Poland and (East) Germany: Bestest Buddies

Poland and (East) Germany

In this episode, Ryan…

-Meets a girl on a train in the Polish countryside

-Employs Nineteenth century virtual reality to return to the Polish battle of Raclawicka

-Gets the good stuff flowing at an all-you-can-drink wine-bar in Berlin

Poland: That country you feel sorry for

Poland tends to be one of those countries that gets invaded a lot, and since I was relatively close—or so I thought—to the Polish border, I launched my own personal invasion. While I have some Canadian friends of Polish descent, I didn’t know anyone in the country of Poland itself, but I thought like a Hungary-style mad dash into a completely foreign land might be just want the doctor ordered. Unfortunately getting out of Prague proved to be somewhat of an ordeal, as while Wroclaw (the city I was targeting in Poland) looks only a few hundred kilometers away on the map, the trains don’t seem to like to go there directly and so I spent many hours changing trains and dicking around in Eastern Czech Republic (Moravia) before I finally crossed into Poland itself.

You might not expect it, but you can notice a difference when you cross borders in Europe (not that anyone really checks you). For one, the trees suddenly became more closer to the track and I was beginning to wonder if my attempt to get off the beaten path was leading me down into a labyrinth of non-English-speaking despair. But my fears were in vain, for once I finally got on the right train to Wroclaw, I encountered a Polish girl named Kasia who works as an English teacher and once lived in Britain (Even now, she speaks English with a cute British accent, something akin to a cross between the Queen’s English and the BBC, with a slight Polish lilt on certain words.) As it turned out, she was also going to Wroclaw—where she works—and offered to be my local guide once she finished work, an offer I happily took her up on.

While Kasia was at work though, I ventured out in the city trying to find the Panorama of Raclawicka, which along with Wroclaw’s perceived proximity to Germany was one of the main reasons I decided to come to this city. While I was getting sick of paintings, this one was worth looking at. About 12 metres high and 140 metres around, its no petite Mona Lisa. In fact it has to be stored in a special building (is basically the sole reason for the building) and is designed in such a way that you feel as if you yourself are surrounded by the painting and in fact are taking part in the scene (think of it as 19^th century virtual reality). The scene itself is the Battle of Raclawicka, which is sort of the Vimy Ridge for Poles (It represents a short-lived but memorable victory of Polish forces over Russian and Austrian armies intent on occupation and partition). The sheer scale of the painting, and the quality of the characters painted, is mind-boggling, and I am truly surprised this practice isn’t attempted by artists today as the experience is unlike any I’ve had before.

In the evening, I met up with Kasia and she toured me around the Wroclaw central square, university district, and river corridor. Like many of the squares I’ve seen so far, it was very quaint and beautiful though not as over-the-top restored as Prague or Vienna (this goes for a lot of things in Poland, especially trains and train stations which seem like they haven’t changed much since this area was part of Germany). Still, call me old-fashioned, but I somewhat prefer it this way, as the unrestored buildings are just or even more beautiful in their own way. Wroclaw is a university town though, and Kasia showed me her alma mater (which at 300 years is older than my country). Not far from the market square (everything is so wonderfully within walking distance in these little centers), the campus did have a handful of modern structures, but they were wisely designed to reflect their surrounding buildings. Thus the campus as a whole looks beautiful and merges well with the surrounding city unlike the hodgy-podgy behemoths of the 1960s which so dominate campuses back home (not to say that Poland doesn’t have its fair share of cement box communist era structures).

After the campus, the bar Kasia wanted to take me too was full, so we grabbed a couple of Karmi (Polish caramel beers) and headed to the island park amidst the canals (Wroclaw is called Venice of the north, because it has one of the highest numbers of bridges of any city in Europe and picturesque waterways running beneath them. This was something I didn’t realize until after I arrived.) We didn’t have any bottle openers so I had to improvise and bang the caps against the side of the canal, but in the end I managed to not spill most of it, and we had a rather enjoyable evening watching the sunset on the canals (how like something out of a novel eh?)

The next day we did manage to get into the bar, but she also took me out for Polish food (which was basically a feast) and then off to her favourite pub, a hidden gem of a place with old wall paper, a bar painted by a famous contemporary Polish artist, and olden age Japanese motifs (If this were in Toronto, it would be my favourite hang out too). Kasia herself is a beautiful woman, but like the Poles, she seems to have had a tough life. Not only did she battle her way through cancer, but recently was left at the alter so to speak by a former fiancé who opted for another woman. She’s a very intelligent woman, who speaks 3 languages and now is focused on starting an English language school, though she says she might come to Canada first to explore this interesting dialect which I speak. At any rate, she was very kind to me in Poland, despite the fact she didn’t know me from Adam, and I’m very thankful for her generosity.

Germany (East)

Heading across the border from Poland into Germany, the first thing you notice is that the number of wind turbines in the fields—spinning like those plastic whirligigs my Grandma sometimes keeps in her garden—increases exponentially. The same thing could be said about the borders of Austria with Hungary and Slovakia, and In fact, if the former iron curtain is visible today, its visible through the never-ending line of gently-spinning wind turbines. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and say the darn things spin so slowly I really can’t see how this claim about them killing birds makes any sense—unlike your porch window, these things are giant, white, and standout, so only an incredibly stupid or drunk bird could possibly crash into one.

Anyways, I guess its nice to know at least some part of the world is actively pursuing an alternative energy source (although I can accept that Eastern Europe has had other problems to deal with in the mean time, I still don’t know what North America’s excuse is—of course I still think Ontario needs to swallow its pride and buy hydro power from Manitoba, but then that’s a whole other debate).

