the travelling sociologist

Back now for a little over a day. It has been a strange return, the like of which I have not experienced since my return from India, the sense of being unsettled, of finding ones own life, so familiar a week ago, suddenly strange. It is amazing the difference. It is amazing what a 500km each way dash will do for ones perspective.

But anyway, just some final reflections for now, before I close this up again for another while.

On Nowa Huta:

My first reaction to finding out about Nowa Huta was one of nerdish delight. After all, I work in a town, Eisenhüttenstadt, which not only also has a steel plant owned by arcelormittal, it is also a socialist newtown dating from the 1950's. How would this compare? And would it remind me too much of 'home', of the weekly grind, the day in day out labour of language training. Armed with a pamphlet and small map, I jumped on the tram and thought - let fate throw at me what it will. I'll just go and experience. What I found was a very strange kind of surprise. You see it was not the buildings that were the surprise - the architecture for the most part looked like central Hüttenstadt with a polish renaissance twist. It was the fact that anyone occupied them that surprised me. To see cafes that actually have people in them. Streets with young family walking on them. Brightly coloured shop fronts. Ice cream sellers. Old folk in the park. SUVs. Life, real, contemporary, ordinary life. It made me realise how drained of life Hüttenstadt is. It is suffering a slow, withering death, both literal and metaphorical. Nowa Huta gave me some understanding of what it may have looked like way back when, when anyone actually lived there.

On the road home:

I concluded my stay in Krakow as I started it, with a wander and a bowl of mushroom soup. It really is good stuff, that, to be recommended. Sat down with a book and a tea. Prepared some rolls for the road. Said goodbye to the hostel staff. Slept. Steeled out as soundlessly as I could manage at six thirty. Boarded the train to Hamburg Altona. Krakow vanished behind me. I ate and and drank some train coffee. Leaning my head against the window, gazing out, somewhere after Katowice I was gone. By the time I awoke again we were somewhere approaching Wrocklow. The journey was uneventful until Legnica. Pulling into the station, seeing the name, some folk memory that my students have no doubt transmitted to me was triggered, and I remembered that this is the place the germans would call 'Liegnitz'. At the station, and older german couple, who seemed to me to be definitively in their seventies, perhaps older, got on the train. They puzzled over the seat numbering, and I, having taken the time to figure it out earlier, took it upon myself to share my wisdom. In german of course. Satisfied, they asked the young man who was occupying one of their reserved seats to move, and sat down. What struck me was that the older man did they asking, and he did the asking in fairly convincing polish. Later I heard him translate sections of the polish rail magazine into german for his wife. Still later, a few stations from the border I heard him say something about a factory that had stood somewhere near there. I was bubbling with questions. How had he learned polish? Had he lived here as a boy? Is that how he learned it? Was he here visiting family that stayed behind? Was he looking(as some of my students have) for an ancestral home in Silesia? Or had he learned polish for some other strange iron curtain reason? So many questions and I asked none. We pulled across the border, the sun blazing in. He started pulling down the blind, turned for my approval, asked me. In polish. Despite the fact that I had already talked to him in German. Force of habit? Or was it because I simply do not look or sound German? Some questions here will inevitably have to go unanswered. Sometimes the borders between people simply have to be respected, and I left the border between him and my questions where it was. The time will come some other time.

Windmills return to the landscape. I ponder the bilingual signs in German and Sorbian at Cottbus station. The Deutsche Bahn woman makes woeful English language announcements about our eight minute delay. A teenage couple, curled together since Krakow, joke with each other about it in German. We pass by Ikea at Südkreuz. Look! says curling teen 1. We're home! Indeed we were.

And so I am. With about 18 zloty still in my pocket, enough to do some more extensive research about price of beer in Slubice as compared with Krakow someday on the way home from work......

Whenever wanderlust hits again, I'll let you know ......

Til then, fare thee well ....

Some reflections.....

On krakow and poland:

Visually my first impression of Krakow was that it had a vaguely Italian feel to it. I still get that sensation walking around, perhaps it the sundrenched, simple and elegant buildings. Whatever it is, there seems to be an ease, a grace to this place. The way the poles here dress and move has also arrested me: walking around on weekdays you see remarkably sharply tailored men, wearing suits that define the body and add character. The women here dress elegantly, again in body defining dresses and tiny perilous shoes. This certainly ain't no berlin. Observing couples dancing in clubs as well, this elegance and definition comes to the fore: dancing here is not simply some kind of rhythmical stumbling. Bodies arch backwards, feet move with purpose. Again all of this has surprised me.

On the germans and the poles:

Perhaps the reason that this has all suprised me is not because I had had no contact at all with poland. Rather it was because i do have so much regular contact with 'Poland' as seen through the eyes of my students, who live and work on the germany-poland border. So many times I have gazed across and wondered what lay on the other side. Rumours of some kind of uncivilised, wild place with crazy drivers, unkempt roads, impoverished, undesirable came to me. What I found provides a contrast. Not only have a found a place that is civilised and elegant in a way that Germany never is, I have been surprised by how, in many respects german standards of civilisation are also valid here. Traffic behaviour for example has been as predictable here as it ever is Germany. Coming here has been a revelation to one who only ever saw Poland through this distorted border mirror.

