-
A World Turned Right Side Up
June 1, 2013 | 0 comments
-
Boys and Girls
May 1, 2013 | 0 comments
-
American Rand Stand
April 1, 2013 | 0 comments
-
Sounds of Silence
March 2, 2013 | 0 comments
-
Clearing the Air
February 2, 2013 | 0 comments
Last Call
A New Normal
Thirty-three years can make all the difference.
Back in the day, when the good citizens of Poland finally found a way to overthrow the Communist yoke, a common refrain, born of decades of exhaustive effort, was the wish that their country simply be a “normal” one. That of course meant they wanted to live à la Western Europe and the U.S., free and prosperous, under rule of law, without a Soviet Russia breathing down their necks. Two decades later much of that has come to pass, and no one speaks of “normal” anymore. Besides, what is “normal” these days? (Sorry, but that’s exactly the kind of question one can afford to toss off when belonging to the West again.)
This summer, for family reasons, I found myself in Krakow for two full weeks — my first time back in Poland in 33 years, a golden opportunity to see how it has changed. Family and friends warned me I wouldn’t recognize it. I wasn’t so sure. Yes, on the way in from the Krakow airport, nicely, discreetly named after Pope John Paul II, we passed an IKEA, huge lumberyards, many new car dealerships and KFC-signed strip malls, and even saw a stretch of modern freeway. Yet on nearing the city’s center, once we turned into bumpy and narrow Dluga street, everything was as I remembered: its three-story buildings still a sooty, early 20th century gray, but with one small difference — all the ground floor stores and shops had clean windows and displays, bright signs, and not a queue in sight.
The historic old city, where we stayed at my wife’s old apartment, was something else again, exactly as I remembered it, except better: spiffier, cleaner, upgraded, renovated, and not only its huge Main Square but side streets and courtyards and cellars. Krakow has become a tourist mecca, and its summer human traffic never stops, foreign and domestic alike. I would need a lot more than two weeks — how about two years? — to explore it properly, starting with its glorious churches, an art historian’s dream. How can there be so many of them in such close vicinity, if not right next door to one another? (Not to mention the many chapels within each one. And it’s not as if these churches weren’t overwhelmingly Catholic.)
About those tourists. It used to be Poles from the hinterlands would be bused in, in groups, to see Poland’s old capital. What struck me this time was the number of individual Polish families, two parents, two or three kids, on visits. So very Western suburban, no? That also means they traveled by family car. Krakow, needless to say, now teems with automobiles, all of them newish, Japanese, European Fords, German and French, plus an occasional Cadillac — and for old time’s sake, a communist-era clunker that didn’t know the '70s are over.
Students of that Polish decade will recall the communist party’s ill-starred effort to introduce consumerism — all of it resulting in huge Polish indebtedness to the West (and wide suspicions that much of that Western aid ended up in Kremlin accounts) and an ever more restive populace. Back then, complaints centered on food shortages and the unavailability of Polish pork (and toilet paper). Now food is so plentiful and shelves so well stocked — eggs in cartons that let you know if they came from free-ranging chickens — if there is concern, it’s that modern supermarkets drive out Mom and Pop efforts. Today’s most frequent complaints have a familiar ring: there’s way too much public and private debt, regulations are killing small business, the country is becoming too dependent on EU funds. It all could end very badly.
But not right away. Drabness is no longer the norm. People make plans, travel the world, build new houses, knock down walls to create bigger, sleeker apartments, the entire package at times worthy of Architectural Digest. And in Krakow every hour on the hour a trumpeter plays the abruptly interrupted Heynal from the tower of St. Mary’s Basilica on the Main Square. The performance recalls the original bugler, who by legend took an arrow to the throat while warning the city of a Tatar attack back in 1240. I always remembered its sound as hopelessly forlorn. Now I swear it’s being played by Louis Armstrong.
About the Author
Wlady Pleszczynski is editorial director of The American Spectator and the editor of AmSpec Online.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Wlady Pleszczynski
More Articles From Last Call
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/07/a-new-normal
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
The Spectacle Blog
Democrat Dan Maffei Blames Budget Cuts for Girl’s Rape, Mother’s Murder
Robert Stacy McCain | 6.18.13
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.7.11 @ 7:04AM
Wlady,
thank you for that glimpse.
Alan Brooks| 10.7.11 @ 12:04PM
It was a provocation to the Russians by Bush attempting to install an ABM system in Poland.
Bush knew we could put the ABMs at sea, but he wanted to stick a pin in the Russians.
Bush was a tough old bird, you have to admit.
Mimi| 10.7.11 @ 8:01AM
Everyone take note.....The DRAB Wlady describes is back in style with the GOALS the Democrats and Obama are plannin g for US ! Yes POOR, GREY, DRAB and LEASHED!!
Thanks for a peek in the WINDOW....and congrats to the Polish people!
