Greetings everyone!
Well, it's 13:33 here in Gdansk, and me and Paul are sitting at the 'Jazz Internet Cafe' at the edge of the Old Town. Paul's staring blankly at his screen, biting his nails, and me.... well, I'm sitting at this 1980s-style keyboard, drumming out what I'm sure will be another very lengthy e-mail. Outside, the world is covered in gorgeous white snow and I've finally got some peace from my dziadek (grandad), as he's gone off to take care of some "personal business".
I may as well begin where I left off, which was Warszawa. As it turned out, we didn't bother making the trip to Kazimierz Dolny: the only way to get there was by bus, and that bus left at 5:30 in the morning, from some obscure station at the far eastern end of town. So after some intensive round table discussion that night, me and Paw decided we wouldn't bother with K.D., and would spend an extra day in Warszawa instead to check out Lazienki Palace.
In the end we never did go to Lazienki, which is pretty disappointing, but we simply didn't have the time. Somehow the whole of our last day was taken up taking care of various necessities: I had to call home, call my dziadek, send some photos from my camera (I forgot the fucking cable again so can't send any now), get train tickets to Gdansk, as well as the usual eat, shower and sleep routine. Actually, I myself got about two hours' sleep that last night. We got talking to a lanky Pom that night who, like all the Poms we've met so far, had an excellent sense of humour which was made all the more humorous by his full-on cockney accent. He told us about his previous (and first) night in Warsaw: hoping for a few quiet drinks before bed, he'd gone to a nearby place called the 'Lemon Bar', only to see a drunk guy get kicked him down a set of stairs by two other guys. As he watched in shock at this open, unrestrained violence, he was even more dumbfounded to see the barman step out and calmly give the two assailants a couple of beers (which they'd ordered earlier), then re-enter the bar without so much as blinking an eye. That was just the beginning though: upon entering the bar, he got talking to two gorgeous blonde girls, dressed in short skirts and getting steadily more drunk on Bacardi Breezers. Unbelievably, one of these "girls" turned out to be the other girl's aunt, and about 40 years old: being Polish though, she still looked like she was in her 20s. "If you want to have a really random night out," the Pom concluded: "Come to Warsaw."
Anyway, as I said, I barely got any sleep that night. We finally stopped talking to this Pom and a girl from Melbourne at about midnight, but all of a sudden I became so hungry that I got up and walked to McDonald's, wearing nothing but the T-shirt and tracksuit pants I wear to bed (and boy was that a mistake; apart from the freezing cold everyone stared at me like I was criminally insane). I then spent the next two hours sitting by the window and eating Leibniz biscuits; finally at 3:30 I crawled into bed only to get woken up an hour later by the girl from Melbourne, who was desperately packing the last of her things to catch the 5 o'clock train to Lithuania.
Anyway, that's enough about our time in Warsaw: let's talk about Gdansk. Our stay in Gdansk has been a mixture of good and bad so far. For one thing, Paul became sick as a dog the night we arrived. Remember that rotten hamburger I mentioned in a previous e-mail? Paul complained that since he ate that hamburger his stomach had felt like a washing machine, and things quickly deteriorated when we arrived in Gdansk - let's just say that the bathroom didn't smell too lemon fresh for a while, and me and dziadek sat in the living room pretending not to hear the sound effects. We actually went to the doctor the morning after, and it turned out the poor boy had a bowel infection, most likely as a result of that evil hamburger (I wasn't kidding when I said it was the worst hamburger we've ever had). So Paul hasn't felt too tip-top for the last few days, but things seem to be more or less back to normal now. Which is nice.
Our time in Gdansk so far has been dominated by my loud, opinionated, extremely extroverted dziadek. We're living in his apartment at the moment, which is great in some ways (he's a great cook, for one thing) but it's also proved to be a bit of a shock after all the freedom and personal space we've had up until now. Worst of all is the fact that me and Paul have to share the same bed - yes, you read right: THE SAME GODDAMN BED. Thank God my dziadek sleeps in a double bed (maybe he's got someone on the side I don't know about) but yeah, it's a serious pain in the arse (no pun intended) coz every time Paul moves it wakes me up, as well as vice versa. Because of his constant bowel movements, he's been getting up to go to the toilet at all hours of the night, as a result of which I've been getting very little sleep (and I can barely get to sleep as it is, the bed's so bloody uncomfortable!). "Very little sleep" seems to be one of the ongoing themes of this holiday actually: when I get back to Melbourne I'll probably sleep through all of February just trying to catch up. Last night I was woken up at 2 in the morning by some drunken woman on the other end of the phone: in that high-pitched, slightly hysterical voice older women assume when they're drunk, she virtually yelled "Dobry wiecor!" into the phone then asked for Zbyszek. I handed the phone to dziadek; he put the phone to his ear, listened for about five seconds then put the phone down without a word, and walked back to his inflatable mattress cursing his "idiotic, drunken friends". As it turned out, it was a lady I'd met just the day before; she seemed like a pretty mild old woman at the time but obviously things changed after a few shots of vodka....
