Poland – 1992
This story, about our trip to Poland in 1992, was written in April, 2018.
In 1992 the Iron Curtain had been down less than three years and we wanted to see a former Soviet satellite before there were major political and economic changes. We chose Poland for a two-week visit, and entered through East Berlin.
We flew Paris to Berlin, where we spent two nights recovering from jet lag and exploring Germany’s impressive capital city We found a good hotel in East Berlin, near the Brandenberg Gate and Unter den Linden, the main boulevard in East Berlin. The wall was still being taken down and we snagged several chunks as souvenirs.
Our plan was to rent a car in Berlin, drive into Poland for two weeks, and then return to Berlin to fly home. Before getting the car we went to ADAC, the German Auto Club, and used our AAA card to get some maps. They were very friendly and glad to be helping auto club members from California. They gave us several maps, and matter-of-factly said we likely would not be returning the car in Germany, even though that was our intention. They said the car would assuredly be stolen in Poland, which, of course, didn’t happen. The car was a new Audi and we returned it intact with no damage.
They also told us to stock up on fruit, especially bananas, before crossing the border, since fresh food was scarce in Poland; another myth. In 1992, just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Poland and other former satellite countries were considered to be primitive and dangerous by West Germans. After driving for two weeks throughout the country, we came to realize that was not at all true.
The Polish border is only a few hours east of Berlin, and as we drove through Eastern Germany, which was only just beginning to recover from Soviet rule, we saw roads that were being torn apart to make way for new autobahns and construction of new buildings. At the border between East and West Germany, we passed through a guard station that had recently been abandoned, with East German army uniforms hanging on racks. We had the feeling that the soldiers wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
In 1992 there was no Internet and few, if any, travel books on Poland. Using our maps we laid out a route taking us through the cities we wanted to see, which included Warsaw, Krakow, Zakopane, Lublin and Gdansk. Of course there was no GPS, so we navigated the old-fashioned way, following the map. We decided that the road signs for many Polish cities looked like an eye chart, with a jumble of letters, and pronunciation was intimidating. So we eased the task by using just the first few letters, and that worked fine.
From Berlin we drove southeast, through Dresden, the city that suffered the worst firebombing in World War II, and we entered Poland in the south, headed toward Krakow. On the way to Krakow, we decided we’d first visit Oswiecim, where the Auschwitz concentration camp is located. We visited the museum, horrified to see the thousands of eyeglasses, suitcases and clothing taken from the victims before they were gassed and cremated. I thought it strange that the camp was so small, and didn’t understand how so many people could have been killed there, until we were told about Birkenau, a huge camp a few miles away, where most of the killing took place. We left Auschwitz with many ugly thoughts about what happened there, and headed for Krakow.
Krakow is Poland’s second largest city, has an enchanting medieval old town dating back to the tenth century and an interesting Jewish quarter. It was chosen by the Nazis as their Polish base, so did not suffer the damage that was inflicted on Warsaw. The old town centers on Europe’s largest market square, Rynek Glowny. The city sits at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, not far from the Czech border, is considered to have a mythical atmosphere and is a historical and architectural gem. We only stayed two nights and vowed to return so we could more fully explore the city.
While walking through the market square, I was approached by a woman who was clearly a gypsy. As she came closer, she lifted her blouse revealing her breasts. She kept coming closer, as I backed off, telling her to go away. While I’m sure she didn’t understand English, she did recognize my tone of voice and moved away. It was then that I realized that with gypsies, or others looking for a handout, you can’t let them get close, because they’re usually adept at pickpocketing, and if they get close enough to touch you, your wallet or something else will disappear. That experience served us well on future travels.
From Krakow we took a side trip to Zakopane, a small town in the south of Poland, near the Czech border, at the foot of the Tatra mountains (part of the Carpathians), a two-hour drive from Krakow. We had read that it was a lovely ski village and is regarded as the winter capital of Poland. Since we were visiting in early May, skiing was finished, and the town was quite lovely and peaceful. We found one of the many small chalets and relaxed with a local beer, sitting by the fire.
We had read about the Wieliczka Salt Mine, outside of Krakow, and decided it was worth a visit. It’s a fascinating labyrinth of chambers and tunnels, carved from salt blocks, as deep as 300 feet below ground, and reached by elevator. We took a guided tour and saw many statues and monuments carved by hand from salt formations, including a chapel built from salt over a thirty- year period, by one man and his brother. Quite amazing.
I celebrated my 52nd birthday in a little town, not far from Krakow, staying one night in a small, strange “hotel” run by two elderly Polish women, who seemed very “Soviet.” We were the only guests and it was a bit creepy, but a bit of an adventure. The two women didn’t speak a word of English, or German, and I used hand signs and pointing to words in our Polish phrase book, so they understood we wanted a room for the night. They were amused by our being foreigners and had no idea what an American was. We had a very simple birthday dinner and a bottle of Russian vodka, for a total cost of three dollars. The room was five dollars, all in zlotys, of course. The exchange rate in 1992 was 13,500 zlotys to the dollar; the exchange rate in 2018 was 3.5 zlotys to the dollar.
