Post by Jaga on May 16, 2008 19:59:01 GMT -7
Are Poles faster than Brits in changing their economy and market to EU?
interesting article:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/15/poland.eu
In Krakow, Poland's Oxford, the Brits don't have a good reputation. They pile in with easyJet for drunken hen, stag and thug weekends, carousing loudly, half-naked, through the cobbled streets of this conservative, Catholic city. And they call it "kraking". In some bars, I was told, there are signs saying No Brits Allowed. Even the Germans are more welcome.
In Oxford, England's Krakow, the Poles have a good reputation. They are students in the city's universities and language schools, managers, waiters and waitresses in its bars and cafes, plumbers and carpenters. They don't go drunkenly "oxing" down its cobbled streets. Through their presence, and that of so many of their compatriots, as well as through the countries' new partnership in the key institutions of the west, Britain and Poland have become more intertwined than ever before. Yet they take relatively little notice of each other, compared with the attention each separately pays to France and Germany, let alone to the United States. The relationship between the two peoples has traditionally been and generally remains a friendly one - but it's a neglected friendship. (That's one reason I came to Krakow, as co-organiser of a Polish-British Round Table, to try to cultivate the friendship a little more.)
Our historical experiences, and our perspectives on contemporary Europe, are still very different. Go to the extraordinary Czartoryski Museum and you will find, close to Leonardo's exquisite Lady with an Ermine, a large empty picture frame containing a photograph of a missing Raphael. Why is it missing? Because the Nazi governor of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, took it with him when he fled before the advancing Red Army. When his American captors finally opened the box it was meant to be in, they found it was empty. To this day, no one knows where it is. It's probably the most valuable missing picture from a private collection in the world. You don't get that kind of story at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Any Pole over the age of 30 remembers what it was like to be cut off from the west, queueing for hours to get a visa, treated like a second-class citizen, possessed only of a few hoarded dollars or deutschmarks: the poor cousins, shivering on the doorstep.
Memories like these help explain why Poland, unlike Britain, is so enthusiastic about its membership of the European Union. We were there for Europe Day, May 9, and the media were full of it. There was a by now traditional Robert Schuman parade in Warsaw, with 10,000 people singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy in Polish.
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interesting article:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/15/poland.eu
In Krakow, Poland's Oxford, the Brits don't have a good reputation. They pile in with easyJet for drunken hen, stag and thug weekends, carousing loudly, half-naked, through the cobbled streets of this conservative, Catholic city. And they call it "kraking". In some bars, I was told, there are signs saying No Brits Allowed. Even the Germans are more welcome.
In Oxford, England's Krakow, the Poles have a good reputation. They are students in the city's universities and language schools, managers, waiters and waitresses in its bars and cafes, plumbers and carpenters. They don't go drunkenly "oxing" down its cobbled streets. Through their presence, and that of so many of their compatriots, as well as through the countries' new partnership in the key institutions of the west, Britain and Poland have become more intertwined than ever before. Yet they take relatively little notice of each other, compared with the attention each separately pays to France and Germany, let alone to the United States. The relationship between the two peoples has traditionally been and generally remains a friendly one - but it's a neglected friendship. (That's one reason I came to Krakow, as co-organiser of a Polish-British Round Table, to try to cultivate the friendship a little more.)
Our historical experiences, and our perspectives on contemporary Europe, are still very different. Go to the extraordinary Czartoryski Museum and you will find, close to Leonardo's exquisite Lady with an Ermine, a large empty picture frame containing a photograph of a missing Raphael. Why is it missing? Because the Nazi governor of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, took it with him when he fled before the advancing Red Army. When his American captors finally opened the box it was meant to be in, they found it was empty. To this day, no one knows where it is. It's probably the most valuable missing picture from a private collection in the world. You don't get that kind of story at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Any Pole over the age of 30 remembers what it was like to be cut off from the west, queueing for hours to get a visa, treated like a second-class citizen, possessed only of a few hoarded dollars or deutschmarks: the poor cousins, shivering on the doorstep.
Memories like these help explain why Poland, unlike Britain, is so enthusiastic about its membership of the European Union. We were there for Europe Day, May 9, and the media were full of it. There was a by now traditional Robert Schuman parade in Warsaw, with 10,000 people singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy in Polish.
...