Because we're living with my dziadek, our lifestyle hasn't been anywhere near as carefree and relaxed as it was previously. No more coffees, no more endless, unplanned wandering around the city, and DEFINITELY no more going out, since my dziadek is irrefutably convinced that Gdansk after dark turns into a haven for thugs and thieves. As a result, I've spent two evenings now getting drunk with my dziadek instead, sitting at the table and talking into the twilight hours about everything from "the war" (inevitably, that means World War 2 in Poland) to the lay-out of our house back in Melb. By the way, Hakes, I showed dziadek your house: it's actually in one of the photos in a book he's got about Melbourne. If I look closely, I can almost see the determined, blue-shawled figure of your nan hosing down the pidgeons on the tennis court, lol.
But I digress. One of the most interesting things about Gdansk is that it provides the perfect example of Poland's transition from Communism to capitalism: far better than Warszawa, which as far as I could see is already very much a Western-style capitalist city (although not on the outskirts, certainly). In Gdansk, crumbling brown-and-grey apartment blocks stand side-by-side with glitzy, Southland-style shopping centres. You walk out of Dluga Street, the main street in Gdansk's historical quarter, and you step out of a fairytale world of elegant facades, cobbled lanes and Gothic spires to a dumpy, frankly depressing world of bland concrete buildings, overgrown, neglected tracts of land and smog. And it makes me realize why people hated Communism so much: that term, "offensive to the eye".... I never really knew what it meant until I saw one of Gdansk's Communist-built districts. They actually don't look too bad at night, when all the windows and streetlights are lit up, but by day they're so ugly that they really ARE aesthetically offensive. Luckily, signs of aesthetic restoration are everywhere: massive, futuristic autobahns and leafy housing districts are popping up all over the place, but much of the city still remains grey and derelict, and it'll be some time yet before these revolting traces of Communism are wiped out.Interestingly, and in stark contrast to the vast majority of Poles, my dziadek believes that Poland has fared worse under capitalism than under Communism: he's contemptuous of this new world of parking meters, English-language brand names that nobody understands and "a government full of Jews and criminals". In some ways he's right: crime and unemployment are serious problems in post-Communist Poland, and the government - made up largely of turncoat Communists - hasn't been very effective in addressing these issues. At the same time, the stereotype of Polish cities as teeming with skinheads and Slavic Mafia is a complete load of shit. As I said, there's not even as many beggars here as there are in Western cities, although that may be simply because the Polish police are better at keeping them away from the "good" (i.e. central and historic) parts of town. What one cannot deny is that, economically struggling or not, Poland is a country that is obviously full of pride: everywhere you look, there's a Polish eagle above a doorway, or a red-and-white flag hanging off a streetlamp. It's no wonder then that, as Glenn once observed, "Every Pole is a nationalist."
Anyway, the length of this e-mail is starting to get a bit ridiculous, so I'll cut it there for now. There's plenty more to write about - funny, serious and God knows which - but that'll have to wait, as will the various photos that I've taken of Gdansk so far. At any rate, I want to make the most of this break from my dziadek: he's a lively character, to be sure, but Jesus does he talk a lot.... my eardrums need some rest from their continual vibrating. If I don't write again before then, Merry Christmas (or Wesolych Swiat, I should say) to all of you, and I hope Santa brings plenty of drugs and alcohol.
