Pieter, Kaima - thanks for a nice welcome!
I could not even have my cellphone on the board in Poland. Happily I unpacked it in Chicago during luggage control and then could call my husband. Polish restrictions are worse than American.
Pieter, I met a Polish girl who lives in Amsterdam during my trip. She workd as the baby sitter. I am not sure whether she is legally or illegally in Holland. She was very nice, she told only good things about Holland.... she mentioned that in Holland everything has to be perfect and this is one of the reason she likes visiting Poland from time to time where life is more chaotic and disordered
Jaga,
Exsactly the same happened to me in Warsaw on the day I took my return flight to Amsterdam on August 10. The friend of my mother called with Chopin airport, because
of the worldwide problems on that day concerning the terror threat in London Heathrow.
The Polish personel told her passengers could not take cell phones and Laptops on board.
When I came on board it turned out to be that other passengers used laptops and cell phones, so the secuarity wasn't that strict as I thought.
Many passengers who could not fligh to Londen, took a plane to Amsterdam, to try to
reach London from there. I think I arrived at Warsaw airport at 15.45, the same evening
back in the Netherlands I heared that Polish security forces surrounded and closed the Warsaw airport. I was very lucky then.
I think the Polish girl from Amsterdam could be right, and that's why Poland is
so charming. But I must say Warsaw looked clean, well organised and sophisticated.
Like in Krakow I had to get used to Modern Poland, in which some things look
like Western-Europe. Some supermarkets and Shopping malls were even bigger
than in the Netherlands. But that can have to do with the size, Poland has many
larger cities. I liked to see well dressed people, the selfawareness and independance
of young Poles (I saw many Young Urban Professionals in Warsaw), the improvement
of the infrastructure, and the great achievement of renovating old buildings, churches
and Palaces as if they were new (with the maintainance of the old charm ofcourse).
And to my opinion they are succeeding in building a Modern Financial district with
good buildings. As I said I hope that they will manage to expand the Modern centrum
block with Palac Kultury i Nauki, Sala Kongresowa, City center, Warszawa Centralna
and the Warsaw towers to the West into the direction of the Uprising Museum,
Prosta street, the Mirów and Wola area's.
Warsaw is the Capital and an important Cultural, political and religious centre,
but also of great economical and financial importance.
So I hope that Warsaw can be the focuspoint of Polish economical growth,
that it attracts more Polish companies from other parts of Poland and in the
same time is interesting for foreign investors, entrepreneurs and so Capital.
I saw both good and negative elements in that great city, that old (Pre-war,
wartime and Communist time) elements were stil present.
In the Mokotow area where my grandparents lived the people living there
where the family members of the UB people that replaced the original
inhabitants (told my host).
I witnessed the resentment of my Mother and her Warsaw friend where I stayed
against the new Poland after the war, because of the power of the new Proletarian
"Socialist" class which replaced their "sophisticated" (educated) class.
In that time not your achievements, education and experiance counted
but your class background. Working class was good, (old) Intelligentsia was bad.
The old aristocracy (what was left of the intelligentsia), Middle and high class
had a hard time after the war. People who had fought in the AK or in the West
were persecuted, accused of counter-revolutionary activities, tortured, spend
years in prison and many of them were executed.
In Warsaw members of my mothers friend family and uncles of mine who traded
in the first years after the war, were put in prison in the end of the fourties and
early fiftees. Her father like my grandfather refused to become a party member.
Her parents who were kicked out of Mokotow moved to Gdynia and returned
to Warsaw in the late fiftees. A cousin of her died in a concentration camp
after the evacuation of Warsaw in 1944.
I tasted the past and old wounds in Warsaw of the Old Varsovians that were not cured yet, that the devision of Poland is stil present in the hearts of old Poles and
that because of that they are distrustful of people from abroad.
I have to tell you that I wintnessed a little bit of intolerance, xenophobia
and a fierce sort of Nationalism (Polonism) I have never witnessed before.
People don't easily trust people and therefor can be distant, and that is
maybe an heritage of the Communist era.
But I was in the privilaged position that I stayed in the Ambassey area, where
it was easy for me to find my way. I had a good orientation in Warsaw.
The great handicap is that I don't speak the language, and therefor you
emediately feel a stranger, a foreigner, someone from abroad.
I wonder what the influence of Radio Mariya and it's television station is in Poland,
because I had to hear and watch it daily, since my guest host listened and watched it
daily. It was interesting but also worrying to see it, because I heard so much
about it in the the Netherlands and on this Forum.
Some Polish people (like my guest host) think that it is good and independant, because it
is not controlled by the big companies or the state, and because it is the voice
of National Poland and old fashionate Catholicism.
Priests were interviewing people in the TV studio, and all the time their were religious
songs, people in traditional folk dress dancing and Patriotic news.
Because I can't understand it I could not judge the content of it, and I was not shocked
by the images I saw, it only looked old fashionate to me.
People can call and say anything on Radio Mariya in special talk radio hourse, without sensorship (at least that was what my mothers friend told me).
Next to Radio Mariya TV you have many commerical and Polish state
tv chanals and French, CNN/SKY/BBC, German, Ukranian and Russian tv,
Polish MTV, a Polish fashion chanal and even a Polish women chanal.
This Polish women chanal is an uniquely Polish phenomenon and a very
smart and nice idea acording to the 28 year old daughter of my Mothers
friend. This women represents the new generation, with commercial
jobs and a Modern lifestile.
Walking, driving and sitting in Bus 116 (taking the Royal way from
Wilanow to the Old town) I witnessed that the most billboards where
of LPR. Secondly was the PSL and third PiS.
I walked past the SLD headquaters in Rozbrat street.
I saw graffiti of radical Communist action groups on the walls of buildings
in the centre.
I saw that the churches were full on saturday, because of many mariages
and on sunday evening, when I went to a mass in the baroque student
church in Krakowskie Przedmiescie.
The Catholic church is very present in the Catholic country Poland, but I
had the impression that I wintnessed differant kinds of Catholicsm.
The more intellectual liberal wing of my preferance next to the more
traditional and reactionairy ones. To my suprise the German pope was
everywhere on signs, advertisements, inside and outside churches.
I saw many people who were starting their pilgrimage to Chestochova,
dousens of busses, trucks, old people and young people, Scouts,
families, students and workers.
Warsaw and Poland are on the way, it is an adult city in an old nation.
I saw the dark side of the past, but saw the positive changes of the
present and the bright future in front of the Poles.
Pieter