Cold winter Friday evenings became Scrabble nights for us and two other couples; Michał/Marta, and Piotrek/Julita, friends of Karolina’s from high school, and friends of mine by association. It’s a fun way of edumacating ourselves while having some beer, cracking a few jokes, and at times even getting into some serious discussions about life in general.

Naturally the Polish version of the game has a few extra letters such as ą, ę, ś, ć, ż, ź, ł and ó, and we keep a laptop handy with a website that has a list of Polish ‘game words’ that are or are not allowed in Scrabble. Our teams are usually divided in a very non-political way I’d rather not discuss, but we try to mix things up to even out everyone’s chances. Fun times with fun people.