Thursday, June 06, 2002
THE LORDS OF CENTRAL EUROPE
II: The Two Curtains
Warsaw has a healthy number of parks within and near its borders. Green is the dominant theme. Trees, trees, and more trees. Shrubs. Flora. Florets. Why, just outside my window is a pleasant little memento of the vast forest Poland used to be millennia ago. It’s only one square block, but there’s a statue there, a memorial to Polish soldiers who fought a hopeless cause against both Nazi and Soviet aggression in World War II. Wide paths. Manicured lawns. A quaint flower boutique on the far end. And, oh, yes, a recently added kiddie playland. Like the park itself, it’s not a large parcel of real estate, maybe only 200 square feet. But the slides and swings and pint-sized climbing gymnasium are all brand-spankin’-new and of good quality. There’s even a little outdoor café on its south side; herein harried parents can rest while they care for their children. The City footed the bill for the playland, and Café Zielnik, of course, turned to other resources for their altruism: over each table is a large emerald umbrella, emblazoned with the name of a popular beer. Thus the kids can always be assured of their ultimate source of largesse. The kiddie park stays open day and night, and the café likewise, serving eats and booze. Day and night.
Welcome to Warsaw.
Make no mistake: life is tough here. Communism tried hard to break this country, but the Solidarity Movement and the indomitable will of the Polish people eventually proved too much. The Reds were sent packing, but exacted a terrible price. I’ll try to explain it in 9 sub-sections over the next few pages, then in the next chapter I’ll speak about what maybe can be done to make things better. If the City fathers see this, however, I may be writing that next chapter in a cardboard shack somewhere in Siberia. (The Communists are back in office, remember.) So let me pontificate on the state of this former Soviet state just east of the fallen Iron Curtain and we’ll see what happens.
Poland is struggling to find its balance, get some sort of foothold on a extremely slippery slope. Confusion and inefficiency reigns, but everywhere there are signs of a brighter day. Poland is slow, uncertain, xenophobic, disorganized, and weary. Yet there are legions rising surely from the ashes of this former totalitarian state trying to make it quicker, self-confident, open-minded, efficient and indefatigable. Mazeltof. In both the good and the bad, everything is focused in and on Warsaw. So let’s take it point by point.
1 - Spirits
This city boasts strict anti-drinking laws, or so I’ve been told. No public consumption of alcohol. No public billboard advertising of alcohol. But there are ways around this. The police don’t care, thus one need travel only a few blocks before seeing buddies stumbling down the pavement, swearing their eternal fidelity to each other. (In stentorian drunken Polish, which everybody should experience at least once.) Once a week an obnoxious drunk will climb onto a trolley I’m on, spoiling for a fight. Warsavian (or "Warsaw" in the mother tongue) men are fond of picking their noses in public, and I hope it’s only the drunks who are doing this. Everybody and anybody can hold a can or bottle and imbibe liberally. Beer companies get around the billboard law by adding very fine print at the bottom of their ads that the advertised product is non-alcoholic.
Simply put, booze is everywhere. Vodka is referred to as “liquid bread” though in these hard times Poles have turned to beer instead. Also omnipresent are the legions of pissing pedestrians (er, just the men) who don’t bother to try to hide the fact that they’re relieving themselves. Just walk ten feet from the sidewalk and find a tree or patch of grass. I’ve watched more mothers than I care to count tell their kids to do this in broad daylight. One little guy let it all hang out against a fence as I walking by, with no tree in sight. Trouble was, the fence was one of those old-fashioned iron deals with the bars spaced about a foot apart. Add to that the roughly hundred people in the park as the kid bared his all. I guess the funniest thing about all this was I was the only one who seemed to notice or care.
What else is everywhere? Dog poop. You can’t buy a pooper-scooper in this city and nobody bothers to clean up anyway. (Although I did once see an elderly gent kick his dog’s business toward the nearest sewer grate. Considerate guy.) In some of the parks and greens in this burg you can’t take one step without an unfortunate mishap. You only see the occasional deposit on the sidewalk, however - that and the blotches of vomit. Like I said, booze is everywhere, in one form or another.
