Polish Vodka?

Hehe! And Hehe, I got my new bottle of Pan Tadeusz today, and Jarek categorically refuse to call it anything other than a gift. Supper is just cooking and I have poured a tiny measure out.

Hereford shops may not sell Polish Vodka, but apparently it can be found in Worcester!

I suspect that Polish humour may indeed be rather less PC than we like to think British humour is.

I know that Norwegian humour would get me banned here in a very short time. It really is very funny though!

Fredrik

Fredrik

How's the Pan Tadeusz?

Second measure progressing nicely! I would love to win the Lottery and pickle myself in twelve months!

Fredrik. [Lost soul in waiting sort of Smiley]!

PS: Perhaps I should sell everything - not much I can tell you - and emigrate to Poland and do it anyway! Apparently it is very cheap to buy a good drink in Poland...

Dear Frank, Please will you send me an email sometime - address in profile... Fredrik

Dear Friends! [Bleary Smiley]!

Last night I went on an impromptu drinking session. Only just got home in Hereford. I went into a Night Club for only the third time in my life! Well nothing shocks me anymore, but one wonders why some of the people who go into these places should have a vote of equal value to mine at Elections? I went there with our Polish mob, having downed a couple of excelent Lech pints before hand. The beer in the Club was awful! Then my one mate 'disappeared' and did not reappear for a good hour... There are some real slappers out there I suppose! So I went back to their house and continued on the Lech and some fantastic Soup, which is proof against being ill next day. When I woke up I felt non-too-bad, but was certainly still inebriated...

This followed on from work... At a few minutes to ten I was in the canteen having a fag break, and in came the manager (senior production manager) and he was quite shirty. I went and saw him before I went from work [no good not putting in a defence, I have found], and explained not only had we achieved the programme and done the deep cleaning we were asked to, but as I thought this would not adequatley fill the time I pulled three batches forward from Monday, which makes next week's programme that much more achievable, and kept us going nicely. It seems to me if you become deceitfull and simply look busy at the appropriate moments, they never actually check to see what you are really doing. I have never been like that. So given that I shall certainly get a bollucking on Monday, I thought a bit of an impromptu session might be in in order and it was! Yes indeed, just what the doctor would have prescribed! Initially the conversation about work and life was rather good, if things gradually became incoherent as time went by!

So not Polish Vodka, but certainly Polish beer. [The Night Club Stella was criminally bad!].

All the best from Fredrik

PS: I was given a tiny One Grosz coin, to have luck with and make my fortune! That's what happens when you get onto the meaning of life. You get given money!

Jesus, Fred, you're going to end up like me if you carry on...!

EW

Dear EW,

We are not so different to each other, I would think. Both a bit dark in our outlooks, but I am pretty sure you have a streak of humour in you! I have. In real life I can be great fun to be round, and that reflects an irreveverance which is healthy I think. I attrack a small number of the best type of friends, but somehow, ultimately I never quite have let go with a girlfriend since my first true love ditched me. That hurt.

I think you like romantic music more than I do, and I used to so maybe you will become more of a classicist in time. I think you are about 15 years younger, and at your age I was more serious than I am now.

I make no bones about it, if I won the lottery I would certainly drink myself to death! I have never fancied getting really old, and don't want to see too much of the future.

Be good - steady on the bends from Fredrik. [Smiley].

Dear Frank,

I always smile at the observation that my great grandfather, Ivar Fiske, born 1875, did get married at 44 and then lived till 92! I rememebr both of them and his wife was actually 18 when she married him. How would that go down nowadays?! In fact he was something of a philanderer, and my great granny was very much a nice person who was rather badly hurt by him over this. On the surface he was charm personified, and a very clever man, engineer and inventor. But being successful often seems to lead to people being a bit cavalier in dealing with the people who should be their mainstay.

I am the opposite. I take my commitment, even if only to a small number of friends as the only important thing! I think people either recognise that aspect or often merely let me keep them at a respectful distance. My father married five times, and by the age of 18 I had seen three step mothers come and go! He married again about two years before he died, and finally he found a person more wilfull than him! She was the boss! My mother is on her third, and we have not had contact regularly since 1993, and at all except Christmas day 2005, since 1997. I rang her, and sh3e was not pleased to hear from me!

