Up to my neck

Hey man, I'm so pissed with EW... what a shock, right?
The thing is that she thought I didn't have the keys for the house today, she was out and she called and I said: 'Hey, I'm at home and I have the keys!'
"Wait me at the door"
"Oh...k...?"
She understood I was standing at the building's door and then she came home in a hurry. When she saw me inside she kinda got furious.
"Because I came home running and you were here all the time!"
"Hey, if you misunderstood me, there's nothing I can do"
She then went to the market (she goes there every two days, I go once a week), and bought all the fattening things. When I got home I ate two sausages, she made three sandwiches...
Fuck her big time, man! I'm here enjoying my Mitialada and she's been in an awful mood for days.
I've been working a lot here, I got myself another private student and I've been walking a lot. I have to prepare classes and barely have time to eat something in the house. And she fucking gives me attitude? What a bitch!
Oh, well...
And she got accepted for a month's course at a top university, to study Polish. I thought she would be back to Brazil in June, but now I don't think so. Damn...What a loser, capital L... She doesn't want to work, she doesn't want to work as a waitress, even thought Junior and I keep telling her we both worked as waiters before... I did the washing up, mopped, cleaned bathrooms, put up with stupid customers for more than than a year and the princess doesn't wanna do that. I have to put up here with lousy students, teaching ficking business English, which is fucking difficult for me, I spend a lot of time preparing these fucking classes with words that even in Portuguese I wouldn't know how to explain, and she's complaing all the time that 'she's doing nothing and wanted to work...'
"Yeah, but why don't you look for work?"
"Because I cannot teach as you guys can"
"So? There's a lot of restaurants looking for people..."
Silence.
Sometimes I just wanna punch that fat chin, man...

No more breakfast club

Last Saturday was strange. I was feeling down, no prospects, no nothing. As I went to sleep at 11pm the day before, at 7am I was wide awake. But it was fucking Saturday and I refused to get up before 9am. At this hour I got up and made myself a coffee. Listened to the radio, smoked. It was a beautiful morning and it was already hot. I went back to my room and started studying - revising - all Polish lessons I'd had so far. All that fucking endless cases. "Mam nowego zajomego", "To jest moj nowy znajomy", "Czy masz ochote na piwo?" (this 'e' at the end has a "cedilha" sign). "Jakie waglandy? Przystojny? Szczuply? Ma okulary? Czym sie Interesuje?" Fucking L man...
I studied for three hours and couldn't stand seeing another word in Polish. I had lunch, sorted out some things in my computer, burned a CD for Junior and washed my clothes. By then the weather was shit. You guys have no idea how hot it is here. Porto Alegre hot. Amazonas hot. It's definitely hot. And it's gonna get worse...
Junior came back from his classes, he was stressed out because he'd had a row with one of the other teachers. He went over to Suzana's place, her mother had died the night before. I went to the market to buy the generic RedBull and some beer. I decided to buy one Zywiec for me and the rest was Tatra. It was 6:30pm and it was so hot that I opened up one can. It was good. I decided to open up a second one. "Czemu nie?" (Why not?) Junior and Patricia arrived and we had some more beer. We called Nazira. He brought vodca and RedBull. We fired up Madonna's DVD. Junior had his dancing shoes on. By 9:30pm I was already feeling good. I went to Zabka for for beer and vodca and could listen to Moby DVD from downstairs.
We kept listening to electro, Smiths, OMD, Depech Mode, everything. Patricia got depressed and started crying. We all drank almost everything inside the house. Loud music. Dance steps. Elaborate dance steps. I kissed the floor and somebody picked me up.
I don't remember getting in the cab, getting in Cocon, getting to the dance floor. Patricia said she had to puke and we went to the bathroom. I hate people who can't hold their liquor, man... We spent almost half hour in that fucking bathroom, with people almost invading it because they wanted to use it. I finally got her out of there, but them she saw Junior and asked him to go with her to the bathroom again. This time they spent almost an hour there. He wanted to kill her. Nazira was chatting up a girl, I was dancing and controling myself not to fall on the floor again. Nazira bought me some water. The drunken EW wanted to go to Kitsch and I thought 'What the hell does she wanna do there? She can barely stand'. I was enjoying it all along. They even played 'Erotica' from the Confessions DVD. Junior and I went to the bar on the balcony to buy some beer and he started staring at one guy, but the guy was with somebody. Then, the boyfriend came to me talking in Polish.
"Nie mowie po polsku" I said.
"Ok, so tell your friend that he can go to the dance floor right now and stop looking at my boyfriend"
I passed on the message and of course Junior refused to move from there, until eventually the guys were gone.
Way after Patricia and Nazira left, I went home to do my early morning bailinho. A while after Junior came home with somebody and said 'turn up the volume'.
I did it, listening to Foo Fighters and Duran Duran. Loud. I don't know, I think it was 7am, 8am...
I went to sleep and at 4pm they woke me up for lunch, Nazira had joined us. We listened to a lot of Brazilian music, then Blind Melon, Evita...
We went to Kolory at 9:30pm, drank a beer. It was funny, Nazira is funny. We laughed a lot and I would've stayed there if I wasn't so fucking tired.
On Monday we got the news: somebody had complained about the loud music that had been played for a long time. The landlady got pissed.
No more breakfast club. No more chill in. Crap.

