Krakow theatre

[pieter]

www.pwst.krakow.pl/fotogaleria.jsp?ident=5
www.pwst.krakow.pl/fotogaleria.jsp?ident=40

I love Krakow as a Polish and Habsburg (like Prague and
Budapest) city of history, the Jagielonian universaty
(126.000 of the 800.000 citizens are students),
Jazz cellars, theatres, architecture (Polish Gothism
and Ramanism, Renaissance, Baroc/Rococo, Classicism,
and 20th century architecture), it's river, parks,
boulevards, art galleries and museums, ellegant ladies
and pretty girls, it's dancings (old stile), Kazimierz,
it's Museums and galleries, Academy of Fine Arts
and it's special atmosphere.

Adam could you tell me more about your city,
Warszawa, the Capital, the diplomatic, commercial,
and administrative heart of Poland.
It is rebuilt wonderfully, but did the new Varsovians
make it a fibrant, dynamic city (like it was before the
war). I have no objective nor realistic vision, because
the last time I was there was when I was 14.

Pieter

[aadam]

Pieter, we've had a discussion here about Warszawa some time ago - and most of the Polish participants views about the city is that it is , I cite "above all- ugly". I present that opinion as I am trying my best to be honest However, I don't agree with it. I must say that in my whole life and very many travels I never visited a perfect city with no ugly side at all. That is valid even for such a jewels as Florence and Krakow (and - yes - Amsterdam, too!) both cities adored my me (Krakow a bit more, since my wife's from Krakow). So - in my eyes is Warszawa - very beautiful, even charming city, with regions of terrible ugliness, yes. Warszawa is very much different from Krakow - Krakow is cosy, slow, warm and even poetic in its very centre, whereas in Warszawa both the cultural and social life is more dispersed throughthout the whole 2.5 million agglomeration. Unfortunetely Warszawa, according to the eye-witneses of the process - failed to re-establish her's full charm of her pre IIWW time.
The reasons are multiply, maybe we'll discuss that in future. Nonetheless we have to remember that at that time cultural life of Warszawa was limited to the Trakt Królewski and it's close environement. It is much different today.
Warszawa has changed very much throughtout my life, too. I don't think I would actually recognize every region of the city would I have fallen into a coma 16 years ago and woke up today. Warszawa AD 2005 has this very special feeling that the better you know her the more magnetic it is. And, although some old Varsovians do not like that very much, Warszawa is quickly loosing it's 'locality' 'parochiality', especially since today more than 50 % of her citizens were not born in Warszawa! A growing expat society adds to this bigos every year more. A great mixture we have, and enjoy it! However, I have to frankly note that I started to enjoy everyday life in Warszawa much more since we moved to the suburb to wake up in the forest instead of smog, etc. etc... Life in Warszawa may be tiring - traffic jams, demostrations blocking the city and all the folklore that is not always as pleasant as could be...
Pieter , I love this town I could talk about it for hours, but - don't want to bore you to death, are you aware of that?

[pieter]