Naturally I am cautious after that tattered type of childhood. But in the real world I can be be great fun to be with, and a real torment to those I am fond of! I only tease people I love, and it takes a long time for me to lower my guard enough to really risk getting hurt. Ironically one of my two Polish trainees has become a real friend, and certainly he is glad enough to talk to me as he ought to be able to his father. Like me with my father in the old days, there is no commication in that department.

Friendship can come from the least expected quarters! I tend to think it is the only thing that actually matters...

All the best from Fredrik

Fredrik's great grandfather as a young man in the 1890s, I would guess.



Ivar Fiske 1875-1967

Posted by Fredrik Fiske

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:

Dear Friends! [Bleary Smiley]!

This [very satisfactory piss-up on Friday/Saturday] followed on from work... At a few minutes to ten I was in the canteen having a fag break, and in came the manager (senior production manager) and he was quite shirty. I went and saw him before I went from work [no good not putting in a defence, I have found], and explained not only had we achieved the programme and done the deep cleaning we were asked to, but as I thought this would not adequatley fill the time I pulled three batches forward from Monday, which makes next week's programme that much more achievable, and kept us going nicely. It seems to me if you become deceitfull and simply look busy at the appropriate moments, they never actually check to see what you are really doing. I have never been like that. So given that I shall certainly get a bollucking on Monday, I thought a bit of an impromptu session might be in in order and it was!

All the best from Fredrik. End of QUOTE

Well, Dear Friends,

My defense must have worked a treat for I met my dear chief production manager, (and I am always on good form at the begining of the week), right after going in through the door! He grinned somewhat in the manner of a man not quite sure what to say next!

He asked if I was in a better mood than on Friday! I responded that I was always alright till people messed with me at work, and we both had a little chuckle. Nothing more was said at all! Result!

All the best from Fredrik

Another lovely Polish beer has been sampled in moderation (one bottle followed by a can of Lech), and I have to say it is a real stormer. a lovely beer. Warka. It comes from the same brewary as Zywiec, but this one I have not yet found. My goodnes the Poles know how to bottle a nice beer or several!

Fredrik

:

Hello Doc!

I'll visit your home turf!

Fredrik

Whilst one lives life by the day, I am not sure it is idle to sample a few simple delights as one goes along, and having had one bottle of Warka last night, I thought it good to enjoy just a few more tonight! We shall see what the head brings in the morning. Forgive a report in the morning, for if such a nice beer really does not give rise to pain next day (as Okocim does) then is is indeed a heaveny Brew. Bit like Archer's Gold in a bottle! Most similar in taste to Norwegian Christamas Ale {Hansa is nice}, which is about as close as the Norse get to brewing a strong beer! The Poles call Norwegian beer Gay Beer. That is comical in my book, and one assumes they are refering to the sexuality of the beer and not the quality, as there is no doubt that Norwegian beer is really rather fine!

Fredrik

Warka is, as I suspected not a beer to make one ill! Well anything would if you had too much, but in moderation no harm came of it.

Dear Frank, Are these wonderful beers on draught in Poland? That would be a diiferent thing again!

Fredrik

Dear Friends,

Here is nice discovery!

I have found in a shop in Worcester, where they have been selling all these wonderful bottled beers, something even stronger!

They have run to stocking Wyberowa, and Zubrowka! Zubrowka is indeed a Vodka with grass in it, but nevertheless it shall be sampled at the right moment, and I can easily find some good apple jiuce in Herfordshire, to assist in the general dereliction of duty to behave in a respectful manner to the tenets of the modern world...

No I did not immediately buy one of each or even one, but a house warming will occur in the next four or six weeks and the occasion may (indeed will) arrise where these amusing additions to forgetting how real is the world will certainly find pleasurable consumption!

No doubt the world will seem the least of the problems next day, so world get ready to be ignored!

Fredrik

PS: If I survive at all, I think it reasonable to suppose that any comment may take two days to appear!

Dear Friends,

Regarding my overtaxation last finacial year, I can definately say that the Revenue confirmed that I would get the money back this week, though it has not appeared yet. It will finance the horrible business of moving to Worcester, where the flat seems to be really nice, and like any nice place to live, has a good atmosphere. I be;ieve in the aura of buildings. For example, though I did not take it as being haunted, I used to hate a certain room in a house on the Cloisters in Hereford Cathedral. I pointed this out to my friend the occupant and his wife one day, only to be informed that in medieval times it had been a bakery. Apparently there had been a terrible fire and several monks died trying to escape. I think these vibes hang round, and good ones too in other places...

I suspect that sleep will be easier when the money comes.