On Auschwitz:

I was prepared for the room of hair, of eye glasses, the models of gas chambers: I had seen it all in documentaries over the years. I was not prepared for the suitcases with names and adresses painted clearly. Names of towns and cities in germany, mixtures of german and traditional jewish names, locations that are recognisable and familiar to me. These clearly are the places they thought they belonged in. This is what saddened and shocked me in a quite unexpected way: that a country that many of these people thought they belonged to in some way tortured and exterminated them. I cannot even begin to grasp or understand the hatred that produced this, and it is an experience I will carry with me and process for some time to come. It may take me years to even begin to understand the implications.

On gay clubs, clubs and music:

Another thing I had heard, looking through the distorted mirror of poland through germany, was that poland has a major problem with homophobia. I'm sure that there is some truth to this: different standards of public morality do seem to apply here - the professional was apparently shot many a dirty look walking around krakow with the craftsman on a sunday morning in what were clearly last night's clothes. I was cheered, therefore, by the scene in the more gay friendly than gay club we danced in on friday and saturday: those who were out were out and unapologetic. The value of tolerance, and the importance of the struggle to achieve it cannot be underestimated. On a lighter note I was surprised by the music in all the clubs we danced in: it appears to be stuck somewhere not later than 1998. Having experienced 1998 the first time round this was a source of joy to me. Curious, though, very curious.

On friends:

Friends are the best, and mine rule. I love you all.

On home:

On my first full day here, I found myself unearthed and missing Berlin. Now it is one day before I am due to return and the idea fills me with dismay. Isn't it ever thus?

Off to Nowa Huta today, perhaps I will write more after.....

Now sitting in an internet cafe on a scruffy Krakow street. I have slept in my new, precarious top bunk bed, eaten some kind of vegetable tart and salad in a lovely old school cafe. I have sat by the river making notes and drinking ice tea. I have sat and let the events of the last few days simply filter, come to some kind of order, declutter themselves in my brain. And this is what I have come up with..

Last thursday night was the last evening when any kind of normality reigned. Feeling the need to fill the space of the evening with something, I went to a concert of Jewish music, music with a kind of intensity that should be experienced with eyes closed. I wandered back up through the city, pausing to watch the cheesy music on the stage that is showcasing Ukranian music as a gesture of polish-ukranian friendship. I retired to the hostel, read some Max Goldt, chatted with a fascinating American woman and wound into sleep sometime after midnight. Breakfast the next morning proceeded as normal, with coffee to be drunk and conversation to be had, this time with a sweet German girl and a sparky chick from Hong Kong. I sat, read my book, did some casual browsing. And waited for the storm to hit. The storm being my dear old friend, the professional.

The professional and I, friends since university, are in many respects at the opposite end of the spectrum, of weath, opinion, lifestyle. In those late nineties university summers, while I drifted from waitressing job to waitressing job she was building a CV. I live in the world of ideas, she a pragamatist. I am happy to wander in two dollar flip flops for days, she has an impressive and dangerous looking collection of stillettos. We share, though, a certain intensity, and a regard for each other that has survived more than a decade; the kind of complicated and dear friendships that we do not plan and that nonetheless sustain us.

That shared intensity made for a weekend of blinding experience. Some flashes: An introductory glass of wine on the market square was followed by a hike up the town hall tower which we felt in our right leg muscles for the day to come. A wander up to the castle, past marrying couples in churches in the jewish district, rain and revelations and poor quality food in Szeroka. A bar at Plac Nowy. Tips from longer term residents and locals lead us to a club, gay friendly and kitch. Spinning and dancing, and wandering. Back to the room for four hours sleep. Boom. The world returns, time for piecemeal breakfast. Time to stumble through the rain looking for a tour company that will bring us to Auschwitz. A rainy bus ride. A solemn couple of hours. Private reflection. Not knowing what to say. Exhaustion. Off into private space. Sore limbs. An unsure heart. Under the shower. On with the heels, do the make-up, drink the sparkly wine. Go.

Dinner in a wonderful restaurant. A wander through bars and clubs looking for fresh experience. Heated discussion of movies. Disappointment in the quest for the new. A return to the old. Back to kitch. Dancing and joy, and impassioned singing and swinging. Impressive couples, whose female halves can bend back elegantly, arching their backs in the arms of their partners. Provocative t-shirts. Virtually no music released after 2000 played. Smooth criminal, simply the best, cotton eye joe, tub thumper. Hours of dancing, talking, all body and joy. Sometime after six am the professional disappears with a companion, the craftsman. I notice a while after, notice that their swinging flowing bodies have left the floor. Walking out into the coridor I catch a glimpse of the inevitable intimacies, they are dancing in front of a deserted door, then kissing. I leave them to it, until my aching feet can stand no more, beg for rest. And we the night warriors walk through the krakow early morning, barefoot, past squares, past the early stirrings of the market square. And they marvel. And I record it, with my camera and my eyes. The little miracles. Back in the door of the hostel, the same gentleman that saw us out the previous night gently laughs and chides us for a return home so late. I crawl, showered into bed. My feet, legs, all is tingle, all is unearthly, detached from my body. The professional pops back out to bid the craftsman farewell. And I drift off into my customary four hours of sleep.

