Wait, are you sharing a memory or just a description of a great puck of Tabac? I couldn’t tell exactly.I will never forget my time in Poland in the mid-90s. This was not long after Perestroika and the Solidarity movement. Poland had broken away from Russia, but had not yet joined the EU.
The smells were...notable.
Smoking was still a thing at that point, and it was impossible to escape the stench of stale burnt cheap tobacco mixed with the smoke of curently burning cheap tobacco.
On top of that, deodorant was simply not a thing, so everywhere you went, the sour, oniony smell of BO hung in the air, intertwined with that eye watering smoke.
One Saturday in August, we took the public bus from the city to a small farming village about 20km out of town. There was no air conditioning, and the bus was filled with hard working farmers. Sunday Mass was not for 24 hours, so most of the riders had not yet had their weekly bath.
I was thankful for the smell of tobacco.
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