Babi

“I probably shouldn’t say this to you,” my Czech grandmother tells me in the middle of Prague as we walk through a very busy park, “but I don’t like Czech people. They’re not very… intelligent.” She then goes on to explain, in the true style of a woman both in love with historical details and now slightly senile, how the invasions of the communists and the establishment of the Czech Republic as a worker state ran anyone with any degree of intellect out of the country. And it is exactly for that reason that she likes living in the middle of the old quarter with all the tourists. “At least they’re not Czech.”

This, of course, might be shocking coming from any other 82-year-old, chocolate-toting grandmother, but from my Babi? Never. Not after having received calls from her telling me that having many “friends” as opposed to “one friend” – by which she means boyfriends – is much better at my age (after all, I need to be “free”) and that stupid people are boring. Not when she tells me she would have gone to university earlier but was too proud to spend a year pulling potatoes as the communists dictated, or that she thinks lip rings would get in the way of kissing properly. Not when, at breakfast, she asks me how many bottles of wine we’ll need for the day.

Visiting with my Babi has always been a treat; especially as I got older. The more I grew into myself the clearer it became that my parents would never need a Maury Show DNA test and I was quite obviously my grandma’s own. We’ve always been the “soft science” outcasts of the family – discussing sociology, language, and wine– and neither of us seem to be capable of functioning on our own. During an evening out, one of my cousins told me that he and his parents often had to put my Babi directly into a cab otherwise she would neither leave nor find her way home. Ironically, that same evening I somehow made my way to her apartment only to find myself incapable of actually fitting the key in her door. The next morning, between a couple of Advil, a litre of water and after having declined the offer for more wine, Babi told me that it must have been very difficult to know which key was which at 4.30 in the morning; naturally, it had nothing to do with my blood alcohol percentage.

Living through the Russian occupation, Babi was never permitted to leave the country, let alone travel. My grandfather – an international marketer of communist goods – spent years bringing trinkets home from around the globe until the two of them made a break for Switzerland and travelling liberty. Since then, I doubt there’s a cruise ship they haven’t boarded, a flight they haven’t taken, or a restaurant yet to serve my Babi wine. When I was ten my grandfather passed away, leaving his poor wife to open her own cans, fry her own eggs, and call her own taxis. Since, with an empty house and places to see, none of the family could tell you exactly where at any given moment my Babi can be found – maybe Turkey, France perhaps, or the middle of the Mediterranean – or whether she’ll have time to talk were you to call.

The night before leaving her hundred-year old apartment, we finished one last bottle of wine and plotted our next rendezvous. Maybe La Palma, Paris, or somewhere in Melanesia. We’d have to find the perfect halfway point; somewhere with good restaurants and centuries of history where we can spend the day meandering from cafe to cafe and all night exchanging stories. Only next time, I’ll bring the wine.

Travelling Tips

Departure: Row 24 Seat D – Even though the people crawling outside look cold, it is pertinent to refrain yourself from suggesting that the flight attendant let them in and to remember that not everyone is taking the same sort of trip you are.

Stop 1: Calgary – Once the ugly lights come on, the loud banging noises you hear are no longer music and it is no longer an appropriate time to dance on the speakers.

Stop 2: Mississauga – Agreeing to see your 60 year-old aunt’s new dance moves means that you will actually be subjected to impromptu dance lessons and to reassurances that you’re a “natural” even if you’ve already stepped on her feet twice and only ever get the first step of the Cha-Cha right.

Stop 3: Amsterdam – Spending most of the day smoking up to recover from a hangover is in no way advantageous when a tour bus full of Slavs thinks it would be funny to take impromptu pictures with you at the ferry docks.

Stop 4: Prague – Spending $30 on beer is equivalent to paying to wander the streets alone and lost at about 4.30 in the morning on the way home from the pub two doors down. And then having to call your grandma to let you in when you realize you’re not physically capable of fitting a key in the lock.

