“I know what your bathroom looks like” is never an okay statement coming from someone who has never been in your flat. Seeing as our bathroom is windowless, we instantly started to wonder where the camera is hidden. It turns out that this person is friends with the man who checks our water meters (the bathroom water is different from the kitchen water and apparently this requires regular accounting). And so every month this man gets an up-close look at our salle de bains and kitchen. Apparently the foreigners with Polish grammar on the bathroom walls is great conversation fodder. It’s a reminder that living in Włocławek is like living in Facebook. Everyone knows a bit of your business.

We’ve shared before that life in our industrial town of 100,000 can feel a little small town at times, but it’s increasingly clear that the local gossip-mill is a well-oiled machine. As foreigners in Włocławek we’re oddities. We’ve been given a quirky platform and a small portion of the local water-cooler talk. What does one do with novelty?