In the morning when I took a shower in the decrepit bathroom, with leaky plumbing, I had to remind myself that WW II was over and I was safe in a small hotel run by two nice old ladies. What came out of the shower was water and not gas that would kill me. We were close enough to several concentration camps so perhaps the horror lingers, at least in my imagination.
Before heading to Warsaw, we went northeast to the city of Lublin, located about 100 miles from the Ukrainian border. Lublin is a mid-sized city with a well-preserved medieval old town, going back to the thirteenth century, and its buildings were better preserved than Warsaw’s, since it had less Word War II damage. We stayed in a very Soviet hotel, built in the 1930’s, with an elevator so scary that we chose to walk up five flights of stairs rather than risk disaster on the elevator. For us, it was an example of the shoddy, and ugly, Soviet architecture.
On the outskirts of town, we saw hundred of refugees at the central bus station, waiting their turn to flee from points east, including Russia and Ukraine. What we were seeing was the beginning of what was to become a mass exodus of people leaving the east and heading west for a new non-communist future.
I always had a curious desire to go into Russia. Since we were so close to Ukraine, which I considered part of “Russia,” we inquired about getting a visa and driving to Lvov, about two hours from Lublin. We learned that was not possible because there was at least a several day waiting period for a visa, so Ukraine would have to wait for another time (and we did visit Ukraine twelve years later in 2004).
Our main destination was Warsaw, the capital and largest city in Poland. Before World War II, Warsaw was considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world and was often referred to as the Paris of Eastern Europe. That changed in 1939, with the German invasion of Poland and massacre of the large Jewish population. Herding Jews into the Warsaw ghetto and then deporting them to concentration camps for extermination, led to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The savage German reprisals resulted in destruction of 85% of the city’s buildings and left the city in ruins.
An interesting side note is the fact that the Red army, which in the summer of 1944 was just outside of Warsaw, was ordered by Stalin to not enter the city and help the Polish people fight the Nazis. This resulted in the Germans massacring 200,000 poles and decimation of the Polish resistance fighters, facilitating the Soviet occupation of Poland.
When we visited in 1992, which was almost fifty years after the end of WW II, most of the city had been rebuilt. While almost all the old town buildings were destroyed, an effort was made to reconstruct them, keeping the original architectural style. The destruction was so complete that paintings of city streets done by a Venetian painter in the 1770’s were used to recreate historic buildings. We haven’t been back to Warsaw in the 26 years since our visit, but we’ve heard and read that it is now one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities and is ranked as one of the wealthiest and livable cities in Central and Eastern Europe. What a nice comeback, especially given the many years of Soviet control.
One highlight of our time in Warsaw was a visit to the Warsaw opera house, the Teatr Wielki, which, in 1992, had the largest opera and ballet stage in Europe. Because Warsaw had only recently been set free from Soviet domination, there were few autos and everything was generally in a state of disarray. We drove our rental Audi right up to the opera house steps, marched up to the ticket office and bought two tickets for an afternoon ballet performance, for just a few dollars (in zlotys), left the car parked in front of the opera house steps, enjoyed the performance in an almost empty theatre, and then left. No police, no tickets, no questions asked. I’m sure all that changed quickly, but it was a nice experience.
We also visited the National Museum in Warsaw, which had recently been renovated, and was one of the best museums we had ever seen. We learned a great deal about Polish history and were awed at what that country has gone through over the millennia. Being surrounded by powerful nations like Germany, Russia, Austria, Hungary and Sweden, meant they were constantly under attack and occupation. The year that I am writing this, 2018, was the 100th anniversary of Polish independence (1918).
Near the end of our Polish journey, we visited Gdansk, at one point called Danzig, when it was controlled by Germany. It’s a port city located on the Baltic, and is the center of the world’s amber trade. Amber, sometimes referred to as Baltic Gold, is from the resin of forests that grew in the region 40 million years ago, and is found in the Baltic Sea to the east of Gdansk. Strong winds and currents wash the amber ashore.
Gdansk is famous for being the city where Lech Walsea, during Soviet times and while working at the Lenin Shipyard, became a trade union activist and co-founded the Solidarity trade-union movement, which eventually led to parliamentary elections after the Soviet Union was dissolved. The airport is named after him.
In Gdansk, we stayed two nights at the Grand Hotel, an elegant and luxurious manor built in 1924, with a private beach facing the Baltic Sea. Since 1992 was the end of the Soviet era, and Poland was in a state of flux, everything was incredibly inexpensive. After looking at a basic room, priced at about twenty-five dollars, we asked to look at the nicest suite they had, and rented it for less than one hundred dollars. The room and hotel were a special treat. There were few guests in the massive hotel, the huge staff consisted of ex-soviet employees now entering the uncertain world of private enterprise, and we were treated like royalty. Previous guests included Marlena Dietrich, Fidel Castro, Greta Garbo and Charles De Gaulle. A fun and unexpected experience.
After Gdansk, we drove southwest into Germany, stopping at a small café to have what was the worst “pizza” ever. The guy put some tomato sauce and cheese on a piece of white bread and microwaved it, resulting in an inedible, but memorable, glob. We headed for Berlin, spent a night in a hotel in East Berlin and the next day boarded our flight to SF by way of Paris. Thus ended our Polish adventure.
Art Faibisch, April, 2018