly revolutionary stuff. I number many a critical Brit amongst my close friends and associates, but, as is the case in the States, the official rhetoric tends not to be so self-reflexive. In the 5 years I've lived in the UK, I've been queried extensively on, among other things, my qualifications, work experience, seemingly bizarre interest in the Czech Republic, disdain for fake tan, the capitalization and pronunciation of my own surname and whether I really need to see a specialist for something my GP can surely handle by flipping through an abridged medical encyclopedia. Such experienes are part of life outside one's native land and, if nothing else, provide amusing fodder for blog posts. I mention them because the implicit sense behind such challenges is the notion that the British way is the most natural and/or highly-evolved manner in which to handle whatever's at stake.

The emigration sign, then, upsets the applecart of casual, public nationalism in a quite radically shocking way when you get down to it, or so it seems to me. Indeed, it feels downright portentous. This is especially the case when coupled with a recent article in the Sunday Times Style mag in which Chav was rebranded as Chinese Accessories Victim - in honor of the Beijing fashionistas converging on New Bond Street and creating a market for shop assistants who speak their native tongue. In this brave new world, one can't help but wonder what's booking up faster: the emigration fair or City Lit's courses in introductory Mandarin.

Stalinist Bloomsbury...or the manifestations of unrealized wanderlust.

Last week, I submitted a visa application to UK Borders which involved surrendering my passport. The passport and I have never been parted for more then about 72 hours and I am not, to put it mildly, enjoying our estrangement. Even if I have no tickets booked, I love the possibility of travel, the sense that movement may be immanent. This in part explains my affection for central Europe, where you can train rapidly around Germany, Austria and Czech Republic at a moment's notice and the destination board at your local train station includes places like Moscow, Bucharest, Sarajevo...Sans passport and stranded on this island for the foreseeable future, I've developed a passing melancholia that seems to involve burning candles, drinking red wine, listening to endless Leonard Cohen (thank you, Spotify) and thinking dreamily about my former cities. It was in just such a mood that I noticed the following similarity.

This is the Palace of Culture, Warsaw:

And this, is Senate House Library at the University of London...

Both are massive and impossible to capture in a single photograph without inducing vertigo. The more I think about this comparison, the more apt it seems. Both take an eternity to walk around - P and I once spent 20 minutes circumnavigating the PoC and taking the wrong exit from the library can easily add 10 minutes to your journey home. Both have strange internal layouts and you have to go outside to get from one part of the building to another. I've been semi-lost in both and each time I was filled with a sense of unease irreducible to mere spatial disorientation. They feel wrong. It seems entirely plausible that both could house a population of feral cats in their basements and/or contain offices full of staff who haven't been outside in years and think the Cold War is still in full swing. Finally, and really, what greater confirmation could there be, both make excellent surfaces for projections:

Palace of Culture, January 2011

Senate House Library, January 2012:

I rest my case, and cannot help but wonder what other bits of Europe I will discover while wandering passport-less about London. Watch this space, and, in the meantime, here's some Leonard Cohen.

And you shall know her by her left ear….

Happy New Year! (How late is that still an acceptable way to begin a communication and/or to explain away with three words one's complete lack of productivity over a period of time which encompasses, but is not limited to, the festive season?)

This mid-January day finds me in Warsaw, where it is particularly January-some in the most depressing way: unrelieved grey skies coinciding with the uninspiring sight of dirty snow melting to reveal just how many cigarette butts, tram tickets and other discarded items were dropped in it over the past month. Nasty. At least the Christmas decorations have remained up, which ameliorates things somewhat. In praise of Poland, I must admit that it's lovely to be once more in a country where people do not believe that Christmas decorations left up past January 6^th transform magically into harbingers of doom and general bad luck. I'm not sure quite how widespread this belief is – I first encountered it in the UK, but I don't know where it originated. In my family, we tend to leave the decorations up for as long as possible, in part because my mother completely redecorates the house for Christmas – after so much work and creativity, it seems churlish to tear it all down immediately. Given the shortness of the days here (it's dark before 3.30pm), I'm glad the Poles share my mother's approach and have the left the lights on a bit longer:

The festive lights are of particular comfort to me on this week of bureaucratic tasks. I'm off to Prague for research-related adventures at the weekend, so have only this week to sort out visa-related hiccups. Thus far, I've been to get a medulnek (a sort of local residency permit, a bit like a Czech ubytování, which allows you to then get a visa) and to have my picture taken for my eventual visa. The picture-taking process has given this post its title: Polish official portraits require that you show your left ear, while your body is turned slightly to the right and your head tilted to precisely the right angle to display said ear, and the rest of your facial features, simultaneously. You can also smile, slightly, like this:

To get this image, the photographer and I communicated using my new system. The longer I'm here, the more I realize that I can actually understand the gist of basic conversations, provided I keep calm and don't start mentally hyperventilating the moment someone addresses me. In fact, it works best when I imagine that they're speaking to somebody else. This strategy dovetails nicely with my approach to making up for the fact that I don't actually speak Polish. In preparation for specific encounters (like the one with the photographer, or a trip to the drycleaner after I'd lost my claim ticket) I write down exactly what I need or what has happened, in Polish. Google Translate and/or Polish friends are very helpful in this regard. Upon reaching my destination, I explain, in Polish, that I do not speak Polish, and hand over the note. Assuming the person I'm speaking to doesn't speak English, I handle anything else that comes up with a combination of Czech verbs (most basic verbs are similar) and miming (I don't trust the nouns to overlap as much as the verbs do). So far, this seems to be working. I managed to communicate with the photography shop man quite effectively – I was even able to convey the fact that I'd left my hat in the shop's coat closet and needed him to retrieve it for me. I also find people respond better to this approach. I'm not sure why – perhaps it's better not to include English and, by doing so, imply that I expect them to speak it, or perhaps they actually think I'm from another Slavic country. I don't know. But so far, so good, in any case. The photo-fetching scenario had the hallmarks of a potential Polish disaster written all over it, but went down much better than Monday's attempt to reconnect the internet, which saw myself and Mr. P spend ninety minutes running maniacally back and forth between the post office and tp, with Polish friends on speed dial, clutching stacks of bills and receipts and trying neither to cry nor swear very loudly and at great length.

Now if only I could figure out what the notice taped to my building's door says…something about personal safety and the gas meter. Oh dear…Google Translate, here I come.