Dear Adam,

You do not bore me to daeth at all, for me Warszawa is a living history, the town and city (what is the right word) is the birthplace of my mother, and the place where she lived as a child and a young women when she returned for Warsaw from Pozñan. Family and friends of my mother live there, the Poles have done a great job in rebuilding
the old town. I remember the Palaces, the beautiful parks, the boulevards and the high buildings in the Centre and the Palace of Culture, which I liked as a 14 year old, and from which I heard that there were made many jokes about it. "From where do you have the best view over Warsaw, form the Palace of Culture, because then you don't have
to see it". My mother said that during the war the intelligentsia was illiminated, and that the original population of Warsaw was deported, and that so after the war many farmers from the countryside and workers from other parts of the country came to Warsaw. The original Varsovian had gone (execept from the few that returned).
So in her version Warsaw before the war was a city with aristocracy, high culture, civilization, nobility, highclass, middle class and working class, a very pluriform city, with 10 % jews and many other minorities.
After the war it became a proletarian Communist capital of a socialist peoples republic, the atmosphere of before the war was gone with it's lost people and burnt past. But in my view after decades, children of working class people went to highschools, higher technical and economical education and universaties, and became administrators, eployees of banks and companies, and the ones who went to the school of fine art, theatre school or conservatory, became artists, actors and musicians, and some of them teachers. Their children were not children of workingclass anymore, but Middle-class or highclass kids (in the Communist version of that). Their kids had a differant upbringing than their grandparents, they got good education and their version of Polishness, some collaborated actively with the system and became the Nomenklatura (partymembers, militiamen, part of the bureaucracy), others just struggled for survival in the grey fiftees and sixtees, and again others actively or passively opposed the sytem. What I try to say is that a new generation of Varsovians emerged from the farmers, workers and others who came to live in Warszawa after the war. It took years to rebuilt the city, and so before the city was again suitable for living.
I understand that Warszawa like other Capitals is a great mixture of people, a pluriform society, with Old and New elements. The organic growing of time made new peoples, new architecture, restaurations, ideas, stiles, awareness of the past and the tradition and set of values that goes with that, new culture, foreign influence, influence of people who came from other (less damaged cities, like your wife from Krakow). People from Krakow, Pozñan, Gdansk, Wroclaw and Lublin took (in my imagination) their towns culture with them to Warsaw, and in the same time the farmers and workers from the rural areas
brought their provincial culture to the city. In the same time there must be a trace left of the Old Varsovians, I can not imagine that all old Varsovians disappeared. So the old and the new mixted in a new population where you are part of.
Like all big cities the Cosmopolitan Varsovian must have a hectic, bussy, flexible life with a lot of dynamic develloments, careers, personal progression, fall backs (disappointments in life), several relations in a lifetime, complex social life (family, colleages and friends, separated in three parts), large infrastructure, industry, stock market, amusement (going out to pubs, restaurants, theatres and cinemas), culture (Museums and artgalleries), the sciences, and the perifery of the city to escape it.
I know to well how anarchistic and chaotic such a city jungle (Amsterdam) can be, running thrue the streets, racing on my bike, trying to lose no time an swearing at people who stood in your way (not openly ofcourse).
The last experiance was more an italian movie that I experianced when I drove with an older husbant of a friend of my mothers, who rode like a lunatic with his Lada in Pozñan in the eightees, shouting at other Poles, those stupid Poles can't drive, while he (half russian-half Polish, madman) himself couldn't drive, at least left me with a constant fear of my life when I drove with him. That was an example how hectic Polish traffic can be, and that there was in my Polish mothers family a lot of self mockery. One of my Polish uncles even said then, we Poles have to import the Germans and Jews again for organising and good administration (but that were Communist times).
Now I see an optimist post-Communist new generation, a lively Polish politics and a growing Warszawa, from what I can observe from here and hear from people who went to Warszawa. Nothing stays the same, everything constantly changes, the Buddha said.

Pieter

[aadam]

Dear Pieter, do you know that you've decribed Warszawa better than I'd do ;D
You are right even in this respect that not all 'old' or 'old-style' Warsowians are gone. Of course not. You're talking to a represebtative of a family that was here long enough to "remember" the pre-partition times But - believe me - some of my dear sweet old aunties are not that sweet towards the 'newcomers' although with all their distiguished might they try to behave in the 'civilised manner' (their words and up to the standards.
All the best !

[pieter]