But the main reason for posting, is that I have found that Lech is definately the nicest beer so far in the excess heat we are having. Like the best English Ale, drunk in a well kept public house, it simply does not knock you about next day, which I count not so much as a bonus, as being an essential!

Fredrik

A nice postal delivery, made me content a few minutes ago! Fredrik

Sounds like a good plan, Frank! Fredrik

Some people start late in life!

I bought my first ever bottle of spirits for myself today at the age of 44! Every bottle (not that many in my lifetime) has either been given to me or the ones I that bought were as gifts!

Wodka Wyberowa, and this I plan to savour quietly myself. There is a plan to aneasthetise me with Zubowka one day, which I think should letf to a fine Friday night, and expecting the weekend to be wiped out!

All the best from Fredrik

Actually I put this in the frezer, so I may just try one nip later!

All the best from Fredrik

Anyone who wants to reply to my other thread might do it here if they are feeling generous!

Well 24 hours in the freezer (sorry for the speeling above) has prepared the nectar, Wyberowa, and it is even smoother and gentler than Pan Tadeusz.

I would think that it reasonable to call this a subtle as a fine malt wiskey in every way. What a treat from my first ever bottle of spirits, from myself to myself.

To be enjoyed as my late Norwegian grandfather used to, as a rare treat, one nip at a time, on special occasions. Though survival is enough, considering this week!

Goodnight, dear Friends, from Fredrik.

Now where has the Well Tempered Clavier gone?

I don't think it's a good idea to leave vodka in the freezer for more than 24 hours as it turns rather syrupy. Very cold is good but syrupy is not so good.

Dear Frank,

As you know I am half Norwegian, and has always had a fascination with history and not just the last 150 years. Not the issues of Nazism. These don't need to much examination, but the issue of how the Allies carved up the world at Yalta is something burned very deeply into my Polish friends' being, and I am the only Englishman they have met who understood the significance of this. Most educated Englishmen would find themselves working in better conditions I in my experience. I think it was the point of contact actually, after meeting my two team mates. Initially they just found me uniquely patient, which they found hard to understand comapred to the norm. so then the conversatiuons started...

No nation is without dark period let alone tragedy, but I have had Poles proudly telling me history in breaktime at work in a b----- cake factory, and I bet I am the only Englishman who knew of the very defence of Vienna by Poles! I was filled in the name by a happy and proud group of Poles, who delighted in the fact that someone understood them. In fact they are a fiercely proud people, but sadly they face a good deal of indifference or even worse here, now as in the past. Not from me. I know what the trials of a relatively small nation can be and so I find my sympathies drawn in their direction knowing the Norwegian history from childhood, and therefore spreading out my interests over time. One Albanian was staggered that I knew about the history of his country! Mind we could not agree about the quality of the leadership of the fascist regimes after the First World War, and eventually we fell out very badly.

But I have never found much to quarrel with about with modern Poles. Not all their views quite conform to British ideas of Political Correctness, but then neither do some views in Norway. I don't have to agree with them or even find everything even acceptable as norm, to see that in the main they have a great and civilised future given the chance, which hopefully they now have.

In fact they have a funny view of Norwegians. One that made me laugh, because it is so true, or at least used to be. They think the Norse are slightly off-beam: As they say, "They Live To Work, but We Work To Live!" In that respect I am sure the Polish attitude is more healthy in the long run. Unfortunately I was infected by the Norwegian attitude to work, but no one seems to mind, and I am too old to alter now.

I have been enjoying the Wyberowa, very gently, and even persuaded my mate who comes here for a single pint on a Saturday to try a nip. I think there will be a great export trade in time!

The language is a terrible trial for me as almost none of the words are common in root, but with time I would master it. It far harder than Norwgian for me.

Previusly the only Pole I knew was about fifteen years ago, and was a rather unpleasant fellow, who was an illegal immigrant, though the first we knew of that was when he was arrested and put on a flight home. I still did not have my faith in these people shaken, though the theory has only been shown good in the last twelve months in practice.

Golly, that was serious wasn't it. Fredrik

Frank F,
I need to know where in Spain you are, and what rioja you are drinking at 1.6 euros a bottle..
We are in the south of Spain - Almeria, and currently are enjoying something called Comportillo - a lot more than 1.60, but very good - also try Vina Albali....
I must seek out a good Vodka outlet - picking up a bottle of Smirnoff in duty free (yes, I confess to that at the airport today) is not good enough..
Steve