Martin - Vodka & Apple Juice: Travels of an Undiplomatic Wife in Poland

For Szymu. For too many reasons.

Jay Martin grew up in Melbourne and lived in the UK, Vietnam, India, Japan and Perth before moving to Canberra, where she worked as a social policy adviser and inadvertently married a diplomat. While in Poland, Jay worked as a freelance writer for Australian and European publications, volunteered at the Warsaw Uprising Museum, and baked one decent chocolate cake. She came to understand snow and vodka, but never, really, pickled herring. Jay lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, with her husband and a cat called Very.

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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

I suspected that I did not have my dream job. The fact that I was hiding from my boss in a toilet cubicle was a dead giveaway.

Jay?

She had followed me in here? You cannot be serious.

I had a week to go before I left for Poland. Before Tom and I packed up our lives and moved to Warsaw, for his first stint as a diplomat. Despite having eighteen months notice, wed only started doing anything about it in the last two. How long could it take to move to a new country, after all, wed figured?

Whatever the right answer was, two months wasnt it. Everything about moving had turned out to be so much more work than Id expected. Packing up everything we owned into boxes and putting them on a ship. Working out what we should take with us for the next three years, and what to leave in storage. Should we pack the wedding photos? The tax records? The laundry basket? What was more possible: that the storage unit would burn down, or that the ship carrying our possessions might sink? Cleaning the house and getting it rented out, selling the car and hiring another one for our last few weeks, getting official passports, signing insurance papers, doing our wills and changing the addresses on all our mail. Warsaw Bag Id spelled out to what must have been every call centre worker between Manila and Mumbai. Wasnt there someone at Toms work whose job it was to advise you about these things? It seemed like the sort of thing someone in the Department of Foreign Affairs should have done before. Maybe one of the people whose business cards read, Relocation Support, for example.

Id thought the last decade Id spent in my job, heading up a high profile government policy team in Canberra, had prepared me for anything. Ten years of dealing with the fifty staff Id accumulated somewhere up the career ladder, and a procession of twenty-nothing-year-old ministerial advisers who thought calling me every five minutes to check how that ministerial brief was going would get it to them more quickly. Slamming together media statements for ministers who needed me to have a bright idea on their behalf because the polls had dropped. Pulling all nighters to get the papers ready for the next Cabinet meeting. And yet

Jay? Are you there?

OK, now I was sure. This was not my dream job.

Just a sec! I flushed, keeping up the ruse.

My mobile rang. Tom. He was at home, dealing with the movers who were in charge of getting the container of stuff we were taking with us to Warsaw, and the rest to wherever the storage facility the Department had organised was.

Whats up? I held my phone to my ear and ran my hands under the tap. My boss tapped her watch and huffed out.

I need that second set of keys.

And the minister needed his briefing and my boss wanted her KPI reports and my team leaders were waiting for their succession plan. Take a number, Tom.

Ah, cutlery drawer, white plastic container? Or kitchen windowsill maybe?

I heard his footsteps on our kitchen tiles. Charlie barked. Charlie, who had no idea we were about to give him away to another family. Would have no idea why we didnt come home and take him for walks up Red Hill anymore. Tears pricked my eyes.

Shit. No walk for him tonight either. Polish class, I remembered. And I hadnt done my homework. Shit shit shit. Polish grammar wasnt something you could fudge. My chest tightened.

I heard Tom opening and closing drawers. Do you want to catch up with Pete and Danny one last time on the weekend?

What I didnt want, right now, was to be having a conversation about a social life that involved people I was not going to see for three years.

I need to go, Tom. Text me if you cant find them. OK?

When I told people I was about to move to Poland for three years with Tom, theyd always ask what I was going to do there. Snow, cabbage and pork were pretty much all that came to my mind when I thought of Poland. As a vegetarian, that was an immediate challenge. At least I ate fish. If there were fish in Poland.

I looked in the mirror. OK, brave face. I had a mountain of work to get done and two more days to do it. And my boss still hadnt signed the exit form I needed for my final pay. I took a deep breath, steeled myself and headed for my office. Through the glass wall I could see two of my team leaders there, waiting for me.

Toms number flashed up again.

Yep?

The movers backed their truck over the water supply, said Tom. Our driveways turned into a waterfall. Your names on the account so the company says youll have to deal with it.

I didnt know what I was going to do when I got to Poland. I just knew that it wasnt going to be this. That was good enough for me.

Tom and I, a caf, Warsaws Old Town Square. Slender houses in golden plaster, an old couple on a bench throwing bread crumbs to pigeons, buskers with accordions, geraniums on windowsills. The sun warmed my face, through a red-and-white parasol advertising what I presumed was a Polish beer brand. The centre of the town in the centre of the country in the centre of Europe. If you were going to live in Europe for three years, this is exactly how you wanted it to look. And thats exactly what I was going to do.

We made it, I said, dragging my eyes away to look at Tom.

We sure did, Tom said. He squeezed my hand.

It was a bright July day, and we were the worlds most newly minted diplomats. Or one newly minted diplomat, and one new diplomatic wife. I closed my eyes and breathed in warm, fragrant air. Poland even smelled good.

A stocky waiter approached with an order pad.

I sat up straight. Dwa cappuccino, prosz, I said, and smiled at Tom. He winked at me. My first words in Polish in this country. Never mind that one was Italian.

Shshshshshshsh, the waiter replied. A torrent of Polish with nary a vowel in sight.

Prosz, nie rozumiem. Please, I not understanding. My second Polish phrase in this country.

Will you be paying by cash or card? he said.

Cash, said Tom. The server turned to leave.

Prosz pana, I called him back. Um what that is saying in Polish? I asked, in Polish. More or less.

Gotwk, the server replied, more slowly.

Go-toof-kan, I repeated after him. Cash. Not even two hours here, and a new word! Not a bad effort. I smiled at Tom again. With his tall, slim frame and olive skin courtesy of some Spanish ancestry, he stood out as foreign here. Being blue-eyed and blonde, I seemed to fit in well enough. Although, from the women I could see around me, it seemed I would need some more fashionable clothes and a bit more makeup to be inconspicuous. I reminded myself that, unlike them, Id stepped off the last of three consecutive long-haul flights a few hours earlier and my body clock thought it was two in the morning.