Adam,

I am sorry for replying so late, yesterday I was in Amsterdam to participate in a religious gathering of
a group around a wonderful monk from the south of my country. The groups name is Ruach.
www.abdijvanberne.nl/ruach.html
Ruach is the Hebrew name for Gods spirit, breath an wind!
See also: www.premontre.org/subpages/2004-catalogus/2004-CAT/302a-Berne.htm
and www.abdijvanberne.nl/
His name is Bernardus Dennis Kersten.
A wonderful, sort of Gnostic christian -in the Catholic tradition- who seeks for the historical christ
and likes Buddha. He is not a traditional church hierarchy person.
The people in the group yesterday (9 people) all had a Catholic upbringing, but went differand
ways. From Theosophy (Madame Blavatski/Rudolf Steiner), New Age to Christian theology studies.
It was a very interesting day yesterday, we went to the bible museum in Amsterdam, where
a Duch reformed Reverance built his replica of the Tabernakel - the temple Moses built
in the dessert, a driving temple in a tent-. Besides that there was an exhibition of Maroccan jews,
in the context of the 400 years Netherlands-Marocco celebrations this year.
Interresting bible and so Jerusalem exhibition, and a wonderful inner courtyard, with a beautiful
city garden with banks (Amsterdam city gardens and trees can be beautiful) and houses.
Amsterdam has something they call the Duch light (you see in paintings of the old masters -Vermeer-).
In the Afternoon we went to the Chinese part of the Red light district, where stands the big
Buddhist temple (of a Taiwanese-Chinese Master), and we went into that temple and got
a tourguide and tour inside the temple. The Duch Buddhist guy, who is married with a Taiwanese
women who is not Buddhist herself, explained everything inside the temple and the questions
of the "Christian" visitors. A remarcleble development is the fact that in East-asian
countries Christianity is growing (in Taiwan, China and South-Korea), while in the West
(Western-Europe and America) Buddhism is growing.
For me it is logical or understandable that Bernardus Dennis Kersten as a Catholic
Norbertine Monk is interested in the figure of the Buddha and so Buddhism,
because in its ethics or moral Buddhism shares values with early christianity,
with the historical Christ and the figur of jesus in the christian churches.
Ruach is for people who miss something in their daily life, especially the
profound debate, deep discussions and searching.
I love the fact that I could find this group with the help of my dear
friend Stefan Papp, a Theatre actor of Hungarian-Duch decent.
He appreciates in our contact that we can talk about our Eastern-European
roots, because I am also interested in Hungary , because it was an important
part of the Habsburg emopire (Austrian-Hungarian doubble monarchy),
and because I love Budapest like I love Warszawa, Krakow, Pozñan,
Prague and Cesky Krumlov (in South-Bohemia).
Yesterday evening I ended up in a pub in Arnhem, and as a matter
of fact I have a little hangover, because of that (to many beers).

I really appreciate our exchanges Adam, and I see you as a special
branch of Varsovian, "Old-stile", but open to the Newcommers.
The attitude of your dear sweat old aunties exsist also in our cities
and towns. With the typical Old families of Arnhem, Middelburg,
Delft, Gouda, Groningen, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Den Haag (The Hague),
Rotterdam and leiden (an old Universaty town) you have the same,
here (the old -nearly aristocratic- elite). You have to belong to them to fit in.
But also the old working class and middle class families who speak the
city dialect and support the cities football club see there town as the best
place to be. I would call it City chauvinism, Patriotism or even City nationalism.
Duch people outside Amsterdam consider Amsterdam people as arrogant
and vain. Amsterdam people see it like this; First you have Amsterdam,
than for a while nothing, and after that the rest of Holland, the peasents.

Pieter

[pieter]

Provocative joke for Dutch people of rural area's and other cities:
"ofcourse the Amsterdam people are a little bit right."

P.S.- Amsterdam football fans call all fans of other cities Peasents.
That is an example of Amsterdam's arrogance in the Netherlands.
("First you have Amsterdam, then a whole time nothing, and then
the rest of the Netherlands")

Do you have the same thing in Poland, England and America?
For instance that Varsovians find themselves better than
Krokovians, and Krakovians find themselves better than the
Poznanians (Pyri Poznanskie)? (No offense Zooba, just a joke! ;D )

[pieter]

Link to the Bible Museum:
www.bijbelsmuseum.nl/english.aspx?ID=3&frame=2&zaal=009

[aadam]

pieter said:

Provocative joke: ofcourse the Amsterdam people are a little bit right.

Yes, I get your joke, Pieter

I am reading everything posted withgreat interest, unfortuntely I am still more busy than usual - I just don't manage to answer/write everythinh I'd like to properly. I've read with special interest about 'the Ruach experience'. At first I got anxious about you, Pieter, that it is some kind of strange 'do it yourself church' a plethora exists now but after thoroughful readind I got relaxed and I am very happy for you to advance/find 'your way'. I've been searching for a while too, I grown up in Catholic envoironment with inclusions from Orthodox Church, Judaism and Calvinist Protestantism in the past, however as a young man I felt athesit (just coudn't gather why the evil exists, I guess) and then agnostic. And then slowly faith started growing up somewhere inside me, I felt it /still do/ as a real gift. There's a great peace in my heart now.