Timothy L. Pennell| 10.7.11 @ 8:12AM
Mimi is absolutely right. The Socialist Utopia, that EVERY Barack Hussein Obama has in mind, is that old Poland. With it's drab Cities, the people with lifeless eyes, and the dream of total Equality.
Everyone has NOTHING.
Soon to be OUR New Normal.
Quartermaster| 10.7.11 @ 8:50PM
It's called trickle up poverty. Every communist tyranny knows it well.
RND| 10.7.11 @ 8:55AM
"Thirty-three years can make a nice all the difference"
Surely a typographical error in the subtitle (above) to Mr. Pleszczynski's article.
Website editor, please fix.
Pelligrino| 10.7.11 @ 9:11AM
One of my "rejoice" moments in life was traveling a German Autobahn south of Stuttgart toward what the Germans call the Bodensee. We call it Lake Constance.
Pulling over at a highway rest stop for a breather and stretch, I was soon with company. Pulling up and parking beside me was a gray Lada filled with ...with Poles.
The five of them were stuffed in it. The Lada is not a large auto. Out they came. Energetic, bubbly, full of exuberance.
Germans typically never looked that excited. Not like this.
As I learned through broken English, some German, a bit of Polish and lots of hand gestures, this was their first trip. First trip outside the borders of Poland.
It was September 1990. They were still celebrating. They could travel! They could come west! If they could afford the fuel for the auto's tank, they could do it!
And so they were going to go. Go, see, learn, visit, explore. They were just so excited. They really weren't sure, but if money permitted, they were going to go all the way to Rome.
I rejoiced with them. I will always remember them and their smiles.
Bujaj Sie| 10.7.11 @ 2:37PM
With apologies to ML King, free at last, free at last.
Quartermaster| 10.7.11 @ 8:52PM
Don't worry. he stole it from someone else. Almost everything he said was plagiarized.
Pelligrino| 10.9.11 @ 1:25AM
I failed to mention a very simple but very key element of what this moment and trip represented for these 5 headed south.
Freedom.
Freedom as manifested by their maps.
As I quickly learned from them, they were entering uncharted territories. I had already been in well over a dozen countries. Only one or two of them had done a class trip into Czechoslovakia. I gathered from their replies that none in their families (parents, relatives like uncles or aunts) had ever been permitted to travel so far from home.
Can you imagine that? You are early 20's and no one in your family has ever been permitted to travel more than 500 miles from where you live.
The maps they were using showed with pen notes places they hoped to see. These maps would have been forbidden documents just a year prior.
A year prior they could not have dreamed of a 2,500 kilometer auto odyssey, choosing their own path and stops.
No one to report to. No fixed timetables. No permission forms required to cross from Germany into Switzerland. No special societal status (political party status) required to "travel abroad." No one accompanying them to make sure they "behaved." No MANDATORY inquiries to answer in odious questions from police upon return to hometown in Poland. No requirements to write detailed information in reports about foreigners met when abroad.
We have no idea how imprisoned the "inmates" of the Warsaw Pact lived.
We have no idea how that imprisonment killed the souls of several generations.
JKMc| 10.7.11 @ 7:48PM
Thank you for a glimpse of life in Krakow. My maternal grandparents were Polish. My Grandmother referred to her homeland as the "old country" and taught us little about it. I remember sending packages to her relatives - mainly Baptismal and First Holy Communion clothing. If we sent new clothing or money, it never arrived. In the past ten years through a dear friend who spent part of her childhood in Poland, I learned about my wonderful heritage and the freedom loving people. My dear friend passed away earlier this year - how she would have loved this article.
Pelligrino| 10.7.11 @ 11:32PM
Has there been a good movie made in the aftermath of the 1980's in Poland: A Pope, a labor union movement centered on Gdansk, a Pope shot, Solidarnosc, Lech Walensa, demonstrations, police crackdown, USSR Kremlin ultimatims, Jaruzelski, martial law, food and clothing drives in the West, underground printing presses, the Pope visits his homeland, Russian tanks on the border....then the autumn of 1989 and the reports of Hungarians, Czechs, and East Germans just walking into Austria.
Public demonstrations in Budapest, East Berlin, Bucharest, Leipzig, Prague, Warsaw, and Krakow.
Public demonstrations! Gatherings of tens of thousands!
Where is this movie? Where is this blockbuster documentary?
Surely this is a story of real life drama in so many places, so many families, so many hearts.
This story must be told.
Does anyone remember the Holocaust series? Shown first on television in 1978? This drama for the big screen should be like the way they did Holocaust. That was quality, very, very well done.
This story must be told.
Cosmo| 10.8.11 @ 12:35AM
Very good point, Pellegrino...
The left wants to forget this happened..
Pelligrino| 10.9.11 @ 1:44AM
I find it interesting that the Hollywood types like Spielberg can get behind a script like the life of
This, as many readers here probabably know, was alone a huge tourist boost shot in the arm for the city of Krakow.