Mateusz
Yes indeed boys & girls, it's time for another long rambling e-mail :DCan I start off, prosze panstwa, by saying that Polish girls are GODDESSES. I told myself that I wouldn't crap on about this anymore, but seriously, the girls in Poland are unlike anything you've ever seen: on the bus, in the supermarket, EVERYWHERE, the girls have faces and figures that would put most Western MODELS to shame. Last night, me and Paw went to a popular nightclub/bar with Piotr, the son of a close family friend, and - my God - it was like going backstage at a Miss Universe competiton. Unfortunately, we didn't get to take any of the fine ladies home (I had to settle for Paul instead), but we were only there for a couple of hours: Paul was feeling a bit "under the weather" again and Piotr had Uni the next morning. At any rate, there's no point trying to explain further is there, coz you probably all think I'm exaggerating right? God, if only you poor sods could be here.....
Anyway, prior to our first (and probably only) night out in Gdansk, me, Pawel and Piotr went to Sopot, which I guess you could say is Poland's equivalent of the Gold Coast, but without any of the tackiness or tropical weather. In summer, Sopot becomes Poland's number one holiday destination: a quaint little city teeming with ice-cream stalls, seagulls and tanned, topless women. In winter, of course, the women are neither tanned nor topless (and the ice-cream stalls are all closed, believe it or not), but it's still extremely beautiful; an archetypal Winter Wonderland. The air was afloat with snow when we arrived, and the whole place - streets, trees and rooftops - was blanketed in this icy, brilliantly white confetti, like an illustration out of a fairy-tale. What amazed me most was actually the beach: an endless stretch of sand worthy of Australia, entirely coated in snow and lined with snow-capped trees. To top it off, a dense fog settled over the city at dusk, turning the horizon into a serene, timeless grey wash, making it impossible to see where the water met the sky except for where the lighthouses penetrated the fog. As we were completely alone on the beach, I got to do a number of things I've always wanted to do, including throwing a snowball at Paul and writing my name with pee. So yeah... I slept well that night.
One of the great things about Sopot is that it's relatively uncorrupted by Communist "architecture". You see very few of those gigantic dominos jutting out of the landscape here: overwhelmingly, the streets of Sopot are lined with lovely old houses and leafless trees. Gdansk, Sopot's big brother in the Trojmiasto (Tri-City), is a very different story: one moment you're strolling along the main canal, admiring architecture reminiscent of Copenhagen or Flanders (many of the buildings were actually designed by imported Flemish architects), and the next minute the scenery has changed completely, to abandoned factories and warehouses; their roofs rusting, their windows dusty and smashed, the colour of their walls faded to a dirty, homogenous grey.
Anyway, after this me and Paul are off to see the old Gdansk post office, a bullet-riddled building preserved in memory of Polish postal workers who defended it during the German attack on Gdansk. The Germans expected the building's capture to be a matter of minutes, but the Polish postal workers held out for an entire seven hours: the first of many embarrassments for the Germans which was met with heavy reprisals. Gdansk was the first city to be attacked during the 1939 invasion, when the German battleship 'Schleswig-Holstein' opened fire on the Polish military installation at Westerplatte: there too, much to the Germans' outrage, a small number of Polish soldiers managed to hold out for an entire eight days, delaying Hitler's victory speech in the city.
However, Gdansk's most significant place in history is more recent: it is the city which gave birth to Solidarnosc (or Solidarity), a nation-wide union movement which eventually brought the Polish Communist regime to its knees and triggered the collapse of Soviet domination in central and eastern Europe. Its birth can be traced back to 30 October 1970, when workers at the Lenin Shipyard (only a minute's walk from where I'm sitting now) defied the Communist authorities and went on strike, in protest against the government's increase in food prices. The demonstrators were fired upon just outside the shipyard gates, and a large monument (made up of three crucifixes) marks the spot where they fell.
Basically, walking around Warszawa and Gdansk, you're made well aware of the sacrifices made by the Polish people for their nation's sovereignty: first from the Prussian, Austrian and Russian empires, then from the Nazis, and finally from the Communists. I only hope that now, Poland doesn't fall into the equally oppressive grip of Americanization, against which bullets, uprisings and strikes would be completely ineffective.....
Anyway, me and Paw better get going: I don't want to waste any more time sitting in front of a screen, since we've already done more than enough of that at my dziadek's flat (watching Polish TV, which is actually really good if you understand Polish). Pozdrawiam was wszytkich, and apologies for my lack of personal replies... I promise I'll find the time when we get to Wroclaw!
Mateusz
P.S. Paul has a pink blanket.