[aadam]

pieter said:

Link to the Bible Museum:
www.bijbelsmuseum.nl/english.aspx?ID=3&frame=2&zaal=009

Thanks! Next time I'm in Amsterdam I'll ceratinly visit the place . I was in kind of museum on Saturday, too - I'm a frequent visitor there since two of my talented kids attend art courses there:csw.art.pl/

If you browse a bit in that site you'll see some of contemporary Polish art.

[aadam]

Oops, a better (English language) link csw.art.pl/new/basis_e.html

[pieter]

Adam,

I live from my teenage time a very secular life, whith anarchist or libertarian elements.
I disliked Masses and groups from my childhood on, because I like the people who
think and experiance things themselves, people who think for themselves.
However I have a very positive, mild and friendly memory of Catholicism in my past
in the Netherlands, Belgium (my second home, due to the many holidays we spend
in our vacationhouse in the Belgian mountains, the Ardens), and especially Poland.
As a rebellious teenager I got fed up by the long masses and the repeating year after
year of the same old story, and found the church a bunch of old guys.
I critisized the church like many others for it's past, it's prosecution of science,
internal opposition (which is necassery to let a healthy organisation grow),
people of other faiths, and it's position towards women.
In my youth I saw the Catholic culture and faith as carried by women,
because I always saw women in the church, girls singing and old women praying.
Fortunately we had a develloped, humble and intellectual priest who made
and gave very good speeches.
I don't like a to modern community fromthe one side (the beat mass), and
am allergic for every kind of fundamentalism, or doctrinarian directions.
I like the more spiritual, let's say Gnostic side of christiantiy, which in it's
enlightenment reaches the spiritual movements of the other great
religions Kabalism (jews), Veda's (Hinduism), Buddhism and Sufism in the
Islam (The Derwish people). I think I am a synchretisist.
In my faith I take Christianity, Judaism( www.jhm.nl/english.aspx ), Buddhism and Nature and combine
them into a new entity. Both Catholicism and Protestantism are important
for me, the history of my country and this continent.
Protestantism (Anglican chruch, Calvinism and Lutheranianism) have had
a great influence on the Modern economy and theology (also on that of
the Catholic church, which is influenced by the critisizm of Erasmus,
Luthers resistance, Calvins puritanism and etc.).
My country was for hundred of years separated in a poor Catholic south
(Opressed and negelected by the rich Protestant North and the West),
and a powerful, dominant and conentrated West (the Core Holland).
I think that I am a liberal Calvinist-Catholic Humanist, with strong
roots in the bible and Catholic culture.

Pieter

[pieter]

