To travel the world as an American in this day and age is still a privileged experience. The world is written in our alphabet. Our fashion is the fashion. And our occasionally silly domestic affairs make news in every foreign land.
The reverse is of course not true. No one visiting New York is offended that signs aren’t written in Mandarin (it is spoken by over a billion people).
And so when I was asked what Americans think of Poland, I had to answer truthfully: “they don’t”. I guess for this reason I had no expectations, great or otherwise about this nation.
In fact I hadn’t any excitement at all coming here. It was simply an overland route from Scandinavia to the Balkans. I figured I might see a few sights along the way.
Boy did I!
The global pandemic made me an unintentional resident of the land of John Paul II.
And you know what I found out? Poland is a pretty darn good place to live.
Put most simply it’s the perfect ‘half & half’ of Eastern and Western Europe.
I must confess though that my initial impression of this country was decidedly unfavorable.
A damp dark lifeless city. Concrete. Hostel guests smoking in the bathrooms amidst multifold signs to the contrary.
Daylight brought little change in this perspective. A dull town square, more concrete.
Once I got on the tourist trail, so to speak, things got better. Gdańsk is fascinating, even if the March weather was a blend of rain, sun and horizontal hailstorms. At this stage the pandemic panic was creeping into the back of everyone’s consciousness as we maintained our normalcy on the surface.
I shared my hostel room with a Pole on a bit of a do-nothing-and-relax vacation. He thought himself better at English than he actually was. Still we managed to converse. He kept insisting that everything was fine, it was all a big scare, and then would laugh the uneasiest laugh I have ever heard. His family must have been practicing that laugh for generations under communism.
My third morning I awoke listening to a still-in-bed phone call from the next room over. An American, the kind of kid who runs away to Europe because Boston isn’t far enough, insisting to her parents that everything was fine.
At the tourist information center they told me that all the museums would be closed from... today. In fact they had already closed a few hours before. Just that morning I had gone to at least one museum in Poland, good thing.
The next day the panic hit the populace. I whiled away the hours waiting on the rain. When it finally cleared it was after dark and the moon was peeking it’s head above the horizon. I set out to see the old earthwork fortifications of the city, now a park along a waterway.
I walked past 6-story blocks of Soviet housing, across broken cement and past barking dogs.
I stopped at a supermarket to buy a donut. The locals were panic-shopping. I watched with serenity and amazement. Their panic shops were so tame, comparing them in my mind to ludicrous American behavior.
I walked into the park. The moon reflecting on the mirrored surface was so beautiful that I barely made it in before I just had to sit and meditate. I sat on a bench, closed my eyes and began to feel the presence of my breath. Then I felt something on my left foot. I startled to my feet. As my vision came to I perceived a fox, just as startled as I, moving away. I grabbed my backpack, said a few exclamations of shock, and carried on my way.
Fortunately the fox bite had been of the investigatory type and not an attack. Also I was wearing a shoe.
Surprisingly this incident neither rekindled my initial displeasure with this country nor inspired me to consider the spiritual significance of such an encounter.
It was time to move on.
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