The Curious Case of Polish Slippers

Home Slippers

In my observation, Polish people are crazy about Polish slippers. Crazy in a good way. And I guess in Poland they aren’t called Polish slippers, just slippers, and not in English but in Polish. In Polish, slippers could be kapcie, papcie, laczki, pantofle, ciapy, klapki, paputki and more.

When you visit someone in Poland, not only is it customary as a guest to remove your shoes, but it seems to be customary as a host to insist that they don’t do so. At the same time, many hosts provide some slippers for their guests, often taking them still warm from their feet. Maybe this stems from the idea that in Poland your guest is king or from the old school idea that your living room area rug has to last you a lifetime. Or maybe it’s just plain cleanliness. Shoes inside are gross 😉

Where are my paputki?!

Once a Vice-President from a big leasing company invited me to have a lesson in his home rather than at the office. I think it was a holiday or something. Anyhow, it was snowing so I insisted on taking off my wet shoes, and he promptly presented me with slippers, the paputki kind which resembled something that Santa’s elves would wear. I felt strange enough sitting in this guy’s home, but in these paputki I felt ridiculous. Then his wife came home and shouted, “Gdzie są moje paputki?!” (Where are my slippers?!) Yikes!

Work Slippers

Slippers not only play a major role at home, but also at work. I remember that I first became aware of the importance
of slippers in Poland when I was working in a high school teaching English. I noticed that all admin staff and cleaning crew wore slippers at work (and let’s not forget the all too sexy fartuch – flowery apron) as well as some teachers. I remember exiting the school one day with an absent-minded teacher who had forgotten to change from his slippers back into his shoes. He discovered that fact just as he planted his foot in a big puddle. Oops!

Once when starting a new contract in a software company, I stepped off the elevator and straight onto beautiful, lush wall-to-wall carpeting. Not the typical office carpeting, but the kind that you sink into when you walk across it and the kind that leaves satisfying paths when you run the vacuum across it. I noticed some IT guys walking around wearing their IT uniform, sweater, jeans, slippers. Nothing new. But then I saw the managers in suits, men and women alike, all in slippers. After they showed me the conference room, kitchen, bathroom, copy machine and introduced me to my students, I inquired if I should bring slippers. They looked at me strangely and said no, but c’mon I’m just saying…

They’re just slippers

On TVN Style, an old TV channel with programs directed to ladies I think, I watched a talk show program about child abuse vs spanking. A well-known politician (so well-known that I cannot remember who it was) admitted to having spanked his daughter because she once again was not wearing slippers at home. The interviewer asked him if those slippers were worth spanking his daughter. He replied that it had been worth it because not only had she disobeyed him, but also she had exposed her feet to the cold making her more susceptible to illness.

School Slippers

That brings us to the slipper-wearing customs in our family, or rather lack of. I started wearing slippers just a few years ago. I had to buy some kind of slippers (and a robe) when I went to the hospital. In fact I bought my husband bought them for me at the hospital from the hospital kiosk. After that I just started wearing them I guess because I had them. My children didn’t have slippers so it was a bit of a problem to introduce this habit to our daughters before going to Preschool. We let them pick out their own pretty slippers and problem solved, except our older daughter wanted to bring them back home from Preschool each and every day. At least we found a use for her worek (school sack). Parents had to take off their shoes before entering classroom, too. It is a problem for me. I was having a sock crisis.

Favorite Slippers

My current faves are my hand-embroidered Zakopane models sent to me by a lovely lady who follows me on Instagram. Second runner up goes to the machine-ebroidered pair I picked up at the Pierogi Festival in Kraków a couple of years ago.

Slippers po polski

I don’t know all the words for slippers in Polish but we have kapcie, paputki, papcie, papucie, kierpce, even klapki or klapeczki. Do you know any more?