Poland. Resilient and Proud. I have a lot to learn.

Palace of Culture and Learning (Pałac Kultury i Nauki)

On arrival in Warsaw I asked Mat how long Warsaw had been the capital. He couldn’t answer (I was sort of expecting this) because a country that has so often been occupied by others, dominated and restructured (read – pulled into pieces and put back together again according to the wills (whims?) of other dominating nations, during frequent periods of war and – in particular – when obliterated by the Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1940.

Some Indication of Changes in Poland over time

One might think that Poland might be a country with an identity crisis, having been subjugated so many times; that it would have lost its personality and its people would have no common features to characterise them as a nation. The opposite of this is the alternative: to cling faithfully to certain features of Polish heritage, and it seems that Poland opted for the latter. If Poland is God’s Playground, then throughout all of the games Poland is resilient and persistent in her will to survive. (And however much I satirised aspects of Poland in a previous post, it is this resilience and survival which stands out as Poland’s most imposing feature.)

St Paul's Cathedral, London. (Rebuilt at least twice, with different designs

in contrast with the Polish reconstructions of their lost cities

In Britain I consider we have a great number of beautiful buildings with truly artisanal architecture. The mighty ones: St Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, Salisbury Cathedral, the great castles of Wales and Scotland. And the humble: Cotswold cottages, dry stone walls throughout the Peak District, alms houses, which can be found throughout the country, and so on.

Warsaw Old Square

The Poles also have their many, many beautiful buildings – the presidents’ residences in Warsaw are impressive, so too the Opera house and the stone apartment blocks (kamienice) and beautiful, colourful buildings flanking the town square. But what sets Poland apart from Britain is that all the buildings I have just mentioned are reconstructions of buildings which were destroyed in the mass assault on Warsaw by Nazi Germany (you’ll also find this in Budapest and much of previously Nazi occupied Europe). The photographs of the (then) devastated city show shells of buildings, their insides brutally excavated and the once orderly, majestic buildings a crematoria and necropolis of shelled ruins, stone rubble in mounds throughout the few surviving partial structures. Would we really have rebuilt all of our structures – rebuilt our history – if our structures and surroundings were wiped out or tried again and again?

Poland in Ruins

Poland is often referred to as God’s Playground because of the enormous struggles it has been through as a country. Mat and I have been meaning to visit for years, since he taught in one of the university cities, Toruń, for a year and loves Poland.

Warsaw's Old Square, by night

Today, visiting Warsaw’s main ‘old square’ there is no evidence of this destruction, apart from the many stone and metal commemorative plaques to be found frequently at the sides of buildings. After the Second World War, a war in which 1/5 of the Polish population died, I considered whether there was enough left of Poland or the old ‘Poland’ to move forward without losing the history of the place, and its defining features. I considered this, but realised it could not be true. The stunning historical buildings of the town square that were shelled to the ground now stand again. The cornices and details of the architecture have been re-built, the gold and colourful paintings on the buildings have been replaced, the cobbles re-laid. From what I have seen – Kraków and Warsaw - Poland is a phoenix, rising again and again from the ashes of its persecution.

Kraków view from the castle

If I can see anything that can be called ‘positive’ in some way emerging from such horrors as Poland has suffered throughout its entire existence, it is in this resilience and refusal to be maimed by its misfortunes. I have both insufficient room here and certainly insufficient expertise, here, to cover Poland’s many, many struggles; suffice to say that I have now visited the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, Schindler’s Factory in Kraków and the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps, and I need a few years of reading purely Polish history to have a hope of understanding to any full extent the multitude of troubles this country has undergone. But the Poles got up and rebuilt their cities. They applied and have passed on their master craftsmanship to enable them to build the elaborate homes, churches, synagogues, municipal buildings, statue and the furniture and interiors to accompany them.

Warsaw Old Town Wall

I wouldn’t have the first idea whom to ask in Britain to build me a 19^th century style stone colonnade, but I’m guessing there would be many master craftsmen in Poland who could undertake this. Craftsmen in the true sense of that word still thrive in Poland. I guess I have been trying over the last year to rebuild myself; I'm not even doing well at that! I might still be here and look alright on the outside, but I could blow over like a stalk of corn in the wind...

Auschwitz

Mass consumerism is visible everywhere, more present (Mat tells me) today than ten or twenty years ago and there is a culture of hard work (i.e. that work isn't always fun or the ideal) where people take the jobs which are available to support themselves, unlike many Britons who apparently would prefer welfare than a job which appears to them to be degrading or distasteful. Of course, I visited as a tourist, and only saw two of Poland’s major cities rather than rural areas or smaller towns. It's striking and impressive that Poland is carries on, despite its challenges.

