The City with Scars

When I think about my trip across Europe through the lens of what my expectations were for each country, Poland is the one that was not only the most “blank”, but also turned out to be most unlike what few pre-formed impressions I had before we set foot there.

Enjoying some raspberries

My very first thought when getting off of the train was, “Such a gorgeous day!” That may sound kind of unremarkable, but after living for 5 years in a polluted megacity, being in an urban environment that is so full of green and with clear, blue skies is something that makes quite an impact. In fact, after we checked in with our hosts, we could not help but take our time walking to the subway. We stopped at a fruit stand near the train station, relaxed in the warm sun and indulged in some (what felt like) decadent snacking as we waiting for our train into the city center.

Our goal for the first day was to walk around the Old Town section of the city. And by “Old” I mean older than Beverly Hills 90210, but not Hill Street Blues.

A little too perfect?

Warsaw’s Old Town is gorgeous. Tragically, it is merely a reproduction of what it looked like before the Nazis leveled it during WWII. As you walk around, everything is so clean and beautiful… it reminded me of a Disney version of a city. It was true to its original form, to be sure, but it had an unmistakable aura of “fakeness”. It was too perfect.

Seeing such painstaking recreations all around, it made me think about just how traumatic WWII was. On top of all of the devastation and lives destroyed, the loss of so much physical history in such an ancient country must have taken an incredible toll on the population, which was made ever more horrible by the Soviet occupation that followed.

An aerial view of Old Town after the war on display in the city castle museum.

Part of my erroneous (if limited) expectations of Poland came from this period of Soviet occupation. Having come of age during the Cold War, my mind was filled with images of gray buildings, potholed streets and drooped shoulders on uniformly-dressed people. Now, before you go getting all “But that all ended back in 1989,” on me, I KNOW that these ideas/images come from what amounts to a generation ago. I wasn’t really expecting to see an ex-Soviet satellite still grappling with crushing poverty and colorless facades everywhere. But it was all that I had.

And it’s not only me. Since my visit there, every time I’ve told folks how much I loved Poland, almost to a person they’ve been surprised. It’s not that there is a pervasive feeling out there that Poland is a crappy place to go, but people generally have no idea what to expect. It has no reputation.

The Warsaw Uprising Museum

Warsaw was like a big wake up call. On my first day I was learning that the city was not only lousy with history, much like my hometown, but that it has eerie memorials to it all over the place, of which Old Town was only the biggest. After a stop for lunch (where I was completely blown away by the food and some incredible hard cider), we went over to the city’s museum dedicated to the Uprising in 1944.

This was an awesome place, though I had actually assumed that it would be dedicated to not just the 1944 city-wide uprising, but also to the Jewish ghetto uprising in 1943. There was acknowledgement of the ghetto and the resistance there at the start of the museum, but it was more to set the stage for what came later.

The Red occupation.

For history buffs like us, it was an incredible place to lose ourselves in… which we promptly did. (This would not be the first museum that we ended up spending much more time in than we had originally budgeted.) Full of incredible artifacts and detailed testimonies of what happened during the tragic battle to liberate Warsaw from the inside, it was an exciting, moving place. The final exhibit, which acknowledges the Soviet occupation that came right after the rebellion had been crushed (and the city had been leveled as punishment by the retreating Nazi forces). It was a wonderfully evocative space that brings home the tragedy of what happened.

Just down the street from this space came what was to be my only disappointment with Poland: The Ghetto. Or, rather, the lack of it.

Only a couple of blocks from where the beautiful Uprising museum stood as a monument to heroic resistance against the Nazis, the spot where the Jews of the day made their stand -and, arguably, inspired the city-wide revolt more than a year later- has only a marker on the sidewalk and a plaque on a wall to bring attention to it.

A memorial map of the Ghetto,
giving an idea of how small it was.

Marking the wall of the Jewish
Ghetto that stood from 1940-1943

When we came across this comparatively insignificant remembrance, I remembered the warnings of some of my Jewish friends who had told me that when they’d visited Poland they detected a slight, yet clearly present, undercurrent of anti-Semitism still in the air. It made me sad.

(NOTE: This lapse was partially rectified earlier this year by the opening of the new Warsaw Jewish Museum in the area.)

After some more walking around the city we finally headed back to our hosts’ home, where we enjoyed an awesome dinner with them and shared some lovely conversation. It was such a fantastic way to end an incredible (and tiring!) day.