Adam,

Underserved I did not react at your visit to the wonderful Museum of your link, the art Castle of Warsaw.
When I looked at the artists that participate the it must be an Ultra-Modern Centre for Contemporary Art.
I saw the names of Marina Abramovic, Annie Leibovitz, Gary Hill, Rebecca Horn (who's work I saw in the
early ninetees in Eindhoven/Holland and in Vienna/Austria, and whose work I like very much), Cindy Sherman
and Andy Warhol.
Polish artists are very much on a Western Post-modern track, in their Contemporary work I don't see
any differance with for instance Britart ( www.britart.co.uk/default.aspx ) or artists of today from
the European continent or America. A lot of work of the Polish artists, like Alicja Zebrowska or Agnieszka Kalinowska,
have links or simularities with artists like Bruce Nauman ( www.stedelijk.nl/oc2/page.asp?PageID=212 ;
the homo-erotic Seven Figures inv. nr. 1995.1.3 1985, 220 x 470 cm, look simular to me as the work
of Agnieszka Kalinowska). A lot of artists play with the theme of alienation, decadence (Lodz Kaliska), but also with
authenticity (Monika Duda, The Unmade project set of naturalistic self-portraits) and hedonism.
The contemporary artist in my view is both selbobeserved- or obsessed and caught in an information overload,
trying to find their way in the Urban jungle of their region and the global (art) village.
Alicja Zebrowska and Agnieszka Kalinowska stand in the same tradition or spirit of the age as Cindy Sherman
and Tracey Emin and www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/wy_wy_pippiloti_rist_wideo_csw
Barbara Konopka's work reminds me of Inez van Lamsweerde's work;
( www.digischool.nl/ckv2/massa/massa/lamsweerde/inez_van_lamsweerde.htm ).
So I do not aggree with what Estelle wrote earlier here in some post on limited information
that "that the polish tradition of art is more Romantic and less postmodern/contemporary
as we are used to in Holland", because in my view the Poles had their own Modern avantgarde
in the Interbellum (interwarperiod 1918-1939) and under Communism and nowadays.
There must be lively art communities in Warszawa and Krakow, and in the other Polish cities.
With the Polish sponsors (Polish Cultural Institute, which has also a branch in Berlkin), the British Council, Institut Français Varsovie, Goethe Institut, The Danish and Ohio art councils, the Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes (EU), Austrian and Swiss organisations Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle is well funded, and so will have a lot of means to make the best of it.
It also has media partonage of Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, Polityka and Polskie radio it must be wellknown under
Polish cultural intelligentsia, cosmopolitans, art lovers and interested citizens.
I think that Polish art has the potency to grow and florish, when it manages to concur a place in the Western
world. I say that, because the only artists in Holland who are wortwhile were the ones that went abroad
(to New York, California, Berlin or London). Why? Because in the Netherlands (and I think in Poland too) there
is not an interesting commercial art climate, of art dealers, art collections, foundations and importand trendsetting
galleries. Please correct me if I am wrong. Maybe there are Mecenasses in Poland too, rich people who buy or
invest in art, companies who built art collections, art institutes and state funded art fairs?

I love the fact that you let your kids follow art courses there. Can you tell me more about that?
What do they make, what are their interests and etc.

Pieter

[pieter]

I bring this post back to the front, because of the first reply of Adam, which I find interesting!
I am curious what Wojtek as a fellow Varsovian has to say about that. Do you share Adams view,
or do you have a differant Varsovian view? I miss Adams indepth replies, and the quality and
sincereness of his subjective and objective views.

[bujno]

pieter said:

I bring this post back to the front, because of the first reply of Adam, which I find interesting!
I am curious what Wojtek as a fellow Varsovian has to say about that. Do you share Adams view,
or do you have a differant Varsovian view? I miss Adams indepth replies, and the quality and
sincereness of his subjective and objective views.

Pieter, thank, you! There are two points I especially agree with: the aunts threas ( oh how I know that) and the line about appreciating everyday life in Warszawa more since lmoving to the green subarbs - I did so too!

[pieter]

Wojtek,

You are right even in this respect that not all 'old' or 'old-style' Warsowians are gone. Of course not. You're talking to a represebtative of a family that was here long enough to "remember" the pre-partition times But - believe me - some of my dear sweet old aunties are not that sweet towards the 'newcomers' although with all their distiguished might they try to behave in the 'civilised manner' (their words and up to the standards.

