speaking polish in iceland
I recently spent a week abroad in Iceland - here are some small moments of joy I had as a (former?) Polish speaker. I had studied the language when I lived in Warsaw, and it's always a treat to hear!
Ærslabelgjur
One of the small highlights of the trip was when my brother and I went to an Ærslabelgjur (bouncy pillow). They are meant for children, so we naturally went over (as extreme children at heart). There were two actual children also jumping on the pillow, who enthusiastically welcomed us. They were really happy to have two people who would do the hard work of jumping so they could just sit and enjoy.
A jumping pillow:
Attribution: original via Wikimedia under CC 2.0.
Eventually, I noticed that they were speaking Polish. My handle on the language has weakened over the years, but we were able to get some basics across, including one of my favorite phrases: To jest mój brat, which means "this is my brother". Who doesn't want to call their brother a brat? Funnily enough, we even traded a couple of sentences in Spanish for things I forgot how to say in Polish!
It was a very unexpected and delightful moment of connection.
Boat Tour
We took a glacier boat tour, and our guide also happened to be Polish. In Icelandic, takk takk (or just takk) is used for thanks, which threw me for a loop for a second because tak means yes in Polish. I asked our guide about this - he said that he adjusted to using the more formal takk fyrir to say thanks so his brain could distinguish between the Polish yes and Icelandic thanks more easily. A very small linguistic point of interest that I found endlessly interesting but would never have known if I hadn't studied Polish!
Gratitude
Iceland was beautiful, with unique landscapes that I had never gotten the opportunity to see before (icebergs floating past in a glacial lagoon were a sight I won't forget soon). I feel quite grateful to have experienced all of the scenery and even more grateful to have connected in unique ways over speaking Polish!