Silver Lining
One Saturday in spring, I rented a 4th floor garret at a small hostel in Warsaw run by the metalworkers’ union. This was several years after the shredding of the iron curtain, but some institutions change faster than others, and this little hotel seemed like it hadn’t changed much since 1989. There was no reception desk, but I rang a bell when I came in, and a smiley older woman came out from a small apartment off the entry hall. She didn’t speak a bit of English, but I had studied some Polish in college, so we could communicate well enough to arrange the handover of tens of thousands of złoty in exchange for a room (this was after hyperinflation, but before Poland knocked 4 zeroes off their currency to make prices sound less ridiculous).
It wasn’t the Ritz, but the little room did have a telephone, which was rare for the cheap hotels I had been staying in. I had an uneventful night, and the next morning, I was packing up my backpack for departure when the telephone rang. I couldn’t imagine who would be calling me, since I didn’t think anybody knew where I was, but I picked up the phone, and heard the same woman who had checked me in the night before.
“Are you leaving today?” she asked?
“Yes,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions, because my Polish was very limited, and I was already not sure that I had understood her first question correctly.
“Dobrze, dziękuje,” she said to my relief: “Okay, thanks.”
I wasn’t sure why she had called to check, since my watch showed that I still had 15 minutes until the 10 am checkout time, but I didn’t think much of it. Five minutes later, I was downstairs handing her the key to the room, and she was as cheerful as always.
I was leaving Warsaw that day, so I walked off toward the train station. A few blocks from the hostel, a man stopped me on the street.
“Do you know the time?” he asked in Polish.
I felt a surge of pride, partly because I was able to understand him, and also because his asking me the question at all meant that I must not look like a stereotypical American tourist. I was just thrilled to answer his question. I checked my watch.
“It’s 10:10,” I said, beaming with pride.
The man burst my bubble quickly, looking at me with a puzzled expression.
“No. That can’t be right,” he said as he quickly turned and walked away.
I must have said the time wrong, I thought. So much for being able to chit chat in Polish. Just a dumb American after all, apparently.
I kept walking to the train station, and looked up at the departures board to see what the next train I could catch would be. Strangely, all the listed trains left after 11:30 am, more than an hour away. How weird that there are no earlier departures leaving this busy station, I thought, until the truth dawned on me, and I understood both odd interactions I’d had that morning.
Europe had switched to daylight savings time the night before, and I had no idea. So I had checked out of the metalworkers’ hostel an hour late, and the man on the street knew what time it was better than I did, even though I was the one looking at a watch. But on the bright side, my Polish was just fine.