Customs controls, newspapers and cars

FIAT 126p made in Poland in the 1970s and 80s

Witnessing some creative trade with Simona. You can buy very cheap (in black market dollars) good here, like fur. And an Italian lady won't let that opportunity pass. Marian knows someone who knows someone who works at the airport customs control. FOr USD 100 they are willing to close an eye on her departing luggage.

The way it works is that after check-in and passport control ALL luggage, including big suitcases that will go into the hold of the aircraft, are visually inspected by customs officials. They are looking for stuff that is cheap in Poland because it is coming from other socialist countries (mostly the USSR) at subsidized prices. Caviar is a prime example, but also furs, carpets, and gold. It is entirely up to the official to check. If she or he is willing to close an eye, the departing passenger can get away with anything.

In the afternoon I try to call my former roommate at Georgetown, Ben, to sort out where to leave my stuff. After a long wait at the post office, over an hour and a half, I have to give up, despite the fact I had booked time for an international call.

While killing time I try to buy a newspaper: foreign papers have wildly different prices: the CPSU's Pravda costs only 20 groszy (cents of zloty), practically nothing. The Italian Communist party's paper, l'Unità, costs 5 zloty and La Stampa costs 32 zloty, perhaps because it is owned by the Agnelli family of rich exploiters of the proletariat.

Yet it is the only Italian paper available, at least that I could find. perhaps because the FIAT auto company (also owned by the Agnellis) is a big investor in Poland, where many cars are produced for the domestic market and for export. Among them the 126 model. Polski FIAT produces cars in this country since 1932, it's a long history.

There are actually a lot of cars in Poland, at least in the big cities, it is much easier to get a hold of one, even if just a basic model, than in East Germany, where the wait is measured in decades.

In the evening dinner at Marian's, where I meet Nicola.

Flying back and meet Cathy

In the morning another tour of the city with Ann. Juwenalia still ongoing, but somehow not so sparkling. They just don't seem excited and are not so exciting.

Antonov 24, made in USSR

At 3:00pm departure back to Warsaw, by plane. It is a Soviet-made aircraft, quite spartan and noisy. Service aboard is basic, to put it mildly. There is a smoking section of the cabin and a non-smoking, but the funny thing is that they are not positioned forward and back of the aircraft like in most airlines. Usually I try to get a seat as far forward in the cabin so as to be away from the smokers, except that if you are too far forward and it is a small aircraft you end up just behind the smokers of business class.

But here smokers and non-smokers are assigned to the left and right of the aisle. With the obvious result that all non-smokers receive generous wafts of smoke no matter where they are seated.

In Warsaw we meet Cathy, Ann's friend who will be traveling with us for the rest of our stay in Eastern Europe and then back to Italy.

In the evening dinner at Marian and Ewa's, where I meet Simona, the wife of my cousin Nicola, a surgeon who is here for a medical conference. It is always very instructive to spend time with them, we always learn a lot about Poland.

Marian and Ewa

Zakopane tour and Juwenalia

Day trip to Zakopane, a ski resort in the Tatra mountains, next to the border with Czechoslovakia. It is still unseasonably cold for May. We take a nice and easy walking tour of the town, with a tasty lunch in a local eatery. Nothing special really, it would be much better to come here in full Winter, for skiing, or in Summer, for trekking. Now we can't do either!

In one quaint shop I buy a tea set: pot, 6 cups, and milk jar for zl 2500, nice souvenir.

Dinner in the evening at the Staropolska. Our local guide, Halska, maintains this is a "typical" restaurant, but I hope she is wrong. It is really nothing special, a smoky joint with mediocre food.

Today it's the start of the "Juwenalia", a kind of youth celebrations during which college students go around asking for money. Seems like a Halloween for older kids. The make more noise and ask for money instead of candies.

Dunajec river cruise and promises of liberation

Day trip to the Dunajec river, on the border with Czechoslovakia. We drift down the river for 18 km on a big wooden raft piloted by some quite deft local sailors. It is very cold and windy.

We stop for lunch at a local eatery along the banks of the river, al100 for a hearty meal of sausages and potatoes, hot soup. Cheap, tasty and filling.

During the boat ride, we often get very close to the Czechoslovak bank, and a few people here and there come down to have a look at us. It is very embarrassing to hear Pat get up on our raft and yell at them from the top of his lungs: "Hang in there, we'll come to liberate you from Communism!". Once, twice, three times... If only... He is being silly and if he weren't silly he'd be irresponsible.

People here have memories of such promises in the past, when it was Western (especially American) government agencies, such as Voice of America, that gave false illusions to the peoples oppressed by the USSR. Especially when Hungary rose in 1956, many brave Hungarians actually believed that NATO could come forward and liberate them. But it did not, and they were crushed by Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks.

In the evening we are back in Krakow. Good lunch in a local restaurant,      always lots of meat and potatoes. Andrew and I take a walk to the Wawel, hoping to catch a night view, but it is closed and watched by threatening dogs, so we turn around and end the evening with a chat in the cool wind.

Pieskowa Skala

Morning walking around town for some shopping, but as usual quantity and quality leave a lot to be desired. But I do find something quite interesting: an old Atlas, a huge book printed in Germany right after World War I, which still shows the old German Empire, when Poland, carved up by Russia, Germany and Austria, did not exist as a country.

Polish-German relations have always been touchy, to say the least. They were terrible in the first half of the XX century. It is a bit ironic to find this atlas here. A great buy for zl 2500.