"Terrinha" invasion

We stayed in Posytywka for two hours, I think. Music wasn't as great but the DJ was trying hard to make us happy. The thing is that is this DJ there that is always sad, even though his music is good. But this day he was all happy and loking at us and to be honest I think he was kinda playing songs according to our mood, because whenever we didn't like a song he would switch it to some 80s song and we would start dancing again.
We went home and started our second bailinho. We listened to electro, Favela Chic, Erasure, Smiths... it was so good that I didn't want to go to Kitsc, but Patricia convined me to do so. We left home at 4:15am and the sun was beginning to rise. It was strange getting out of the house to the party at this hour.
We entered the place (which wasn't crowded, thank God!), and went to the smaller dance floor. The first person we saw was Escovado. Man, such a long time... We said hey and went to the bar at the other dance floor. Like five minutes later Escovado was looking for us. He found us and started talking to Patricia, I was just drinking my beer and looking at whoever wanted to look at me. He had this really ugly friend, Piotr, who kinda wanted to have something. Again, me and my screams...
I was just making small talk and shit and suddenly Gustavo comes out of nowhere to save us! I was so glad to see him! He bought me a beer and we talked for a while. e had met a bunch of Portuguese people there, one uglier than the other, apart from Fernao (yes, and I asked him: Fernao de Magalhaes? I don't think he liked it). We started talking about the differences between the countries, as usual. Man, are they dumb...
At one point there was this girl with a megaphone telling everybody to move to the smaller dance floor because they were closing the main part. That was a wise move because the place was kinda getting empty but with everybody there it felt like it was crowded. I cound't stop dancing and was staring at this guy that I don't know if was gay or not. They played Jamiroquay! I changed numbers with this Fernao guy but nothing is gonna happen.
We left the place at 9am, broad daylight, no sunglasses, tired and looking shattered.
But it was great.

"This is a breakfast club!..."

Well, the week before last we decided to have a dinner party at our place to celebrate Junior and Anay's birthday. She's Mexican and a great person. We invited a bunch of people and Junior cooked. Food was great but the party so to speak was kinda lame, because Suzana was there and the other guests wouldn't aprove of our bailinho. Nazir was there as well he kept asking all the time: 'What about bailinho? What about Madonna's DVD?' He's not gay but he kinda got used to our track list.
It was about 1am when the last guest left and we turned the volume up, just like the mice in the Shreck movie, you know? We watched all Confessions DVD, as usual, and afterwards Kitsch. We were already drunk and started looking at everybody. Anyone who would look back we were willing to go for. Desperate. Completely. Nazira bought us drinks and cigarettes and we went to dance those shitty songs. A guy came and asked for cigarettes but Junior had them in his pocket, so I just pointed to his direction and the guy got his cig. But then he started talking to Patricia and after a while they were together, he was Bulgarian. I went to the bar to buy beer and I met the Mexican guy, Gustavo, whom every time we go there somebody else introduces to us. We got to talking and he had this Polish friend. Of course I was into the guy, but he was so fucking wasted that it wasn't worth it. About 4am or 5am we decided to do an early morning bailinho (it's becoming famous, sometimes better than the actual pre-party one) and we invited Gustavo, the Polish friend and the guy Patricia was with. He had this real cute friend but the guy didn't join us. Neither did the Polish guy. OK, let's do this! This is a breakfast club!
We got home and still had some beer from the dinner. I fired up the DVD (Madonna, of course) and was doing my own little bailinho. Nazira after 30 minutes left the place. Junior jumping up and down and Gustavo trying to talk to us, unsuccessfully. He doesn't know our bailinho style.
After a while Patricia wanted the Bulgarian guy to leave. So she sit down next to Gustavo and they started talking. I was dancing, Junior was dancing. But the Bulgarian guy didn't want to leave the place without some action, so he went after me. I wanted some action as well so I went for it. But nope... not all the way home, just kinda... you know, fun.
After a while I understood why EW wanted him to leave. What a boring guy... My God...
Then I wanted him to leave, he wouldn't. Junior woke up and I asked him to kick the guy out of the house. He said: 'How am I gonna do it? I'm not kicking him out, you do it...' I tried but the guy wouldn't move. So Junior said
"Go to your room and lock the door"
That's what I did.
Gustavo slept in Patricia's bedroom and the guy stayed in the kitchen, listening to music.
I had to work at 5:30pm in conversation club at the school but wasn't in the mood at all. I went, of course, and in a way it kinda woke me up. I got home about 7:30pm and made myself a Mitialada (a Mexican drink, don't know the spelling). Junior got home from the Gym, put his dancing shoes on (rollers) and opened up a beer. He had to work the next day morning and would be off to Warszawa in the afternoon, so there was no way he would go to Kolory. One hour later he said: 'Do you feel like Kolory?'
"Hell, yeah!"
We called Nazira and he came over. Friday night is the best day at Kolory, but unfortunately Zbizega wasn't there. (We have this kind of thing of calling guys with an 'a' at the end of their names, is one of the 500 different cases they have here, I think is accusative. So the name of the guy changes at the end after certain verbs and prepositions. Wierd lingo for wierd people) But we laughed with that Nazira that you wouldn't believe. I went on to do my little bailinho after Junior and EW went to sleep.
Junior went to Warszawa the next day and Patricia went out all day. I thought it would be a bitch staying at home Saturday night with EW. When she came home, amazingly enough, she agreed to go to Pozytywka. We had no money, no beer. I went to the market to but the 1-liter bottle of the generic RedBull, 3.99 zlotych, three Tatras and Viceroy. Patricia had a couple of Warka Strong in the fridge - awful beer, makes you wanna puke.
There were some people in the living room of the next door apartament and I was listening to some electro and dancing while Patricia was in the shower. When she got ready, she said:
"Ferdinanda, there's a couple of women looking at us"
"Really?"
"Yes"
I thought they were sitting and looking from their couch, but when I got to the window they had like half their body out of the window staring at us. Oh my God... They were laughing at us, too.
"I'm shutting the blinds", said EW.
"No way, they'll leave in a minute"
But in a minute there were two more guys staring. We hid behind the wall!
When they left Patricia shut the blinds.
We went to Pozytywka and it was ok. After a while EW made a proposition: go home, drink the beers left and go to Kitsch.

