The Best and Worst Place in the World
Whenever I want to explain what Poland is like to English friends, I tell them about Polish water. Everything important you need to know about this country can be explained by Polish people's attitude to H2O molecules. There are two kinds of Polish water: the stuff that comes out of the tap and the stuff that comes in plastic bottles. The stuff that comes in plastic bottles is good, wholesome and properly Polish. The stuff that comes out of the tap is evil, deadly and somehow foreign.
17.02.2011 07:31
Every study I've seen says that Polish tap water is perfectly safe, but every Pole I've met treats it like a radioactive death cordial. If a Pole sees you drinking tap water, they are likely to call an ambulance and start praying. The fact that I've been drinking it for three years and haven't yet died is seen as strong evidence that I am not fully human.
Visitors often ask me if the tap water in Poland is safe to drink. The answer is complicated. Yes, it is completely safe from the point of view of your health, but being seen to drink it is a social disaster. Try ordering a glass of tap water in a Polish restaurant and the waitress will look at you as if you have just firmly slapped her on the bottom. She will eventually bring you a glass of non-evil bottled water with ice made from tap water, which is apparently perfectly safe.
The result of Poland's rampant, but highly selective, hydrophobia is that the Polish bottled water industry is huge. Even the smallest shop here devotes 20 percent of its floor space to selling bottled water, and all of it is Polish. Any Pole will tell you that Polish water is, of course, the best in the world – as long as it doesn't come out of a tap.
In rural parts of Poland some households refuse to be connected to the public water supply and rely on dark brown water from wells that only flow every other day in the summer. This is partly because of the cost, but much more because they simply do not trust the stuff. I even heard of a village in the extreme south of Poland that spent a large amount of money building a pipe to the Czech Republic so they could avoid having to use the local supply.
Poles are convinced that everything about their country is the best in the world – the water, the bread, the patriotism, the grammar – but that the Polish state is the worst in the world. In other words Poland – the geographical area where the Poles live – is God's chosen country, but Rzeczpospolita Polska was invented by the devil. The Polish attitude to water is my proof. Real Polish water that comes out of the Polish soil and mountains is good, but water that comes out of the state-run water company and its pipes and treatment plants is completely untrustworthy.
It is not usual for people to mistrust or deride their national institutions, but I have never seen such an extreme case as Poland. Poles describe their country as simultaneously the best and the worst place in the world. “Go visit the Polish mountains, they are the most beautiful in the world,” they say “but you will hate it because the roads are so bad it takes 14 hours to get there.” “Go see a Polish play, they are the funniest and truest in the world,” they say “but don’t go to that theatre because they will rip you off and steal your money.” “Visit our cities, they are the most charming and friendly in Europe,” they say “but don’t breathe the air because it will kill you.”
The day somebody offers me a glass of tap water, or a bottle of French spring water, will be the day I finally believe what Poles tell me about their country.
Jamie Stokes