So you too have 'old-style' Varsowian aunts, who complain about the "New-Varsovians" from rural area's and other Polish cities and regions, who came after 1945. It is so strange for me that this "Old Varsovian" element can be so deeply rooted in a persons soul, mind, spirit, heart and a melancholic memory.
My mother told me how a whole generation of "Old Varsovian", youth, pupils, students, professors, academics, Warsaw intelligentsia was simply destroyed or erased, and that this loss of these people (who died from 1939 to 1944, in the Getto Uprising, the Warsaw Rising, and Concentrationcamps afterwards) left a huge gap, because in her view with the distruction of that Human capital a part of the Polish civilization was destroyed. That they (these people) were irreplacable.
The Gestapo and SS were bussy with a men hunt in the Western part of Poland, while the NKVD did their dirty work in the east, and sometimes they collaborated.
The Communist replaced the remainder of them by their Proletarian intelligentsia (Sovjet stile). This new intelligentsia, was trained in Marxist principles, Socialist
class thinking, and the economical ideas of Plan economy and the politics of Democratic centralism, and the Progressive elite of professional revolutionairies (Leninism).
Fortunately many Communist were more Polish patriots and secret Catholics than they
were real Communists, and these National communists have prevented that Poland became like the DDR, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, where Sovjet robots ruled.
This new intelligentsia lacked ofcourse the civilization and sophistication of the old intelligentsia of the interbellum, because that "Old" intelligentsia was raised in a (Polish) tradition of a great heritage of centuries, of culture and science of many generations. Educated great grandfathers, who past their knowledge to grandfathers, who gave the family tradition, skills and civilization ("The inner civilization, from the soul, hart and mind") to the fathers, who had built up libraries in their houses, organised musical meetings, went to the theatre and Opera, loved Polish and Universal poetry, literature and arts, went to Gymnasia and universaties, and lived in circles of the 19th and 20th century intelligentsia.
These fathers gave their knowledge to their sons, who passed it on to their sons.
I talk about the family lines of the "Old Varsovian" families who went back to the 18th and 19th centuries. In the second world war suddenly those Grandfathers, fathers and sons, but also the Grandmothers, mothers and daughters and their children, were erased, mentally tortured, and driven out of Warsaw in other parts of Poland where they got disconnected from Warsaw, and became part of other cities and regions. (like my granparents who moved to Poznan)
I talk about those who survived. In Warsaw Libraries, old books, art, culture and human civilization was lost in 1939, between 1939 and 1944 and during those dreadful days in august, september and early october 1944, things that can NEVER be replaced. The worst thing is that with the people that disappeared, part of the Soul of Poland disappeared. This is my mothers vision, who had it difficult to coap with the new realtiy in Poland, being raised in a traditional family. I have a bit less Romantic and pessimist vision then her about present day Poland and Warsaw, because I think in the decades the mix of "Old"- and "New" Varsovians made a new tradition, in fourty years, there were three or more generations who could develop a new Intelligentsia class or Academical world.
I also know that my mothers view is a little bit "Elitist", but you get that when you come from a Schlachtza family from the one side and bourgeois family (her mother from Southern-Polish origin), in which traditions are preserved, and where the "Old Poland", 1918-1939 was seen as the good time, the Prosporous years . It took me many words to explain how I was informed and how I feel about Warsaw. It is not easy to speak as an Outsider about a city that is not your city.
I am a slow reader and have now come to page 526 of Rising'44 from Norman Davies,
and it is about the terrible Stalinist repression in the fourtees and early fiftees.
As if the Nazi's not already had damaged enough Polish democratic politicians, resistance
fighters (AK soldiers) and Polish intellectuals were rounded up. Soldiers from the West who dared to come back from the West were inprisoned, tortured, humiliated in show trails and often executed. It was as if nothing of Old Poland was allowed to survive.
I understand now how damaging, humiliating and terrible those War years and Stalinist Post-war years must have been. The Proletarian culture had to replace the Old Varsovian Bourgeois and Aristocratic Intelligentsia and "Polish" Culture. which ofcourse was regarded reactionairy
and fascist (I use the words of the Polish Stalinsts and their Sovjet brethern of that
time). It makes me sick to read about the humiliation those good and honest people had to go through in that terrible years of Boleslaw Bierut's rule!

I hope that you understand it Wojtek, and that you can epxress your feeling about present Warsaw, and your "Old Varsovian" and "New Varsovian" family.
How united your family is an example of the New Varsovian tradition, with the
flavor and tradition of the "Old" preserved in it. Or am I to romantic now?

I have to frankly note that I started to enjoy everyday life in Warszawa much more since we moved to the suburb to wake up in the forest instead of smog, etc. etc... Life in Warszawa may be tiring - traffic jams, demostrations blocking the city and all the folklore that is not always as pleasant as could be...

How interesting that you share some things with Adam, I think in every mayor
city people enjoy or long for Green, quiet, cosy subburbs.
When I was in Warsaw my guest host showed me a beautiful part of
Mokotov, with pleasent appartmentblocks (painted in fresh yellow,
with mothern white, synthetic windows and doors).
They know how to built comfortable houses, flats and buildings
in Warsaw, and the City is expanding fast.

Pieter