On day 2 we decided to rent some bikes, and it turned out to be an awesome choice. We set off early and did a kind of circuit around Old Town, venturing out into the gorgeous parks and along the city’s river. I was blown away by just how wonderful Warsaw’s green spaces were, and moved by how many reminders of WWII there were everywhere.

The mine-clearers' memorial.

Scattered all across the city are markers and monuments. Some are small, while others can be quite large. They commemorate everything from specific atrocities committed by “Hitlerites” (I love how the Poles decided to call the invaders that, instead of “Germans”), to soldiers who were killed while trying to clear the city of mines.

Our final stop on the second day was at what would be the first in a series of what I ended up calling our “Holocaust Guilt Trip,” the Pawiak detention center and transfer depot,

Since it was closed on that day, the place was abandoned and almost empty, save for a single Chinese tourist who wandered through while we were there. This seemed fitting somehow, as it was a very haunting place; a crowed would have seemed wrong. We took our time and soaked it all in. Being the history junkie that I am I knew that I’d be totally engrossed by WWII sites like this, but I wasn’t really prepared for the utter sorrow that the place evoked.

 

It was kind of like I was outside myself. I am aware that all of this happened in the past, so there is nothing that I can do about it. Part of me said that I shouldn’t feel saddened or angry by it, but another part of me wanted to feel it. I wanted to bear witness to what happened, in whatever limited way that I could.

And so we lingered.

After a while we drifted back towards our bikes for the ride back to the café where we’d rented them in the morning, but we decided to stop in one more beautiful park along the way, to kind of balance out the sadness that we’d just dipped ourselves into. As if on cue, however, a rainstorm blew in and caused us to take shelter under a building on the edge of the park, forcing us to sit and stew with our dark feelings for a little while longer.

Eventually the clouds passed and we got our time in the lush beauty of yet another park before it was time to head home for the night. And as we stepped off of the train to walk back to our hosts’ home we were greeted with a brilliant rainbow, and I couldn’t help but feel like this was Warsaw in a nutshell: Gorgeous spaces with dark shadows that sometimes creep up on you, but that are never around for long before the sun returns to push them back again.

I wondered what our next stop, Gdansk, could possibly have in store to top this physically and emotionally exhausting city.

Wake me when we get to Gdansk!

*NOTE: To see the full-size version of the pictures included here and the entire album of photos from our time in Warsaw, with lots more details and stories, click here.

Interregnum: My Night in Europe’s Last Dictatorship

On a trip that would take us across a continent exclusively by rail, when all was said and done it came as a surprise that the nicest ride that we had ended up being our first. The journey from Moscow to Warsaw can take two routes: Through the Baltic states and down through Poland, or a more-or-less straight shot that cuts through Belarus. Given our schedule and the fact that we didn’t want to have to change trains in the middle of the night, we opted for the train that goes through the heart of Europe’s last remaining dictatorship.

This decision had ramifications well before we ever stepped onto our flight out of Beijing. Being the isolated, totalitarian state that it is, Belarus is one of the few countries in Europe -including Russia- that requires Americans to get permission to enter in advance. (Conversely, its close ties with Moscow made it the only place along our route that Alya did NOT need a visa to enter. It’s kind of like Russia’s Canada that way.) This meant that I had to apply for a visa at the Belorussian embassy in Beijing.

Since the country is so isolated there isn’t much demand for visas. As a result, the visa section is tiny: just 1 desk with a single consular assigned to it part time. I had to take a day off from work and go to the embassy early to make sure that I didn’t get stuck in a long line. I didn’t, but I was told that the fee for the visa would be just under ¥1,100. Mind you, I was applying for a transit visa that would not actually allow me to get off of the overnight train at any of the stops. In effect, I was being charged an exorbitant toll to pass through the country on my way to Poland.

It seemed so very silly until I realized partway through the process that given the many trade restrictions placed upon the country, visa fees are a key way that the regime can obtain foreign currency. I makes sense. It’s stupid and self-defeating, but it makes sense.

Combined with the fee for my Russian visa -which was ¥1,400 for 2 days- the cost of transit permissions on my first stops alone was almost as much as the plane ticket from Beijing to Moscow.

None of this was on my mind as we set off, though. I was barely keeping my eyes open when the boarding call came and we embarked. I’d had a long night out partying and walking along the Moskva River the night before, and then an early morning getting up to meet Alya’s family for brunch. I was looking forward to sleeping through most of our 13-hour trip and arriving in Warsaw refreshed.