In the afternoon we drive to the Pieskowa Skala castle. Quite impressive. Not so much inside though, even if I feel proud to see that most of the interior decorations, furniture, paintings, sculptures etc are Italian. Apparently the queen of Poland at the time was a Medici and tried to take as much as possible from her native Tuscany to decorate her new home.

Not much here is Polish. They even display pictures of objects which are at other museums elsewhere in Poland. We have to wear some funny slippers to preserve the tired parquet...

Salt mine and fine arts

Nativity scene made of salt

Salt reproduction of Leonardo's last supper

Today an unusual trip to a salt mine in the town of Wielicka. We are lowered about 80 meters into the earth's bowels by a crancky elevator and then proceed to walk for some five km underground, along the mines shafts and tunnels.

Pat picks up a cute girl from East Germany. Two in fact. Good luck.

Then back to Krakow, to visit the Museum of Fine Arts. Many many paintings by Italian artists, among whom a madonna with an ermine by Leonardo is the most notable.

Oswienczim, the Nazi Lager of Auschwitz

This morning must be the most heart rending day of my life so far, and probably for some time to come. The extermination camp of Auschwitz is now a museum and kept in pristine condition, and yet the atmosphere of death, the sinister smell and the vision of ghosts is there, inescapable for me to feel, if not to see. And the inescapable grotesque irony of the gate sign: "Arbeit macht frei", work makes you free.

Crematorium

Wall of executions

Cloth made with human hair 

Belongings of prisoners

Shoes

Hair

Birkenau

We have lunch at 4:30, we could just not get away from the museum and its sister camp of Birkenau, where more people died than at the more famous Auschwitz.

Afterwards a walk downtown to do a little shopping with Ann, but all stores close at 7 and we can't get much done.

It's been an exhausting day, emotionally if not physically, and the evening is spent in the hotel room, reading and writing this diary.

Krakow visit and Moscow Olympics

Today we visit the city with Bogdan, who has hired a local tour guide to show us the sights. She is rather shy and underwhelming but we do learn a few bits and pieces of information as we go along.

Morning at the Wawel, impressive.

Excellent lunch at the Holiday Inn hotel. All meals for this trip are paid for by SGPiS, so we can let hell break loose and order anything that strikes our fancy!

Afternoon touring downtown with Ann, we'd like to do some shopping but it's Sunday and most stores are closed.

During dinner I have only a start of a discussion with Mat, our classmate from New Jersey, who is in a particularly bad mood. Always a sueprconservatives, he is especially belligerent today. Only a start of a discussion because it is impossible to discuss with him, so I let go. Despite his dislike for president Carter, he supports his boycott of the Moscow Olympics in light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I think differently, and believe that politics and sports should be kept separate. France is sending its athletes to Moscow, and they will march under the French flag at the opening ceremony. Italy is sending its athletes but without a flag, only the seal of the olympic committee. I kind of agree with my own country this time. Mat would like to inflict infernal punishment on any American athlete who would want to attend the Olympics in Moscow.

Great meal in the hotel, then we all hit the sack early, it's been a long day.

Trip to Kracow

Not sure whether to spell it Cracow with two Cs or Kralow with two Ks. Somehow I prefer Krakow, it's more Polish.

After an early breakfast we meet with our professor Bogdan and Borzena. Bogdan has organized a minivan to take us to the second most important city in Poland. We spend the whole day in the vahicle, a rickety product of Czechoslovakia, I think, but I am not sure. It's got pretty hard shock absorbers and it's pretty slow, not that you could go very fast anyway on the Polish "highways" but it does the job. Reliable and not too noisy.

Short break at Jaskinia Raj to view some pretty impressive caves of stalactites and stalagmites.

Later one lunch break at Kielce, not impressive.

We finally reach Krakow by the late afternoon. The evening starts well with an excellent dinner at the "Cracovia" hotel. Lots of tasty and hearty food, especially meat.

We then decide to try a local disco, but it's a dark and stinky lair and we run away after less than five minutes inside. Much better to take a walk around the old town. The city is full of Italians, you can hear the language everywhere. This is certainly in part because of the publicity Poland got in my country after the election of the Polish Pope two years ago. But it is as certainly also because of the reputation of Poland, among other Eastern European countries, as a place to easily trade a pair of stockings with a night of love. Not love, really, just sex.

The most fun part of the night is going back to the hotel in a horse-drawn carriage that looks like it's been taken from a fairy tale.

As we go to sleep, Andrew and I share a room, Ann and Borzena another.

World War II Victory Day celebrations

Polish Army parading on 9th May 1980

It's a big day today in Poland: the 35th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Many countries suffered because of the war, but Poland can reasonably claim to have endured the worst.

Victoria Hotel behind unknown soldier monument

Poland was squeezed between The USSR and Germany, Stalin and Hitler, Communism and Nazism, whichever way you look at it, it was a pretty unenviable position in 1939.

These days, of course, it is the fight against Germany that takes center stage. And for sure that is what detonated World War II. And Germany inflicted unspeakable human and economic damage to Poland between 1939 and 1945. More so to Polish Jews. The Soviet attack that immediately followed the German invasion on 1 September 1939, however, gets very short shrift. The official propaganda sings the praise of the heroic Soviet army that resisted German aggression and then moved to counterattack and liberate Poland (and Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and Romania etc.) from fascism.

Of course, all but the most naive Poles know that is far from the whole truth. But they can't talk about it, not these days in Communist Poland where no one is a Communist but censorship, and self-censorship, are tight.