2 - The Spirited Hordes
Public transport hasn’t improved since I wrote my first installment. Recently I was in a bus older than me that reacted violently to every bump and grind. Passengers will do anything to avoid eye contact with each other - although I often catch them staring at me. Too American, I guess. They’re quick to look away when I do catch them, however. This despite being locked together in the most intricate Rube Goldberg fashion: if one person moves, we all move. Yet they absolutely refuse to talk and may even hold their packages and briefcases just a little closer if I try to start a conversation. The trolleys (or “trams”) are worse: they break down intermittently, stranding all the others trams using the same line. Just today this happened twice, each time stranding a dozen others behind it. The subway is rather modern but damn, it’s loud. And again, you’ve got the same problem of people refusing to acknowledge a common humanity. It’s rare when the passenger who bumps into you says “excuse me”. As for the trains, forgedaboudit. The compartments are either too hot or too cold and of course, crowded. The corridors are wide enough for one person to pass and often they are crammed with passengers who arrived too late to get a seat.
Speaking of crowds, people bump into each other all the time. It’s tough to explain this if you’re not here. America has its share of crowds, too - special event and mall pedestrian traffic can be maddening in any county, but Warsavians will not budge for another person until that other is practically on top of them, stamping on their toes and rubbing various pairs of cheeks. It’s much worse when it rains. It’s that watercloset phenomenon again - the first-time observer will think that nobody else exists or matters to the self-absorbed Pole. But it’s not that easy. The Communists taught them that life is brutal - be extremely patient and you’ll get what you need. But that level of patience numbs. A small but salient example: if there’s two or three (or a dozen) trams in a row approaching a station, the crowds will board the first tram without even looking to see if the others are empty. The same is true of the cars: each tram has two cars, but one is often packed in tight while the other is half-empty. Which car it is depends on where the crowd happens to be standing.
And speaking of public transport, tram and bus lines can be lengthened, shortened, added, rerouted, deleted, bent, folded or mutilated with no notice. I’ve climbed aboard a tram or two which had the wrong route numbers on them! You cannot get a schedule in any bus, tram, train or trolley. They are posted at each stop, though vandals often tear them down. Or, if you’re brave or rich enough to have a computer and Internet access, you can fetch it off the ‘Net. Churches do not have schedules, either, or mass booklets. But then, in Poland, a Catholic State if there ever was one, I guess nobody needs them.
Trash is ubiquitous. I recently was in a suburb of Warsaw - a rather nice little town that bordered a national park, where a prim and proper lady pulled up to a turnout in the dirt and dumped the garbage she had stored in her trunk onto the ground, all while I stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. The city water supply is filthy - as, naturally, are all the waterways. Turn on the faucet and the water is likely to flow chestnut-colored, no matter what part of Warsaw you’re in. It eventually runs semi-clear, but dishes and bathtubs can’t help but develop henna-toned stains. So do some of the people.
3 - Spirit gum
Sidewalks are like funhouse floors, what with the damage that tree roots and the decay of time can do. Funhouse floors made of concrete, that is, which come to think of it really isn’t all that fun. The sex industry is relatively sizeable, as it employs a host of people to pass out business-card-sized graphic adverts onto every car in the city, several times a day. Bare breasts are used to sell products here, including the most recent cover of Poland’s most popular newsmagazine Wprost. The next had a full-page blowup of the Pope. I guess they were making a one-two push to sell Miracle bras.(Oww! Somebody stop me!) I had to pay several hundred zlotys (or zl., the local currency) just to make a month’s worth of local phone calls. Internet access is controlled by the state phone company and they charge by the minute. When I tried to figure all this out I was chagrined to find that I didn’t get an itemized bill, but instead had to pay an additional fee to acquire one. Public transportation fees are 2.66 zl. for a single ride, 7.60 for a 24 hour pass.
The bureaucracy is maddeningly inefficient. When I had to extend the time on my passport the process took several weeks and several interminable lines. There was no order to these queues, except that of the honor and honesty of those who stood in them. Finally when my passport was approved (although it almost wasn’t since the information I received in the first line was vastly different from the information I received in the last line) they refused to take my money. Instead I had to travel to the local post office - which functions as a government account office in addition to its more civic duties - pay the passport office’s account, acquire a paper receipt, return to the passport office, stand in another absurdly long line, and finally get my passport approved. And how did the passport office find my application when I returned to them? Why, it was in the middle of a large stack of applications. Sitting on a shelf amidst a ton of other stacks. Imagine the results of one lazy or ineffectual employee: I have a Polish friend who had exactly that happen to her. She lost her ID and it took her over 6 months to replace everything - because all those bureaucrats at the end of all those long lines lost her replacement applications and papers more than once. Recently I was told that I have to give up my original passport for 2 to 3 months to the courts to get married in this country. Imagine how I feel about that.
