Discovering Europe
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2005
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12
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Trip End
Oct 01, 2005
Warsaw, Poland
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Sunday morning is conspicuously different to any Sunday I've seen recently, as it's very obviously a church-going day. People in their best clothes emerge into the morning sun to head to church, showing neither obvious enthusiasm, nor dissatisfaction at the idea. Afterwards, people stroll to lunch or in the city's parks and pedestrian areas, frequently in chattering family groups including 3 or 4 generations
00. Warsaw Old Town
. It's a funny feeling to automatically recognise something in a country which I don't know or live in. It's going to be one of the interesting things about coming back to Europe after my relative cultural dislocation in China. I've never been to Poland, don't speak Polish, but I know what's going on and what the routines are straight away.Another familiar routine is the election. Somehow, the right to vote seems all the more significant after a year living in a totalitarian state. As a child I remember watching news bulletins as Lech Walesa and the shipbuilders of Gdansk led the protests against Poland's then communist leaders and opened the gates to democracy here. Whatever Walesa later did or didn't achieve as President, that sea change in European and Polish history remains a defining image of Poland for me. As in so many European countries, the Poles hold their national elections on Sundays which should facilitate elector participation. Perhaps the UK will one day come around to the logic that people who travel to work might actually participate if the political process was a little more accessible than a vote on a Thursday in their local school or church hall. Unfortunately, it seems that the logic doesn't hold and that for all of my personal recollections and current sense of the importance of the right to vote in a democratic country, the Poles too suffer from the contemporary malaise of disenfranchisement from the political process
01. Warsaw Old Town
. Only 40% voted for the new parliament in a country where elections are still a novelty. For Poland, I can't speak, but if it's similar to the rest of Europe then it's another sad indictment of the disconnect between the mediatised creations of the political classes and the people they claim to engage with and represent. Warsaw's old town is a testament to the care and skill with which a city can be rebuild in an older style. If you didn't realise it had been flattened in WWII and don't really look closely for the old tell tale signs of reconstruction, you wouldn't know that many of the buildings old town are actually quite new. I was planning to explore a little more than I did, but the sun-soaked, cobbled courtyards and plates of cold meats, trenchers of bread, fresh carp and other hearty fare are a little tempting than walking too far. I think the food was a good deal but have to confess that I haven't quite got a handle on zloty. Bring on the Eurozone I say.
After the omnipresent activity which is China, it's nice to be in a city which isn't 24/7 and to find vast green spaces full of statues of artists, historical references and wildlife in the centre of town. I'm seeing plants, flowers and birds that I grew up around and haven't seen for a year. It might be a new city to me, but there's an awful lot here that I know. As if the parks and surroundings weren't enough, I found myself in a sports bar watching football, cricket and motor relayed from around the World to Warsaw by a British television company. There was a pleasant warmth about all this familiarity which was only added to by the banter and drunken repartee of a stag party from the South East London. You probably have to have lived and drunk near there to understand this other language that I'd forgotten. I laughed quietly into my beer and could feel myself relaxing.