(To be continued)

Next stop: Petrovice

It was May 4 and I had to leave the country, otherwise I wouldn't be able to come back anymore and, let's face it, being illegal in fucking Poland sounds like a joke. We had to wake up kinda early because Junior and I would have to go to the train station and find a destination for me to go and come back in the same day. The day before was Pawel's birthday party at Kolory and it was great. We drank for free and met a few people. Pawel's brother, Wojtek, kinda fell in love with me, but he's 19, doesn't speak English and is a scream (in-joke: Junior has this saying which roughly translates 'If uglyness was some sort of pain, he would be a scream'). But he was nice and got drunk. Poor kid.
There was this girl, Maryola - yes, couldn't believe her name either-, who wanted to talk with us no matter what, but Junior and I had our eye on this guy, Zbizeg, and didn't want to waste our time with her. We eventually spoke with her and she bought us drinks, which was cool. The problem with her is that she seems on cocaine all the time, she just wouldn't shut up and we wanted to make contact with the guy. She kept saying that she was gonna have some Siberians at her place for the week and we had to meet them. She invited us for dinner but we didn't go, I gave her some kind of excuse but I think she didn't like it much because she's never called again. Neither have we.
This Zbizeg guy is gorgeous. I mean, he has this strange face, big chin and eyes that seem they'll strip you off right that second. The problem is: we don't know which team he plays for. Natalya told us that he's not gay, but Junior was staring at him one of these days and he was cool with that, because normally, you know, the guy would look away or start a fight or something. But not him. Junior said that his ugly friend was into me. What a shock, me and my screams.
Anyway, we went to the train station trying to figure out where I could go. We thought Slovakia but there weren't any direct trains, so it would take me like seven hours to get there, which was not an option. So we talked to the clerk and she suggested Petrovice (yes, with 'v') in Czech Republic. It would take three hours each way and it wasn't that bad. I would stay there for a couple of hours and then come back to Krakow. Ok, sounds like a plan. We went for it.
I had to change trains in Katowice and that was when my problems started. I didn't know the platform and nobody there could speak English. It was almost time for the train to leave and I was running around the station like the woodpecker bear. In the end I found out that it would be the same train that was heading to Viena and I boarded. There was a couple of stops before my destination, and when the train finally got there I just thought 'Oh my God...'
I didn't get any Czech stamps in my passport and I found it kinda strange. The station was in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere. Junior called me and I told him about not getting the stamp, and he was all:
"Ferdinanda, YOU MUST GET A STAMP! You need to have in your passport that you either left or is arriving in Poland otherwise you'll be illegal"
I started to panic. This call cost me fucking 12 zlotych because of the fucking roaming. I had like 30 grosz and couldn't make a phone call. There was no exchange place for me to change my money and eat something (there was this little restaurant in the station). I started asking people about my stamp. One guy told me, in Czech, to enter this building and talk to the police. I did it. When the officer saw me there he started screaming at me because that area was restricted and I wasn't supposed to be there. I told him I needed a stamp and he said 'No you don't, this is Czech Republic, you don't need it' and closed the door in my face. I felt like crying.
I had no food and no water on me, only the fucking Viceroy. I started smoking a lot and walking around the place. The train back to Krakow wouldn't come for the next two and a half hours and I just waited. And waited. And smoked and waited.
Twenty minutes before the time to leave I saw this train coming and a bunch of police officers started walking around. I got one of them and asked if he could speak English, he said 'a little' and I explained the situacja. He got my passaport and then like seven or eight other officers gathered around us. I kept saying 'Hey, I need a stamp, I'm not European, I'm Brazilian and I need it! Please do something!'. Everybody in the train was looking at me and I thought 'Well, now I'm sure they'll cuff me'. How embarrassing.
I wouldn't stop talking and one Polish officer just took my passport from my hands, opened it, stamped it and gave it to me, as in 'shut the fuck up, you bitch'.
I was so happy... I got on the train and five minutes later I saw the same officers going from carriage to carriage stamping everybody's passaports. I felt like a dumbass. Totally dumbass. When they got to my booth one of them just said 'Not this one, it's the Brazilian'. "The" Brazilian, man... The train started moving and I relaxed, listening to music.
It was so tiring because the train was so fucking slow. If I started running next to it I would be faster. After three long hours I saw the neon sign of 'GALERIA KRAKOWSKA', the shopping mall next to the train station. It was so good to be home! Home, man! Home...
I walked to the house and was starving. Junior prepared some food and then off we went to have pints.
So fucking delicious Zywiec! And Tatra! Whatever canned Polish piss was fine for me...