Having missed breakfast, we begin by enquiring from the gentleman as to where we could dine in a brunch like fashion. Nowhere, he responds. Aparently Krakow has not yet discovered the all day brunch. An overpriced panini on the market square, too lazy to travel futher afield. A wander. A grassy seat by the river. Overheared conversations. A glass of mineral water, beautiful, cold, in enveloping sunshine. Shower. Dinner. Impassioned disagreement. The search for jazz rewarded by two tunes. An incongruous discovery; a club with dark clad people, and rotating blond hair and silver chains. Rage against the machine, tori amos, joy division. Almost about to leave, pulled back by the sisters of mercy. Finally out by three. Dancing on the street. Amazed that we are still dancing, three days later. Swinging in front of a cafe to "We built this city on rock and roll". Siezing life. Swatting flies before sleeping, waking. The professional rises and departs. Over breakfast the gentleman laughs and enquires as to the state of my feet. And I recuperate and filter and settle, wait until all the grains have fallen to the bottom before sipping....

Reflections on same tommorow.....that's it for me today. The sunlight still beckons..

Days of warmth and intensity and friendship and history.
Evenings of dancing.
Walking shoeless through the streets of Krakow at dawn.
Dreaming....

All of this has induced mindblowing exhaustion....have had so many experiences and thoughts to share, and sadly no coherent sentances in which to share them.....

I will hopefully return with thoughts when I have regained to power to formulate them.

Till then...

Ok, so this is more of a short dash away, but nonetheless I find the process of recording these things quite productive. So here it is ....

It is not that I have been stationary since my last travels. I have, in the call of 'duty'(corporate language training), been flung on occasions for eisenhuettenstadt to erlangen, to huettenstadt, to erlangen and back again. This is in a way its own kind of travel and given that few would travel of their own free will to either of these places, one spends a good deal more time talking to the locals in say a 24 hour period that I have done talking to the locals in Krakow. Of course there is the fact that I can speak german, but not polish to reckon with here. Perhaps it has equipt me with enough of a knowledge of what it means to be mittel or osteuraeisch to see things on my journeys that other people do not. Who knows...

I took a train, apparently leaving Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 9.35. By the time we actually pulled out it was past ten. A perfect opportunity for germans to mecker, to complain, moan, dramatise, blame poland for all of their ills. This even despite the fact that we experienced no unscheduled delays on the polish side of the border. One pulls out of berlin, through villages in brandenburg mark spotted with windmills, motorways and allotments. One pulls into the strange interzone, that exists around the german polish border, intensified now that the schengen border has fallen. On the german side of the border at cottbus, I find bilingual signs in german and polish. We pass through the emptiness and, truth be told, grimness that exists just leading up to a border that was almost as impenetrable for many. And suddenly we have a new wagon, new announcers. We are over.

About ten minutes past the border, the police and border guards arrive in our carraige. Now that the border no longer officially exists, they cannot pasport check everyone. So the poles, mirroring their german counterparts on the other side, ask anyone who obviously, physically, looks non european, for identification. One guy, an african man does not have it, and after extensive pleading on his part he is 'escorted' off, with no money or ticket, at some impossibly rural station and is informed that he will have to find his own way back to Germany. God help him.

Pulling through western poland takes hours, and it is empty, rural, at times a disconcerting mix of stalinist and 19th century village architecture. Spending as much time as I do in Eisenhuettenstadt, right up at the border on the german side I am familiar with the 'end of the worldness' that proximity to that border brings. The endness breeds emptiness. For some reason it never occured to me that this strange emptiness would be mirrored on the other side. It is a gentle surprise. Otherwise the scenery is punctuated by a distinct lack of the windmills that follow you throughout eastern germany. There are wetlands, and harvesting farmers, empty and rundown stations, and forests without end. I spend my time contemplating this place, the stories I have heard from students, ethnic germans whose families upped and fled from this part of the world when the third reich collapsed. Students with strange slavic sounding names, that end in ska. I ruminate on the history that lies in these strange fields and farm houses.

I drink viciously strong coffee in a 1970s dining carraige. And wonder how the poles manage to stomach this stuff. And continue to ruminate.

Somewhere around Wroklaw civilisation appears to return. Late afternoon has also arrived, and so do shopping malls, cinemas, and strangely enough, branches of the store Rossmann. I am back into an industrial belt, cargo train after coal carrying cargo train pulls past me, on its way to eastern germany and god knows where else. Just before sunset I arrive in Krakow and am arrested by the prices of everything(at least double what you pay in Slubice, on the polish side of the germany/poland border), and by the way in which Krakow resembles Sienna.

More again soon ....