Our cabin was quite spacious. Designed for 3 passengers, one side had a couch that converted into a bed and two fold-out beds stowed against the wall above it. The other side consisted of a wide closet, a sink and a small table. There were only 2 of us so it felt like a perfect -if cozy- fit.

My body wanted nothing more than to lay right down and go to sleep, but Alya wasn’t tired (she’d had a full night’s sleep) and I was excited and wanted to chat for a bit. After a little while Alya couldn’t wait to unwrap the pizza that her mother had made for us and dig in. I love Alya’s mom’s cooking, so I could hardly blame her.

Yummy stuffed Russian pizza!

After just a few bites it was off to dreamland for me, though. I slept solidly all of the way through Belarus, until we came to the border crossing… which is where things got interesting.

We pulled into the station at Brest, which lies just across of the border from Poland, at about 3:30am. The first thing that struck me as odd was the fact that we’d gone through all of Belarus without a visa check. Why not stop us at the Russian border to check our passports?

Immigration agents got onto the train and went from cabin to cabin. The agent who came to our door was a gruff, mean-looking (and sounding) older woman. In the US we’d call her a “battle axe”. (I had fun explaining that one to Alya.) She barked at us in Belorussian and we handed over our passports. She took them and added them to the large pile that she was already holding and then, after a few questions about illegal items that we should not have, she moved on to the next cabin. Eventually she got off of the train and took everybody’s passports back to an immigration office somewhere while we waited.

This is when the train pulled into warehouse of sorts where we’d have to change undercarriages.

This part needs a bit of explanation: Back in pre-WWII days, the Russians changed the width of their train tracks and made them smaller than what was then the de-facto European standard. This was a strategy to slow the advance of German troops and materiel during an expected invasion. The standards have never been changed. Today, this means that whenever a train crosses the border between Russia and Europe they need to swap out their undercarriages.

This process went car by car and took at least 2 hours. Afterwards, the train rolled back into the main station with a wider set of wheels, the immigration officials came back on and handed our passports back to us, with entry and exit stamps added, and we were on our way.

Within a few minutes we were crossing into Poland… and being shadowed by immigration officers.

It's the fuzz!

The difference in architecture and level of wealth from one side of the border to the other was stark. We went from neat, yet small, homes in hamlets on one side, to familiar McMansions and nice cars in suburban subdivisions on the other, all in a matter of moments. It truly was like passing into another world. Given the obvious difference in living standards, I can understand the need for the Poles to be vigilant about people trying to cross into their country secretly. If I lived right across a river from what looked like a land of riches compared to my hardscrabble existence, I would probably try to get to the other side, too.

Logically, unlike in Belarus, we pulled into a train station minutes after crossing into Poland. Customs officers were all lined up on the platform, decked out in heavy gear. The agent that covered our car came to the door much more quickly than his Belorussian counterpart had, and I quickly saw why: Instead of collecting passports and taking them off somewhere, he had a small box strapped to his belt. It looked like a big credit card reader but it turned out to be a device that let him swipe passports and pull up our information and display it on a screen strapped to his arm. He took one look at my US passport, swiped it, double-checked my photo, put a stamp in it, handed it back to me, smiled and said, “Welcome to Poland,” in accented English.

Alya’s check-in took an extra moment as he checked her visa, but within a matter of a couple of minutes we had both been registered as having entered Europe. It was a shockingly pleasant experience, especially when compared with the inefficient, brusque service that we'd received a few hours before. 

Within about 30 minutes we were on our way again. The rest of the journey was uneventful and I marveled at the beauty of Poland as I looked out the window at the countryside sliding by. The vast expanses of plains and small rolling hills covered in lush, fertile green were striking. I’d done plenty of reading up on all of the countries that we would be visiting on our tip and I expected the scenery to be that of a breadbasket of a country, but my subconscious was still expecting everything to be in shades of gray.

You can take a kid out of the Cold War, but you can’t take the Cold War propaganda out of the kid.

As we finally pulled into a station on the edge of Warsaw I got ever more excited. I could hardly contain my thrill. I’d been worked up to the point of sleeplessness before Alya and I took our flight to Moscow, but that was a place that I had already been to. It was her home turf. We were surrounded by her family and friends.

And so we stepped off of the train into the bright, clear Warsaw morning, into a city -and a country- that neither of us had ever seen before. I finally felt like our adventure was really starting.

So... Now what?