Kraków Old Town Square

Some recommended places we visited on our trip are listed below, which you may want to look into if you’re planning a trip to Poland. However, although so many things were fascinating, beautiful and delicious, my main takeaway from Poland is to be impressed by the resilience and ability to be flexible in the face of so very many challenges, and to be regenerating and yet maintaining its chequered history. How many of us could be so resilient and maintain an identity as a culture or as a family, or as individuals? I think not many. I have a lot to learn from Poland.

Museums to visit:

Birkenau

• The Jewish Museum, Warsaw. Allow at least three hours for your visit, wear very comfortable shoes, and plan to do this historical / educational activity as your only one for the day of your visit, as there is so much to absorb in this multi-media, imaginative presentation of the history of Judaism in Poland from the earliest origins to the present day.
• The Uprising Museum, Warsaw. We didn’t get to this, but again, as above, there is much to learn of the role of Warsaw in fighting against the Nazi invasion.
• Auschwitz and Birkenau (two camps, which you visit as part of a single guided tour). You will need almost a full day for this (you'll leave around 9 and return for the late afternoon). I have read and learned a lot of this period in history, and of Auschwitz before. Following so many tourists around the site de-sensitised me to the impact of this place, now not a place where 'work makes you free' but where everyone is free to come and go as they wish. I'm privileged to have been able to visit it. 
• Schindler’s Factory, Kraków. Allow two hours at least for your visit, again, wear comfortable shoes and make this your one educational activity for the day. There is a carefully plotted chronological journey through Kraków’s experience of occupation and persecution and a good documentary film about the factory itself, featuring a handful of survivors who worked there during WWII. I didn’t find there was enough information about Schindler and the factory – I expected much more emphasis on this – but it was still a very interesting museum. There is less translation of various aspects of the exhibits into English, so if possible a guide or audio guide would assist if you want to absorb absolutely everything.

Poland Pick and Mix: Pork, Pork, Pierogi, Pope(s) Piwo and Przepraszam

We just got back home after a whole week in Poland, the country I’ve been trying to visit with Mat for over nine years. Both exhausted because I now (as previously documented) score points on the Richter scale for my snoring, I wanted to capture some quick, light reflections on the elements of Poland I’ve now experienced first-hand. And then go to bed so you can read all about it and tell me what you think tomorrow. So, I bid you goodnight, but before I go, having seen some of Warsaw and Kraków in Poland, I can now confirm the following:

1.    The concept of vegetarianism is still a relatively new one. I mean, you can order some vegetables. Especially potatoes, the Poles love potatoes. And they love red cabbage and all kinds of cabbage actually – sauerkraut and more, and you can expect mushrooms to arrive with your soup. But you can also expect your soup to have sausage in it (because otherwise, well, it really wouldn’t be a proper soup, would it?) and your potatoes will probably have been cooked in pig fat. And your cabbage? It’s very nice, but really just as an accompaniment to the duck, rabbit, venison or other game you must have it with. You really can’t just want cabbage, of course!

 Pork, glorious pork, served in so many guises 

2.     Every food must be accompanied by some sort of pig product if it is to constitute a Proper Meal. For example, a Proper Salad will include bacon. (I knew this already, Mat having already explained that Proper, Proper Salads are in fact burgers with bacon and cheese.) Pierogi (dumplings, nomnomnom) with meat is meat that is porcine. Cabbage leaves stuffed with meat (Gołąbki) means two cabbage leaves with a sliver of tomato sauce and a whole lot of minced, spiced pork. (Apparently, Mat tells me, it’s meant to have rice somewhere in with the stuffed pork. Clearly I missed this carbohydrate addition when I was stuffing my face with the stuffed cabbage leaves the other day.) Żurek (the name given to soup made with rye) contains rye, yes, so nothing against the trade description act there. And an egg, just so you get the full picture here. But it’s also guaranteed to have at least two if not three different types of sausage thrown in to make sure you’re hale and hearty for a day of logging the next day or, erm, walking the half a mile into the old town to eat a massive lody (ice cream), possibly phallus shaped if you’re really lucky.

Duck, with vegetables. Or vegetables with duck. 

You got vegetables, so you must be happy right?

A hot dawg to end all hot dawgs (bottom).

Yep, for pork, you cannot go wrong in Poland.

3.     There is a lot of vodka. A lot. And it’s on sale 24 hours a day in shops which don’t try to dress up their wares with off-licence or liquor store or wine merchant. No, it’s “Alkohole” or go home. Lemon vodka, ginger vodka, bison-grass-pee vodka (Żubrówka), traditional vodka, special vodka, ordinary vodka vodka. They pretty much have it all. And if you don’t want vodka, well, then you can buy pretty much anything else, especially if it comes straight out of the seventies. I don’t know how many years it has been since I saw a bottle of Sheridan’s cream and coffee liqueur, but if you ever wonder where you can get some, you can put your money on Poland to come through. (Although, caveat emptor, really, why would you want that dreadful stuff? Just have some vodka. Really.)