Stop 5: Vienna – Being able to say “I can speak [language]” does not actually mean you will understand a word of it when someone questions you, gives you directions or asks how you’re doing in four different ones within ten minutes.

Stop 6: Neuchâtel – Fireman carrying the biggest guy you can find around the club does not, contrary popular belief, completely eliminate your chances of getting laid.

Stop 7: Lausanne – Teenaged exchange students still find incredibly creative ways to drink themselves into a stupor, and even more creative ways to stash it.

Stop 8: Montpellier – People inconsiderate enough to commit suicide on train tracks cause not only massive complications for railway customer service representatives, but massive – occasionally overnight – delays for anyone traveling those tracks.

Polish Nutrition

“Here, what would you like?” I say, brandishing a can of tuna and some crackers in a friend’s face as he sat patiently waving away my advances. “Popcorn. D’you want popcorn? I might have some. You sure you’re not hungry?” I continue pulling things out of my fridge and cupboards until he agrees to have some of my left over lasagne and I sit across from him, sipping on chocolate milk and completely self satisfied.

Visits with my mother’s (and polish) side of the family has always meant meeting relatives I never knew existed, struggling through conversations in broken English, cheek pinches, ass pats and being fed more than I could possibly have needed as a girl of any age. Wandering in and out of the kitchen, my Babcia would tsk at how “skinny” I was and my aunts were consistently disappointed when I declined a fourth helping of dinner. After all, I was their unfortunate guest and there to be fed, watered and pinched.

As I got older, though, it became clearer that it was not only some odd poor-country impulse but something that simply made them happy. I tried for years to turn down the generous, albeit constant offers for food or drink and my polish family were not only disappointed, but ridiculously persistent. At the very least I would need to eat some fruit and have a drink. It took a couple of years before I learned that I would have to pass from household to household tactfully eating only a small bowl of my Babcia’s homemade chicken soup so that I could manage to eat one of the sandwiches my aunt had made and later the cakes presented to me by a great aunt twice removed, each one of them carefully watching and beaming as I forced my way through the ninth meal of the day.

One family-filled month I spent a morning watching my grandmother butter half a loaf for breakfast and pondering how to subtly get rid of the pierogies she would feed me an hour later, directly before an aunt came to pick me up for lunch. My aunt in turn could not figure out why I didn’t finish the pot of rice that she had made alongside my tray of vegetable chicken only to ask “How about dessert, Nishy?” squeezing my face with her hands. Later that evening I would be treated to a reunion barbeque and half a bottle of Zubrowka vodka - to be chased with homemade cherry liqueur, of course. Despite being raised Canadian and lacking what I would see as an old country need to feed, my mother herself will sit me down the instant I get home from a flight, place a beer in front of me and then point inside her fridge asking what, exactly, I might like to eat. At least being Polish generally means I get a few beers or Vodka shots with my indigestion.

I believe my own symptoms surfaced around the time I was graduating high school and started taking on the sole responsibility of entertaining my friends. Before, I would have already microwaved myself a pizza pocket only asking “Oh, you want some too?” once I’d seen my friend eying my plate at the table. But gradually I got into the habit of sitting them down, grabbing them a glass and then running through the list of what was available in the cupboards. Having drinks at my house soon meant that everyone would be standing around the kitchen island while I chopped cheese and salami, occasionally interrupting the flow of conversation to squeal and run to the cupboards when I remembered the crackers.

On my way from the beach one day, leading a troop of drunk guys home for dinner before the bar and in the right frame of mind for some deep self contemplation, it hit me. “I’m fucking polish!” (while smacking my roommate for proper emphasis.) There I was, marching my friends to my kitchen so that I could dice carrots, boil pasta and watch to ensure that every one of them was properly fed and nurtured before a big night on the town. I was the very product of my genetics and bloody well incapable of denying it.

Some weeks later, sitting on a plane after a couple of days spent with my Babcia and doubting I could ever eat again, I found myself wondering if the guy beside me might like a few of the chips I had with me. He did, of course, look kind of undernourished.