GB No. 11, spring 1993
And now I lead the life of a cosmopolitan. Here, in Poland. To be more specific, on the Mazurian Lakes. I just cannot leave the country when the nation is discussing the future, and the Seym - lottery games, which is a closed fragment of our unity. Our life is also but a lottery game. And I feel as if I were not present here at all. I can see water like that on the Cote d'Azur in front of me, the temperature being 30 Centigrade in the shade. Behind my back, in the fields, there is the African draught and 50 Centigrade in the sun. There is the blue and cloudless Italian sky above my head.
I can see all this lying on the dirty, full of rubbish beach which reminds me of the present Yugoslavian coast. What is more, I am drinking beer: Czech, German, and Danish, because the local beer is exported God knows where, maybe even to Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. And when the heat gets less intense, which allows me to have a cool drink, I pour myself a glass of Scottish whisky faked in a distillery near Gdansk and light a tasty, aromatic Cuban cigar made near Rzeszów of Bulgarian tobacco. Then I open a pack of tasty American chips faked in a stable near Chorzele and while crunching them I listen to the splendid music from the last album of Sting copied in a basement in Kraków.
When I wake up I usually have two Finnish eggs sold in the nearby market as fresh Polish eggs for breakfast. And I drink milk from the Poznan area, on which it says "bottled in Hamburg."
Then I put a slice of salami from a Mr1gowo butcher produced on the basis of an original German recipe on Lithuanian bread brought straight from Nowogródek.
When I go visiting friends in the afternoon, I use an excellent French deodorant brought from Mongolia by the Chechen mafia, who bottle French perfumes near Bia3ystok, and then put on a Chinese cotton shirt faked in LódY and Chinese sneakers faked in China with a 'Made in Poland' label on my fragrant body. And American jeans made in Milanówek.
If I return from the visit early, I make myself Brazilian coffee imported from Portugal and packed in the steelworks of Nowa Huta, and then I sit down by the window and spy on the united Germans, who return from Hitler's headquarters to Orbis holiday houses in their Opels, Mercedes' and Wartburg-Golfs and immediately wash their cars. Hitler did not like dirt.
When I feel like doing some shopping without spending much money, I look for the nearest market where you can find the Russians, who sell things there from dawn to sunset and never have a rest. And you should not even ask them when they have a day off, for their answer is always "Pamriom, budiem addikhat" ("We shall have a rest when we die").
And if I want to buy something in a shop with electric goods, I look for an Englishman who can speak Polish and who is able to translate both for me and the shop assistant the book of instructions accompanying a Turkish iron assembled in Szczecin.
Today truly Polish are only "Solidarity 80" and national parties. And as I have not noticed anyone like that in the area, I can frankly say that I have left Poland.
translation from his book Miedzy Worłujem a Przyszłozbożem,
vol. 3, pp. 118-119