I hadn’t been in Vistula-Oder land since the late nineties, which was less than ten years after the communists quit. The influence was still visible then in grumpy service, crumbling concrete and the gaudy Palace of Culture in Warsaw. This was the building that Stalin kindly bequeathed the Polish nation after he had slaughtered and Siberianised thousands from Warsaw, on the heels of the second uprising against the Nazis. The story goes that the Soviets parked their tanks at Praha, on the eastern bank of the Vistula, turned off their engines, waited until the Germans had flattened Warsaw a second time, then went in and made sure there was no Polish national resistance left to bother them. Not very nice people at all. The socialist invaders, I mean.
In the intervening almost thirty years since I first set foot in their country, Poles have travelled out and about a lot. (The diaspora, apparently is known as Polonia.) There was the Polish Builder phase in London, even before the demise of communism and then, much later on, Poland’s accession to the EU and Polish people relocating to ‘stronger economies.’ Some stayed there, some went home when they had saved enough to build/buy a house in Poland and some settled, mostly in the UK, Germany, Netherlands and even Ireland, with regular trips home. Poles apart but very much together, with ties of language, culture, land. And food. The nearest Polski Sklep is usually not that far.
I flew to Poznan on a midday Ryanair flight. Poznan is on the land route between Warsaw and Berlin. Berlin (52.5200° N) and Warsaw (52.2297° N) share pretty much the same latitude. For this reason, when Zhukov and the lads were heading back west to thrash the Germans in 1945, in the replay of 1939 and 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), cities like Poznan and Wroclaw (on the way to Dresden) were very much in the way. Poznan was declared a Festung by Hitler – a fortress city slated to hold out at all costs – which didn’t do much for the inhabitants or the architecture. Ergo, Poznan, outside of the mostly reconstructed old city, has lots of wide boulevards for its superior tram/ system. There is an air of ease about busy Poznan though. Stuff works and the streets are clean. It doesn’t seem to depend too much on tourism either.
I read the room incorrectly when I arrived at my little hostel. The place may have been a little the worst for wear but the other passers through seemed sound and there was a good kitchen and common area. The same sort of hostel in many European cities would have had a different, dodgier patina. As I only had a few days, I wanted to avoid museums and the like – just walk the streets, eat, nose around supermarkets (I love to learn what the commonality feast on diurnally, in different countries) and generally gawk at this and that. A taster for a later return, hopefully.
The following day I took the train up north to Gdansk. I wondered at the wide-open fields (as opposed to the ditch demented fields in Ireland) en route and pictured Panzers plowing across harvest fields less than a hundred years earlier. My visit to Gdansk was because of the Baltic, Gunter Grass, it’s part in the start of the Second World War and, well it was once a Hanseatic city. After a few hours of enjoyable, pointless rambling I took the train back south. In the evening, I rewalked the old city in Poznan. It was as tranquil and safe in the evening as in the morning.
The following day, Corpus Christi, the streets were quiet in the morning. I spotted a nun in traditional habit on a tram – an unusual sight in Ireland now and maybe not so usual in Poland these days. I decided to take the train down to Wroclaw, which I didn’t dare pronounce (and I wasn’t going to call Breslau either, the old German handle). As with Gdansk, there were marks of former German control and occupation, here and there.
With the redrawing of Polish borders after the Second World War, a large section of Eastern Poland was ceded to the USSR while the western section including Wroclaw was given to Poland. Wroclaw changed from a majority German town to a Polish one with the flight/expulsion of Germans on the heels of the Soviet advance. In Wroclaw, at a small side-street café, I had my first borscht since the nineties. It was a sweetish, blood red affair with pierogi (small dumplings). It kept me going while I did a short walkabout of central Wroclaw.
In the late afternoon, I took the train back to Poznan. There was a music festival in one of the old city squares. Much later that night, just before midnight, I went to catch one of the night buses out to the airport but, misinformed, waited at the wrong side of the wide street and missed it. I wandered around the great Rondo Poniera roundabout trying to get a taxi but without luck. I watched single women (well after midnight) and young couples walking the streets without fear. This was something new to me too, after Dublin. Unlike in the seventies and eighties, I wouldn’t put money on a safe outcome wandering around Dublin city centre alone after midnight these days.
In the airport, I catnapped before the 5.30 AM flight. A couple of women soldiers woke me up with pistols on hip holsters at one stage. It was nothing personal. When they had checked my boarding pass I was allowed snooze again. It made me feel safe that they were scanning the arrivals all the time. Later, I chatted with a Polish man in his thirties, living in Ireland for seven years.
‘I was in IT. Now I’m a scaffolder. Better money. And I love the countryside in Ireland. I go fishing with my brother when he comes over.’
The plane wasn’t that full – it didn’t seem much like a tourist route either way, from Poznan – more a work/family axis. The weather had held up in Ireland so there was no great drop from the Polish early summer which, thankfully, is a long way from the incinerated south of Europe. The little taste of Western Poland went down well.
Berlin-Poznan-Warsaw. A more peaceful axis these days. Long may it remain so.