(This was originally written a few weeks ago, don't remember when exactly)

Hey, here we go again... EW is out of this world. Man, she sits there all the time. I'd be embarrassed. The two of us working like dogs and she doesn't do anything at all. And, at the end of the day when we want to chill out or watch some news or something we can't because the TV is "hers". She watches soap operas from 3pm to 9pm and when she runs out of options she switches it to the shitty Italian music channel. Sometimes until midnight. Her picture was posted here a few days ago. Take a good look at her. She's a EW...
Goddammit...
She's doing nothing but waiting for the day to come back to Brazil. Why doesn't she leave already? She would be doing everybody a favor, herself included.
Doesn't have any ideas on anything. She could at least come and say 'Hey, maybe we can have a couple of pints in Rynek'. She hates our favorite bar, she hasn't been out with us for almost a month. All she does is to roam the city searching for the candies she'll never find here. Or a different kind of bread.
Oh fuck, Junior just texted me saying he won't be able to travel with me because he spent all his money on the residence process. Fuck man... And I have to wait to be paid as well. I guess I'll be going to Slovakia...
She just came back from the market, of course, buying some food. And the fucking bitch left the TV on and the volume high. What a bitch. And she never takes the trash out, she left a box of juice on the sink just not to take the trash out. Now she put it next to the trash can!!!
Unbeliveable!!!
What a bitch, man. Big time.
I'm not taking the trash out anymore.
Now I have to figure out what to do about the trip. Maybe I'll travel next weekend, on Friday, because the woman I'm substituting for is supposed to come back on the 4th.
It was great chatting with Ro yesterday. He sent me a few pics from London. I miss that.
EW is going for the second buka (kind of a bread), full of good ol' cals... The mayo is light, though, as if it would make a huge difference, but anywho...
And she's always cold! I don't understand that! She's packing up a huge load of fat and still all the time complains that she's cold. She eats this huge lunch and right after has two cups of tea because she's "feeling cold". It's almost fucking May and if it was up to her the heating would be on all the time. Suzana complained about the price of heating. Junior HAS to tell EW that she's gonna pay for it.
I just turned up the volume. Fuck her, man. And if she says something I'll let her have it.
What a moron. Sitting there all day long. Doesn't contribute to society. I wish I had money on me, man, I would go to Kolory for sure.
Why doesn't she put that fucking TV in her bedroom? And stay there until June when she goes back to Brazil...
Sorry, I must be the most boring person right now, but man, if you were here you'd understand.
Maybe Nazir wants to go to Prague. Junior invited him but now that he's not going I don't thik Nazira would go with me.
I need to take a shower. Tomorrow I start at 7:30am. After this beer I'll go.