We all gathered in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel at ‘O-Dark-thirty: Martha, Craig, Allen, Brian, Scott and a new face – a young woman who spoke English, German, and POLISH! Her name was Anna, and unbeknownst to me, Martha had met her while shopping the day before. Martha was a great shopper, and had shopped the whole world. Martha was also the all-American girl who attracted people wherever she went. She was very friendly and outgoing, so it didn’t surprise me that she had befriended and actually hired this girl to go with us to Gdansk and act as our translator.
We all walked down the street to the train station in Warsaw. If you’re not careful – or you don’t speak English – you can buy tickets for the wrong train. We could recognize the city name of “Gdansk” – but we couldn’t discern “Express” from “Slow.” But lucky for us, Anna kept us from making that silly mistake. The Slow train stopped at every little point (town or station) between Warsaw and Gdansk. The Express train stopped twice in Warsaw, and once in a small town outside of Gdansk (where all the roofs housed huge storks), and then in Gdansk. So without Anna, we might have been on that stinking train for 5 hours instead of just 3.
I refer to the train as “Stinking” because it really did stink. People in Poland had had such a difficult life. Personal hygiene falls way down on the list when you are struggling just to survive from one day to the next. I remember one time when I was on the train from Warsaw to Gdansk and a TV-Gdansk news anchor and her boyfriend shared a first class compartment with me. This woman stunk to high-heaven. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure that she had never heard of deodorant. I was physically ill by the time we got off the train. Another time, I was sharing a cab with another American businessman, and he started laughing so hard because the cab’s mirror sported a little car deodorant tree, but the cab driver probably hadn’t bathed in a month. Well, we are all so uppity about this – but the fact is, this was just evidence of how primitively these people were forced live. When you can’t afford bread – you don’t buy deodorant. In fact – women couldn’t even buy tampons without a prescription!!
I used to think you could tell how civilized a country was by how often you had to tip people. Case-in-point. When we visited Cairo, Egypt, we had to tip the guy to watch our guide’s car while we were visiting a Mosque, and then we had to tip guys everywhere we went in the Mosque on every floor, for every tomb, etc. Then there was the tourist police that made sure you tipped everyone, i.e. the parking lot guy, the grounds-keeper, and on and on. Later, I revised my theory to gauge the advancement of a civilization to be based on how well they treated their women. Cairo would still lose – but the communists help validate the theory. While Polish women were treated with more deference and respect than American women by the men in their respective countries, the communist government had all kinds of silly laws prejudiced against women. The civilization was at a literal stand-still by the fall of The Berlin Wall.
We managed to enjoy our train ride thoroughly in spite of the smell because we had a chance to relax and see the vast fields of saffron, the prairie-like countryside, and chit-chat with the average Poles that were sharing this ride with us. It was fun to get their take on the democratic changes going on in their country.
The average Pole at that time was either very excited about the prospects of democracy and free market economies, or terrified into constantly grumbling against it. While Poland’s history is one of democracy to an outrageous degree, here was an entire generation that had grown up like the Jews in Egypt – with the rulers taking care of their every need (i.e. cigarettes and Vodka); guiding their every footstep (who will work where, and when); and controlling everything from historical references to current events, including what was taught in schools; the food and clothing rations; styles, music, books, television, all culture, etc., etc., etc..
The generation left over from World War II that could still remember what Poland stood for were tired, had all but given up, and had become dependent on the nanny-state to take care of them. The Polish equivalent to the baby-boomer's had adopted the fondness to intellectualize everything, and blame everything on the current regime, because it was all they could do. They knew they lived deplorable lives, and had all the arguments as to why and how; who was to blame, and the prescription for remedy. But as soon as the source of their woes was removed, and they were required to hold themselves up, they were having a more-than-difficult time shifting from intellectualizing their lives into the action needed to live their lives. The excuses for their plight no longer existed – it was terrifying for them. They did not have the tools to go from the creation of their world in their minds to the physical action needed to realize their world in the flesh.
This phenomenon even afflicted some of the country’s most ardent supporters of Solidarity, including Anna Walyntenovicz and Jadwiga Staniszskis. Anna is quoted in the NY Times as she reflects on the new democracy in 1999: ''We wanted better money, improved work safety, a free trade union and my job back,'' Walentynowicz, now 70, recalls. ''Nobody wanted a revolution. And when I see what the so-called revolution has brought -- mass poverty, homelessness, self-styled capitalists selling off our plants and pocketing the money -- I think we were right,'' (Roger Cohen, The Accommodations of Adam Michnik, November 7, 1999).
Jadwiga still lectures and has written many books about what happened and why. She is probably not as disappointed as Anna, but she was disappointed in the outcome of the negotiations of 1980 (21 X Tak). She felt their demands did not go far enough, and that they could have asked for so much more. She is still a scholar, and remains above the fray, as she did during the communist regime.
It was the student generation that the implementation of democracy and personal freedoms fell to. People like Andrjez, Kuba, Janick, Jerzy Koblynski and Julian Skelnik had been able to recognize the lies they were being taught in school, and had formed underground universities where they could learn historical truths and the English language. The students came together with the Intelligentsia like Jacek Kuron and Bronislaw Geremek, along with the artists of their time (Piotr, Teresa and Pino – friends I would make later), and hung on to the truth until it broke through the darkness they were imprisoned in.
But they didn’t stop there. They didn’t achieve the over-throw of their government just to walk away. They stayed and got elected to Parliament where they could change the ridiculous communist laws; they formed private enterprise, and vehicles to facilitate private enterprise; and worked tirelessly to make their politics match their sudden free market economy. They may not have succeeded as they would have wanted to, but it was their destiny – their own choice – and they had this small window of opportunity to get it right. We were looking through that window, and we knew it. It was the most amazing time in my life, and in the lives of millions of people who lived it every day.
So the rest of the day was spent placing flowers at the base of the Monument to the fallen strikers/workers at the shipyard in Gdansk, and exploring main street. I had never been there, and was amazed to see that most of this part of town had survived World War II. It was storybook, picturesque: It seemed enchanted – cobblestone town square with the centerpiece fountain; a platz surrounded by shops, cathedrals, and the Maritime Museum on the Baltic sea. It was quiet now, but almost 10 years ago, it was in the uproar of the workers’ strike of 1980.
It was in this town square that my friend Joanna had participated in rallies and organized mass prayers when Solidarity was illegal. She later showed me a picture of herself: In the foreground was a Zomo holding a “billy-club” with his back to the camera – looking on at Joanna in the background. Joanna had her back to the Zomo, but turned three-quarters to look back at the uniformed man who had just whacked her on the butt with his club. Joanna liked the picture because it captured that painful moment in time, even though she never felt vindicated to her companions, as she could not boast by showing her injury. The bruise on her rear-end was black and painful, but it was not visible like a head or arm wound. She had to endure the pain with none of the glory.
As our Journey came to an end, it was decided that Martha would stay in Poland with Anna and do as much research as she could with TV Gdansk, and the Solidarity Foundation (i.e. Andrzej Kozakiewicz). I however, missed my boys desperately, and longed to get home. Missing my husband was another thing.