Let’s start with basics: Łódź. Yep, that’s the way we spell it. Three out of four letters make your mind crumble and wiggle like on a calculus class. Most of the world would just skip all the dashes and read it out like Lodz, but that’s not the case right now. As you’re probably going to hear this name a lot around here, I’m going to give you a short tutorial called “How to spell ‘Łódź’ correctly in just a few easy steps!”. So listen class, warm up your jaws and try saying out loud: ‘Would you like’

OK, not so bad. Just make the ‘d’ in ‘would’ soft, even ‘z’ like. Again! OK, that was better. Now, skip the ‘like’ part of the sentence. Yeah, I think you start to get it, just a few times more! Awesome; now skip the ‘you’ part and what you have left is probably a handicapped version of ‘Łódź’ sound. Anyway, I would not be a great teacher if I did not give you an under-the-table hint for this lesson, so here it goes. Just check out the video

Hope the organisers won’t find out how did this happen, that you’re so great at pronouncing!

Well, after having sorted out the spelling issues, we can move on to some more serious. Like a meaning. In our case Łódź means literally a boat. I think that you would like to get an explanation why a city placed 400 km away from the sea with no significant rivers or lakes around is called in this way. However no one can explain that and the history of the city becomes a blur when we look back to the beginning. What is certain on the other hand is that our city came into the world as a little, insignificant canoe sailing on a vast ocean of XIV century. It was sailing bravely through river of time, becoming a tiny sailboat somewhere around XVIII century, when there was around 250 sailors on board, as they say. Then, smart captain brought new sails and ropes on board called steam-powered-textile-industry. The boat became a steamer, commonly named as “The Promised Land” and the crew number reached tens of thousands in XIX century. Everything was going smoothly, great cabins called palaces were added on the main deck and the crew number was constantly growing. Before the great storm called WWII broke down it peaked to more than 670.000, most of them being Polish, Jewish and German sailors. The storm was devastating and more than 300.000 of the crew were lost to the sea. However, the ship kept sailing. Until it reached the port of XXI century, most of the industry sails worn out, making it slow down a little bit.

And right now? Well, today it’s not a cruiser, nor the vessel, not even a sailing ship. It’s just a boat. I mean, yeah, it has a few holes and scratches, and it leaks a little bit; sails are partially eaten by moths and there’s suspicious smell coming out of the under deck but the hell, it’s our boat! We’ve been together thorough bad and good times, some storms and calm sea periods and still it sails on. It doesn’t look that cool and it won’t win with a motorboat, and if I were you, I wouldn’t try the ‘hey baby, wanna check out my boat’ pick-up line, but damn, I love this city, phew, I mean boat!

The crew was rehired, putting it in the place of the third biggest boat in Poland. New sails are being brought on board as the companies from around the world open their cabins on the deck. Finally, we’ve caught wind in our sails again! We’re ready to sail out, everybody’s on board and no one is going to abandon ship!