Ah… Germany, land of chocolate, leiderhosen, and the holocaust. Of course, anyone visiting Germany today can easily see the country has long since moved past these concepts (except the chocolate), although obviously the Holocaust legacy is a bit tricky to live down. Nevertheless, Berlin is covered in Holocaust memorials, Jewish Museums, restored synagogues—though the present Jewish population is considerably small compared to its visibility. In Canada, I think we tend to automatically associate the word “Germany” with Hitler (an Austrian), leiderhosen (Bavarian only, if you say “Du hast leiderhosen” anywhere else in Germany it means “You have leather pants.”), and beer, but there’s very little leftover elements of the Second World War to be found in the former capital of the Third Reich (though I can’t blame the Germans for wanting to get over it). Of course, most of Berlin was absolutely leveled by British bombing and then Allied and Soviet occupation. Oddly though, one of the buildings the British somehow missed is the Nazi air force command—one of the widest military bases of its time and the location where the bombing blitz of London was planned. You would think they would have hit that one.

Apparently, though bombs dropped out of planes can be amazingly inaccurate, so the British were able to hit some Nazi targets (like Gestapo and SS HQ), but accidentally hit a lot of non-targets, like civilians, the few surviving synagogues, and even their own former embassy.

After the war of course, Berlin was divided between East and West, Soviet and American influenced sectors, and the former capital of the Reich was now frontlines of the Cold War. This was especially problematic for Eastern Germans, who—after surviving for many years under the iron heel of the Gestapo and SS police, now found themselves under the iron heel of the East German Communist Government’s (That is to say German “Democratic” Republic’s) Stasi secret police and their iron heels (Though I got the impression the Stasi weren’t as bad as the Gestapo, though they were not good and just as paranoid). Actually, when I first arrived to town, I was trying to get to a hostel I thought I had booked, which was actually on a boat, but I couldn’t get to the water, because there was this big massive wall in the wall. I remember walking along the wall thinking “Damn, why is this wall so long?” and “Why is there so much spray-painting of political slogans and figures on it.” Then it dawned on me…

On my tour of the city, my guide enlightened us to as to why the wall came down. Apparently it was the result of a miscommunication, a clever Italian journalist, and an impromptu social riot. The story goes that in the 80s, the East German government was desperately clinging to power as more and more East Germans began demanding access to West Germany. Trying to calm people down, they came up with the brilliant plan of allowing people with passports to cross the border in 6 weeks (No one really had passports, so they thought they’d be safe). However, before the plan was publicly announced it found its way into the notes of an elderly spokesman of the government, who at a press conference was asked by an Italian journalist out of the blue about travel restrictions. The elderly statesmen, remembering hearing something about it at the meeting but forgetting the details, skimmed down to the section and read it out loud without thinking and with a stunned look on his face. The Italian asked “So uh when does this start?” and the statesmen answered “Uh, immediately I guess…” Thus, thousands of Germans watching this on TV, hearing they could go to West Germany, attacked the wall and ultimately overran border security. And the wall came down… all because some old guy misread his notes.

Sorry if you’re not into history—as you know I am, and Berlin is full of it—but I’ll try to focus on some non historical materials. Actually, Berlin these days, while it does have a pretty historical downtown core, especially the area around Museum Island, is actually a fairly modern city, and probably has more in line culturally with Run Lola Run than with its previously dark historical epochs. As in Eastern Europe, old socialist emblems have been “capitalized” with a capital C (The East German pedestrian crossing figure, a charmingly plump fellow in a cap called an Ampelman, has now become a tourist souvenir of the city—I know, I bought the keychain).

So yeah, while I kinda gorged myself on history while I was in Berlin, I did find time to check out some Berlinese nightlife, the most memorable of which was Weinerei (which I think means winery) which was this old storefront redone with weathered secondhand furnishings to look like somebody’s old living room. If that wasn’t awesome enough, get this, here’s their business model. You rent a wineglass for 1 Euro and then you can drink as much wine as you like for the rest of the night, trying as many different bottles as they have available, then at the end of the night you just pay what you feel appropriate (That’s right, I shit you not, their business model is the honesty policy). Frankly, this place was absolutely awesome, I even made some Rhinelander German friends, Eva and Ruwen. I don’t know why we don’t have something like this in Toronto, but then this seems to be a more prominent thing called “trust” in Europe. On the subways for example, there are no turnstiles and while you’re ostensibly supposed to “pay for a ticket” before you get on a train or a tram, there’s nothing actually stopping you from getting on without paying. The system’s great like that, though I can see how people might abuse it when they just don’t feel like paying. I .mean, it’s not like I ever did that, hehe…

Berliners also seem keen on their science fiction. There was this one transformers-esque cocktail place called “Astro Bar” that I checked out, and even my hostel was done-up in a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy theme (I went here after discovering the boat hostel lost my reservation). Naturally of course I also saw my share of Euro-punks and various extras from Run Lola Run (or Bladerunner for that matter), but as long their wielding switchblades, that’s fine with me. Actually, in spite of—or perhaps as a counter-response to—its history as the capital of oppressive regimes like East Germany, Nazi Germany, and uh Kaiser Germany, Berlin today is considered to be one of the most tolerant cities in the world—next to Toronto of course—and for a major world capital is considerably more friendly than I would expect from London or Paris (though perhaps they shall surprise me as well). Oh well, in the mean time, it’s off to Copenhagen, Denmark with me (I’m on the bus in Denmark as I type this), so next time you hear from me I’ll be reporting on Scandinavia. Until then, as the Germans say over a good beer, Prost!