Just a smattering of supplies on offer

4.     The people who sell the vodka, in fact the people who sell pretty much anything at all, practise a sales technique entirely unfamiliar to me as a Brit living in London and as someone who has lived in America. There is rarely a welcome as you enter most (admittedly the more mundane types of) stores. Yesterday Mat tried to buy a bottle of traditional vodka (see above) in one flavour. He and I were discussing which type he should by from the selection of fifty to seventy choices of vodka before us. (Just think of a Lush and how many of those soap bars they have, and now change each bar to a bottle of vodka, each one unique, with its own special something). “What do you want?” (“A co Pan?”) the delightful sales assistant asked Mat without making eye contact and using a tone some might describe as ‘abrupt’. 

It appeared that we had inadvertently walked into a shop wanting to buy something. This is not what shops are for in Poland. Shops are there for the employment of customer service representatives whose joy it is to sit texting or chatting to their friends or perhaps filling out a Sudoku puzzle during their shift hours. It is the height of rudeness to interrupt this delightful, lucrative way of passing one’s leisure time by entering a shop and expressing an interest in one of the products, let alone wishing to purchase it. Be gone, heedless traveller, out of the shop and onwards without your shampoo, your shoes, your fizzy water, and never darken the doors of this establishment again.

5.     See 4, and then add to this the extra pain you cause the unfortunate sales representative when you not only attempt to make an unwanted contribution to the takings of the unlucky establishment, but endeavour to complete your purchase using a note in excess of two or three złoty of the price. How could you be so thoughtless? Surely you would not be so simple-minded as to expect the boutique in question to have such a thing as The Correct Change for notes over and above the exact amount or very near to it? Again, take note, traveller, and ensure that you speak sternly to any ATM machine whose hole in the wall you may darken to clarify that only twenty złoty notes (and preferably tens) should be issued to you. Fifties may gain you a sigh, a casting down of the eyes. Hundreds may cause ill-contained shouting. You have been warned.

"Errr, what? You don't have a ten? Well then, why should I sell you the biscuits?"

6.     You want to pay by card? Game over.

Really? I don't think so.

7.     In direct contrast to 4, 5, and 6, above, and very like the British but – I would hazard – even more so – the Poles love to apologise. Przepraszam is the word you say when you want to apologise. Please use it liberally when you:

• Want to look at or (God forbid) buy something in a shop
• Want to pay with a note that means the shop assistant has to phone a friend to get change from down the road
• Want to pay with a card. (Likely conversation: You “Przepraszam.” Him/her: silence. Facial expression = [Sod off back to where you came from.]
• Do anything else at all. Pass someone in the supermarket. Use the toilet. Ask a question. (And, obviously, when you don’t speak any other Polish other than this and you can just look simple, say “Przepraszam” and emit the confident look of someone who expects to be helped despite trembling inside.

Say it like you mean it.

8.     On a serious note, don’t diss the pope (and DEFINITELY don’t diss JPII), 

(He is (was / is) The Man)

And be careful around discussing issues of homosexuality. A beautiful artificial rainbow constructed of artificial flowers in Plac Zbawiciela has apparently been burned down 6 or so times, for its (unintentional) connotations of accepting attitudes to LGBTQ. Such was the appetite for burning this accidental effigy that sprinklers now moisten the rainbow at intervals, and a 24 hour police guard protect it from further attack.

9.     Poles are sticklers for rules, so the above may indicate the problems caused by ambiguity: perhaps they might have change; perhaps they might be able to serve you, they just weren’t planning on doing that today. Woe betide the wanderlusty traveller who tries to cross the road without waiting for the green man, though. You’ll get a sharp ticking off from a Polish local for jay walking, and not following The Rules. (Also, you’ll miss the sight of a green man who looks like a character from Funny Bones.) 

Green Funny bones guy says it's okay to cross. So cross!

See?

Then again, you might also find yourself being heartily encouraged to drink up your vodka shots (as we heard one poor Pole, Adam was his name, being exhorted time and time again to do) just because it’s your birthday. The Poles wish you ‘may live for one hundred years’ when they say happy birthday. Not likely, with 6 shots for 10 złoty. You’ll be lucky to last till your twenty third birthday. On which note, after no shots, I bid you goodnight and if you are taking some shots in, well then, good luck to you.

Just say "No (thankyou)", and "przepraszam". Obviously.