Speaking of honor and honesty, there’s a great deal of that among the common folk. Poles may not expect much from their government or each other, but they do expect a lot from themselves: don’t complain, don’t make waves, don’t cheat. They’re remarkably loyal - and remarkably complacent. The Warsavian mantra is “you can do nothing”; the average Pole on the street seems to accept life as it is and does little to change it. They don’t complain about their countryman’s mess and have no compunction about creating a mess of their own. This makes them resilient, friends you can count on for comfort and empathy. But a bit short for offering solutions.
4 - Vexations of the Spirit: Inflationary Blues
Inflation is rampant. 20 zl. for a pizza. 2 zl. for a liter of milk. 100-200 zl. for a pair of shoes. 500 zl. for a decent bicycle, the same for a pair of roller blades (meaning one that won’t break the first time you use it).100 zl. for a cheap pair of jeans, 200-300 for a good pair. 100 for a bottle of Kahluha. 1,000 zl. rent for a one-room flat. 3,000 for a basic computer, 50,000 for an average sized car. Though most people tool around in what I call a “Mr. Bean car” and what they call a “can on wheels”. These cars are smaller than my parents’ bathroom! Washing machines are the size of American clothes hampers, clothes hampers are the size of trash cans, trash cans are the size of slop buckets. Clothes-driers are rarer than Jews (more on that later).
And while we’re on my favorite subject, did I ever mention how often toilets break down and leak, and how sinfully small and stuffy they are? I think my landlady’s “WC” must have been designed by the Communists as an interrogation room. Recently I was treated to more old fashioned model, still in use. It was merely a hole in the floor, flushable, believe it or not, with a small water tank above but no place to sit. You figure out the rest. I thought it was a shower when I first opened its door.
Unemployment is over 20%, although I suspect this is the underemployment rate. Whatever, the average professional salary hovers around 1000 zl. net per month! The State maintains salaries and benefits at artificially depressed levels in ever more desperate attempts to control inflation... It ain’t working. How anyone can afford anything in this town is beyond me. There are a number of restaurants and boutiques that cater exclusively to tourists and the few rich workaholics in town. One Mexican restaurant charges 25 zl. for a margarita, and 44 zl. for a couple of burritos. Ay Dios Mio! Mexico should declare war. Well, I’ve got news for them. I’m not making dollars anymore; nobody who lives here is. I work with a staff of 55, though only 2 of them own cars. Most people under 30 out here live with their parents.
Am I the only one thinking of Argentina at this point? Yet in the face of this economic madness, to the former Soviet countries which surround this struggling nation (with the possible exception of the Czech Republic) Poland is the Promised Land. This boggles my little mind. To the good folks of the Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Slovakia, Poland means economic opportunity. In-frickin’-credible! There is an Other Curtain that extends from the erstwhile Iron one, which drapes all of Poland and the Czech Republic; to the west of the former Iron Curtain life in Europe has its problems, to be sure, but generally it’s coming along quite nicely. In Poland it’s bad. To the south and east it’s even worse.
I was recently in Slovakia where the average monthly salary is 20 U.S. dollars and it takes 100 units of their currency to buy a bottle of dish soap. The dollar is 4 to 1 in Poland; in Slovakia it’s closer to 40 to 1! The mountain villages I visited few had cars or jobs; the main mode of transport was feet and if people had to carry anything with them they employed wheelbarrows or two-wheeled carts. Imagine little old ladies and others dressed in colorful but dirty rags, moving to and fro about the town. Still those little villages were the friendliest places I’ve visited yet, and no one stared at this strange American in their midst. They wore smiles and old smocks and had little else. To those countries on the wrong side of the Other Curtain economic stability is as distant from actual reality as the Contract for America is from the New Deal.
The citizens of the Other Curtain come to Poland seeking jobs, but not Russians. There is a tiny sliver of Russia, separated from the motherland, which Russia keeps as a strategic Baltic Sea port. It too borders Poland, but that’s only because Russia took it from Poland over a century ago. Just one more reason why the Poles and Russians don’t like each other.
5 - Spiritless Babble: Xenophobism
Forget whatever nonsense you’ve ever heard about racism not existing in Europe. Poles and Jews do not, under any circumstance, get along. Amazing, huh? I mean, of all countries...! Many former Polish Jews blame Poland for the conditions that inspired the Holocaust, and many Polish Gentiles blame their former countrymen for being unwilling to see how Poles of every stripe suffered under the Soviet and Nazi heels. Some older Gentiles complain that, pre-WW-II, “the Poles owned the streets and the Jews owned everything else.” (To which the impartial observer may remark: “Geeze, go out and get a job, why don’t ya?”) The obvious point they're all missing is that they were all Polish, but neither side will acknowledge that simple fact. In fact, the relationship between most of Europe and Jewry is not good. There are several hundred Africans here attending local universities and they tend to complain about how they are glared at and called by what they consider racial epithets. (Although the Poles don’t see it that way). A small number of vocal Catholic priests have been outspoken in their speech and writings against Jews and for racial purity. Blacks may not be discriminated against, but I defy the state to allow them to run any large Polish industry or company. Every country in the world has its share of racial intolerance. It all depends on the race. (But thankfully, Europe has no legacy of slavery or genocide; Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany notwithstanding.)
