Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Back to Warsaw- Day 8

I have completed my first week in Poland and traveled to Warsaw and Gdansk in that time. We spent the weekend in Gdansk and traveled back to Warsaw by bus yesterday morning. It was a five hour bus ride!

Monday, June 29:
We left for Warsaw around 7:15 in the morning and arrived at our hotel around 1 p.m. This included two stops for the bus driver. Apparently, the driver's union has lobbied for two breaks for drivers lasting a total of 45 minutes. That, coupled with traffic, explains the long trip.

After lunch, we went to the Warsaw Rising Museum. At first, I thought this was the museum for the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. It was, in fact, the Warsaw Rising of the Polish citizens against the Nazi & Soviet occupation. This began on August 1, 1944, a year after the uprising in the ghetto. There is currently not a museum for the Jewish uprising but one is being built.

I thoroughly enjoyed the museum, although the layout was a bit confusing. Each exhibit was numbered and you could get a headset in English that went through each exhibit by number. However, often you would find that it jumped from 21-34 and it was difficult to figure out what direction to go. Aside from that, it was wonderful. There is information on the Polish Home Army (the resistance army) and their operations against the much stronger Nazi army. It includes information leading up to the beginning of the Rising, through the Rising, and on specific people involved. Doctors, nurses, priests, and public officials all took part in fighting the Germans. There is a wall which has holes in it where you put your ears and you can hear the sounds of the Rising. They also have life size replicas of the sewers they used for communication and , at the end, escape. You can actually walk through them and I had to duck to be able to do so.

There was so much information I could not possibly get through it all in one trip. I bought a book that goes through each exhibit to have photos and information. I highly recommend the museum if you ever come to Warsaw.

Dinner last night was an adventure. We tried a different Mexican food restaurant and we found a patio to sit on. The sun was shining, birds were singing.....and then the sky opened up and dumped rain for about two hours. We hurried inside to the basement only to have the toilets in the restrooms (located in the basement) overflow. We see water creeping in and then all of a sudden it begins gushing in. I will post pics later. So....we waded through toilet water (no raw sewage) to the stairs and then ran to our hotel in the rain. It was an eventful evening.

Tuesday, June 30:
We had three different meetings today. First, we traveled to the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which was interesting. They trade electronically so there were no brokers on the floor shouting. Its much smaller than the NY Stock Exchange, with only 25 foreign countries represented. However, considering they have only been in a free market economy for 20 years, the growth is quite amazing.

We visited a private school before lunch and met with the headmaster and a teacher. The headmaster is elected by the teachers every 5 years. He determines teacher pay. The school has a complete executive, legislative, and judical branch with a court for student hearings. Students can serve on their "Parliament", which I found interesting. They have a similar school year, with 10 weeks off in the summer. Also, teachers are not only evaluated by their headmaster but also by students. In the past, they even allowed parents to evaluate teachers!

Our last meeting of the day was with a professor who talked about culture in Poland. In traditional Polish culture, the Roman Catholic Church was at the center of everything. Religion has played an important role in Polish identity and history because it has been one area they could control and be independent through, even when they were under occupation. The strength of the church is still evident at Poland is 96% Catholic today. Traditionally, Polish culture has been very conservative and not open to new ideas. Liberal or socialist ideas were seen as too closely connected to communism. The system of rule during the Middle Ages of having a peasant class and gentry class held influence much longer in Poland than in Western Europe. After Communism fell in 1989, Polish culture opened up somewhat to more liberal ideas of consumerism and free market ideas. People wanted to be successful and that no longer was tied to the idea of a gentry class or land. Today, a return to traditional cultural ideas has brought about more conservative groups in Parliament who often find themselves at odds with the new class of youth who have socialist tendencies. The youth of Poland did not experience Communism as their parents did so they are less quick to associate some of the socialist policies, like government provided healthcare, with Communism. The legacy of Communism is a recurring theme in my studies here in Poland. A people who have been for so long repressed have little desire to give up any of their freedoms, hence the apprehension about socialism.

Tomorrow, we leave early in the morning for Krakow. We will be touring the city and attending a special 4th of July celebration held in a nice museum there, even though its only the first.

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