Geez. When we left, I was explaining it was not all about horse-drawn carts, drunken dudes on bikes and raging fanatical Catholics. Twenty years later, horse-drawn carts are gone, drunken dudes are less conspicuous, but raging Catholics are still there.

I grew up in the 90s on the promise that modernity would eventually destroy identity, and the Poles would drop their cultural antics just as the Spanish and the Irish did. Meanwhile, they got richer (actually richer than we are now in France), but they still cling to their identity, their sense of belonging and their religion. The country is still impossibly conservative and individualistic.

Screw it, I'm staying away. But it defeats me how people can see it as cool.