The English hate the Irish and Scots. The Germans hate the French. The French don’t like anyone. Greeks and Turks hate each other. Spaniards don’t trust Italians. Italians don’t trust the Swiss. The Swiss don’t like anyone who’s a brighter shade of pale. Slovakians don’t like Poles. Western Europe scorns Eastern Europe. And so it goes.....
The Mafia is strong in Poland. (No, not the Italians, you jackass.) You’ve got to pay to play with the big boys, though it’s not as bad as it is in points east where they kill those who complain too loudly. Bribes are pretty big business, too, of the police and bureaucrats and corporations. Nepotism and corruption and the uneducated masses rule. Used to be the big joke here was of “Polish customer service,” which, simply put, meant there wasn’t any. People were paid for their work no matter how inferior its quality. So if on your job you took four one-hour breaks, and then chatted on the phone while customers queued up at your counter, that was alright. And it happened many, many times. The older workers out here, in particular, are reluctant to see this change. It is this very same demographic which is growing increasingly blunt in its calls for a return to a full Communist state.
These days, do not expect much better. Lines will move abhorrently slow. You can buy alcohol in the supermarkets, but you’ll have to withstand one long queue in the liquor department and then another at the main checkout, where they’ll ask for your liquor receipt and run it thought their register again. Nobody bags for you, and the clerk will give you these infinitesimal, thin plastic bags. So you stand there, wrestling all your groceries into the paltry bags, then inevitably beg the clerk for more, while the rest of the line backs up.
Take two of the homeless ladies who are regular fixtures on the local street corners. I’ve never seen the like: they have to be at least 70 though I’ve never actually glimpsed their faces. They stand, bent, at 90 degree angles, wrapped in heavy coats, with uncontrollably shaking hands outstretched for coins. They’re permanently scarred by their former Nazi and Soviet caretakers, starved until their bodies mutilated themselves in a rare form of rheumatism (rare for us, not for them). I don’t know what I could possibly do to really help them. Begging is an art form out here: just acquire a foot permanently twisted the wrong way or profound bloody scars or get really old and bent, maybe write a long, sincere message of your plight which you carry as a sign, and make your case. You can stand silently as the people pass, or kneel with hands clasped in prayer, or board the trams and buses, preferably with a baby in your arms, and appeal directly to the masses. Above all have a sense of humor as most people turn uncomfortably and maybe even angrily from you. Many of these unfortunates used to have health care and jobs when Poland was colored Red.
There are an alarming number of people here who have deep physical scars. The only inexpensive things I’ve noticed in this country so far are cigarettes and basic health care, but people who can only afford one of the two often make the wrong choice. Or they go with neither, deprived of even the simple liberty of that choice. There was a rainstorm here a few days ago which made all the dog droppings runny and the whole city smell like shit, which was followed by a torrential downpour which caused Warsaw to stop dead in its tracks. Sewer grates and tunnels are lacking and practically all the streets flooded; the subway tunnels leaked and shut the rails down for three hours. Gnats descend on this city in late Spring by the millions.
Friend of a friend was beat here recently, by four skinheads. Black guy. Busy night. Completely ignored... There was a multiple murder here a week ago. Four people, cold blood, on a weekend evening. Busy street in a main shopping district. Hundreds of people around. One elderly lady “saw” something; everyone else continued shopping, refusing to let the bodies get in their way as they went about their business. The throng stepped over, not around, the dead, until the police arrived twenty minutes later. Hey, all this stuff I write about happens in America, too - and America is worse, far worse, in other areas. I've written a lot about that too, believe me. But here in Poland, many people in this burg are scared stupid, plain and simple. Communism not only wrecked this country economically and aesthetically, it consumed its soul. Everywhere you go, people want to change - but many are afraid to try. Or simply haven’t a clue how to go about it. Thank God for the aforementioned legions who do.
8 - Spiritualism, the Quest for Enlightenment
Many, many college students complain of the dictatorial nature of their professors; dissent and independent thinking are definitely out of vogue, have never been in vogue, and anyone who tries to put them into vogue will often find an “F” on their report card. Nobody really owns an apartment, or “flat”, out here: they’re all co-ops with the local city authorities. Even my landlady, who’s been in this flat for 50 years, pays building rental and her heat is turned off in April whether it’s still cold outside or not. (And this year, believe me, it was.) Bring your long johns.