Why no great movies about the atrocities of Warsaw Pact nations on their own people during these horrible days of communist totalitarianism?
The Prague Spring? Soviet tanks moving on Budapest? The life, times, and thankful downfall of Romania's dictator for life Carcescu?
Cosmo, I am just thinking while typing here. But it seems that Nazi bashing ref. WWII is en vogue and Hollywood acceptable. The movie industry can bankroll that and get behind it. However, a screenplay that takes on Jaruzelski and his evil regime in Poland in the 1970's and 1980's? Taboo? Tito's iron fist supression of his own people to at-all-costs hold together a group of Yugoslavs who do not wish to be united?
Richard Holbrook's wife, Kati Marton, penned a recent book about her days as a girl growing up in communist Hungary. I found it a very good read. It would make for an excellent movie. It should be a story told.
Particularly the parts at the end where her parents are still haunted, hounded, and followed by Hungarian state police when residing and working in Bethesda, Maryland.
Pelligrino| 10.9.11 @ 1:51AM
Sorry. In the above post, I did not finish my thought in the first line. Here it is:
I find it interesting that the Hollywood types like Spielberg can get behind a script like the life of Oscar Schindler.
This movie did result in special "Schildler tours" in and around Krakow.
As everyone knows, that movie was and is a hit. And the same in the movie "The Pianist."
Rodney Walton| 10.8.11 @ 2:17AM
Strange days for the Poles. They are begining to notice their weight. My shopping malls in SF Bay Area look small & drab next to the new malls in Poland! I remember Poland in the early 90's before there was all this new stuff! But life is still difficult. Still, "Who-you-know" to get a break.
We're becoming Poland thanks to Obama.
Bob K.| 10.8.11 @ 11:22PM
We still have Polish Immigrants coming to America and many settled where I live in an old Coal Mining area. We had them as neighbors in the 1980's. They would often go into the nearby woods in the fall picking mushrooms.
My mother, who was 2nd Generation Polish, could speak Polish and often conversed with them. They told her that she spoke Polish very well but that it was quaint, older Polish. Her father had been born in the USA around 1892 but the immigrants in the mining town they were raised in still spoke, Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian, which they all could understand but not the Lithuanian that those immigrants spoke. They learned English at the schools they attended but spoke Polish at home. My mother was born in 1915 and died when she was 91. She often spoke Polish with other residents of the Senior Citizens home she lived in.
We are not that far removed from our ancestors here in America.
On my father's side, my Grandmother, youngest child of 10, told me stories when I was a child, of my Great Grandfather who had fought in the Civil War before she was born.
Dimitri Aleksandrovich| 10.10.11 @ 12:00PM
If Poland was really looking toward the future they wouldn't be hosting an anti-ballistic missile system that's clearly aimed at Russia. Washington DC is very far from Warsaw, but Moscow isn't that far. The Americans will one day retreat from Europe and most of the rest of the world, but Russia and Belarus will always remain in close proximity to Poland. Poland should be seeking a long and lasting friendship with Russia.
Dimitri Aleksandrovich| 10.10.11 @ 12:13PM
The Soviet occupation is over and the big corporate occupation of strip malls, IKEA and KFC has begun. I don't fault the Poles for believing that they're living in better times in the post Communist era, but they should be careful that they didn't just trade a Soviet master for corporate globalist master with an EU pin on his lapel. Poland would probably be better off doing what Russia did and charting its own course in the wake of the collapse of the Communist pipe dream. With all this said I have much respect for Polish people and for their strong Catholic faith. I am Russian Orthodox myself, but I have nothing against the Poles. I just say look out for the Americans and the Eurocrats, they'll use you and abuse you and they don't have your best interests in mind.
Cug Smith| 10.12.11 @ 5:59PM
Wlady,
Your article brought back memories of one of my favorite Poles, a man who taught me respect and admiration for Poland when I was in college. His name was Marian Zygmunt Nowakowski, and he was one of the vocal music professors at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi when I was pursuing my degrees in Music History & Literature. He had been in the Polish Army at the beginning of WWII, and his unit ended up in Scotland after the Nazis overran Poland. As a basso in the Polish Army Chorus, he was noticed by the British music world, eventually singing with the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, and then throughout Europe and America after the war. At USM, he learned that I was studying Russian (the Russian professor at USM was also a Pole named Jaroslav Tomaszewski) and that I intended to sing some Rachmaninov songs and a Tchaikowski aria on my Senior Recital. He made it a point to attend the recital and tell me how much he enjoyed the fact that I was the first student in years that he had heard sing in a Slavic language. He was the first person to tell me about such features of Polish history as the "Winged Hussars". To me, he was a true hero, and years later, he was one of the first people I thought about when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became the first Polish Pope. I know that he was proud to see the advent of Polish freedom.