Hi, it's me again,

Polish stuff

First off, many thanks to the reader who sent me this Polish cover of Frank Sinatra's My Way by Stachursky, the same guy that did the Chesney Hawkes thing from last week. The new Polish title Żyłem Jak Chciałem immediately makes it sadder in my opinion since it means "I Lived How I Wanted", very much underlining how My Way has for years been the most common song played at funerals (until last year). To counterbalance that mood, here is a more recent and silly song by Stachursky about going clubbing all night, even though he's now in his mid-50s.

Switching gears, I was in Oslo this week and visited the new Edvard Munch museum. This superb museum houses several reminders of how Munch was good friends with fellow drunkard Stanisław Przybyszewski. You can see his face in a lot of Munch's art (every time you see a moustachioed red-faced man, basically) and there are direct portraits of Przybyszewski on display too.

Przybyszewski was a key figure when it came to promoting Munch's art, and some of the Norwegian's earlier success can be attributed to his friend's support. There is an old in-depth article on Culture.pl which talks about the artists' relationship, or this more recent short article from the Munch museum itself on Przybyszewski and Munch if you want to know more.

Non-Polish stuff

There's a new cohort of Ship 30 for 30 soon, and I would like to recommend it to you all. Especially since they have created affiliate links for all past students to encourage them to pass that information on 😅

If you aren't sure what it is, it's a digital writing course that challenges you to write and post a short essay or thread every day for 30 days on Twitter, LinkedIn or Medium. It's supposed to get you over any trepidation you might feel about writing publicly, and it definitely works.

They also teach lots of techniques in copywriting, headlines, formatting and about how to figure out what you should be writing about. There is also an absolutely lovely community of people from around the world taking part, who really make the whole thing worthwhile.

Plus it seems to be getting more expensive with each cohort so if you think it's something you'd like to do one day, it's better doing it sooner than later!

If you use this referral link, you get a $100 discount off the current price.

Travel recommendation of the week

Oslo! (Yes, unsurprising, since I already mentioned I was just there). Although it's more expensive than London, it's well worth a short visit.

3 travel tips if you go to Oslo:

• Get an Oslo Pass for sightseeing. It seems expensive, but the pass covers so much stuff and individually everything is astronomically more.
• Don't make big plans for Mondays - many places are closed! We ended up spending a few hours in the national library, where there are a lot of play areas for little kids.
• Go look at all the weird naked statues in Frogner Park. In fact, you'll find many weird naked statues all over the city. (The park was recommended by a coursemate from Ship 30 for 30, it just so happens).

7 other things I learnt in Oslo:

• The most popular food in Norway is... tacos. "Taco Friday" is a big thing.
• The second most popular food is frozen pizza, which everybody eats on Sundays. (Every TV ad break we saw included a very silly commercial for Grandiosa Delux pizza. A deeper dive shows that this pizza company has had at least two number 1 singles from their advert jingles)
• The Opera House's design is based on a glacier and is made from Italian marble, while the inside is mostly Norwegian oak. It apparently cost 7% of the country's GDP. You can walk all over the building.
• The people who live in the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland & that nearby bit of Russia are called Sami. People in the UK often call them Laplanders, but that's actually an offensive term and they hate it.
• Norway is really into brown cheese. It's a bit sweeter than your average cheese and probably goes well as cheese on toast.
• For the first few hundred years, Oslo kept burning down because all the buildings were made from wood and the people were often drunk.
• In the late 1940s, a small group of Norwegians sailed a bamboo raft across the Pacific to prove whether it was possible Polynesians originated in South America. The main guy Thor Heyerdahl didn't know how to swim. They somehow all survived.

That's all I have for you this week. See you in October!

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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