The flat buildings, by the way, are called “blocks” and they look it: large slabs of gray and dismal concrete, totally devoid of character. In some of the outlying Warsaw districts and suburbs the blocks have more the feel and appearance of modern apartment units, but they’re still in the shape of huge rectangles. Architectural innovation out here is not valued, while the original gray models blight the whole of the Polish landscape. The effect of this and all the above is that much of Warsaw and many other communities look, feel and smell like American ghettoes. Praga (or "Prague") and Wilano'v (or "Villa Nova") are really nice, though.
Basic Polish quality is an oxymoron. As anywhere, you get what you pay for. But you can’t afford much on 1000 zl. or less per month. Clothing is thin and fragile, electrical wiring is shoddy and dangerous, and phone and Internet connections are dismal. And that’s very sad, since ‘Net access is controlled by the State and costs .12 zl. a minute. Utilities are monopolized, so the common man can do little - and often does nothing. In the same vein, hardly anyone recycles. I've heard that years ago an auto stalled out over a railroad crossing as a train approached. The passengers couldn’t get out, however, ‘cause all the doorhandles broke off in their hands. That’s how they were found: with their mangled hands clutching the handles. Do I believe it? Well, the mangled hands is a nice touch of dramatic license, but yeah, cars did fall apart in the Communist and immediately post-Communist era. And nobody was sued. Hey, usually I’m the first to complain about the American culture of litigation. But sometimes it’s necessary.
Maybe that’s why things American and British are omnipresent. 8 out of 10 songs on the radio are English, and most of them American. 1 out of 10 is Western Europe or Latino. Cinemas run mostly American films with subtitles. Tee-shirts and businesses are emblazoned with English logos. Even in the small village of Bendzin in the south, the local bus line is named in English “Red Bus”. There is a palpable sense here of all things Western (except vodka of course), American in particular, being better. Which circles back to the backlash against Poland’s modernization and floundering democracy.
Nobody seems to like Lech Walesa anymore, the man who led his Solidarity Labor Party to topple the Communist government and thereby start the process of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today many of Warsaw’s denizens are opposed to trade unions while Walesa pitches computers for a Western firm. He continues to be idolized by many in the West and is a hot ticket on the lecture circuit... “A prophet is not without honor” and all that.
9 - Holy Spirit
Once again I must praise the legion of Poles who stay here and try to build a better life. Things are changing, but slowly. The dismal failure of the Great Soviet Experiment has ransomed the happiness and livelihoods of millions. God bless anyone who tries to pull it all together - and despite all of the above, they are trying. It’s just real hard to see sometimes. The average Pole is scared and wary - and with their past, they have damn good reason. The Polish government wants to join the European Union in 2004, but many of the common folk just don’t trust anyone but their Catholic countrymen. We all must learn from the past as we forge the future. Walesa and his supporters understood that; they’re still here. Their cause and their passion are still here, within the borders of this country. It can and must be tapped again and not allowed to fade once more.
Used to be life here was much as it is now in the East. And life in the East was much, much worse. I guess. It certainly wasn’t any better. fiancée’ reminds me constantly of how good people can be and how uncompromisingly dour my own view of Warsaw is. Fact is, she’s offended by my opinion. Let me use her own words here: “It is true that we are not as joyous and open to one another as Americans with their big artificial smiles, but under our hard shell which is caused by an extremely hard life we have to live. There is a big heart in many Poles and we do help one another... one example comes to my mind: yesterday I was on the bus and at one of the bus stops a handicapped woman tried to get on the bus. At once many people came up to her to help her......it is just a small thing but life consists of doing small things and that’s what matters.”
And whatever happened to Café Zielnik? Nothing. I wrote letters to the local paper out here, the most popular in the county, but they were ignored. If Zielnik takes away the beer or beer advertising they’ll lose their funding, and the City wouldn’t dream of moving the kiddie park. According to Zielnik’s co-owner, the City has never successfully undertaken a project so quickly. The park went up in two weeks, when most City projects of similar or greater size take months or years to complete. The City provides security for the Café, which last year was vandalized and robbed when there was no kiddie park alongside it, so now they need each other. Faust and the devil are alive and well. At the recreation area across the street, where there is no round-the-clock security, robbery and vandalism are common themes. Of chief import are the “rocking-horse” ducks. I have no idea why.
And so it goes...
posted by mark 12:26 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
