78.  “Painting the Grass Green”

(Poland by train and tram: Warsaw: 29th October - 3rd November, 2024).

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The low, ashen cloud of a heavy Autumn sky reflects the weight of history over Warsaw.

The fog shrouds the upper floors of Stalin’s “Gift to the People of Poland”: a grotesque wedding-cake pile in post-war “Soviet classicist” style (built by the Russians, paid for by the Poles) which crouches at Warsaw Centrum, taller than any other city building or church spire, until the arrival of capitalist office blocks and malls. Projecting absolute Russian power (rather than style or taste), this overly wrought “Palace of Culture” is largely concealed for most of my visit by low grey cloud which blankets the city. At night, the building’s floodlighting dyes the near-constant cloud into a bleak, bruised purple.

Wandering tourists are confronted by scores of memorials to the cruelties, slights, tragedies, failures and achievements of Polish history. In this city where the Warsaw Pact was signed between ‘friendly Socialist States’ following World War II, the democratic government of this now NATO member is fast-tracking the rebuilding of eastern border defences against Russia, following a line from the Baltic States (who are completing similar defences) to Ukraine. Meanwhile the Warsaw population is getting on with its life in the build-up to the national Independence Day on 11th November.

The vibrant, Spanish banter and colour that surrounded me in Miami streets and buses and markets just one day ago is replaced by the sullen silence of commuters in dark puffer jackets with contrasting beanies and scarves, mobile phones in gloved hands. Along suburban streets we pass remnant semi-derelict buildings from before World War II whose probably-deceased Jewish owners are yet to return. Many of these tenements with their ground-floor retail spaces are subject to extended and competing inheritance claims from descendants: some of whom may or may not yet know that dereliction and high property values could be their entitlement. The Polish government is pondering a moratorium on extended property claims, meanwhile constructing semi-permanent, first-floor-level wire grid awnings to protect pedestrians in streets below from crumbling, tumbling masonry. In the working class district of Praga, east of the river and an area that largely escaped WWII destruction, about a third of the tenements have these lines of chain-wired masonry-catchers while the buildings themselves, always lacking running water, may or may not now be squats.

Outside my pub in Centrum is a brick wall with a twin-lanterns: a memorial to random street arrests which preceded pre-announced public executions of Polish citizens by the Nazis: part of their increasing reign of terror over the Warsaw population. Like most such monuments this wall includes a neat garden lined with red and white flowers snuggling against the brickwork. Across the road is a sparking neon-glass shopping mall for H&M and other fast fashion, suitably Starbucked, KFC’d and Macca’d facing the main streets and Metro entrances. Much better food options are tucked away in the lanes behind all of that glass.

Other brick walls and plaques and plinths and sculpted figures and dioramas are scattered across the city, memorialising injustices, murdered Polish leaders, deportations…  An area north west of the Centrum intersection (and that hideous Russian “Palace of Culture”) about the size of Sydney’s CBD north of Park St, was the WWII Jewish ghetto. Polish residents were forcibly moved out of the area into recently vacated(?) homes, to create a massive walled enclosure for the doomed Jewish population. Seemingly at random when walking the inner city, you step over the linear carved granite line of the former wall. Following the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Nazi forces overran the walled compound, forcibly deporting or murdering the remaining inhabitants. They then demolished the whole area to remove any evidence of Jewish occupation.

Continuing the retribution, following the broader Warsaw Uprising in 1944, (in the imminent expectation of the arrival of Russian forces, who remained on the far side of the Vistula River) the whole (remaining) Polish population of Warsaw was forced out of the city (in one way or another). German forces then set about bombing and bulldozing what remained of the city to wipe Warsaw off the map, before they retreated… The city’s great pride is that it has survived the Nazis, survived Communism and has physically, politically, socially and economically rebuilt, and does not forget… So, as a visitor, do expect to find yourself regularly confronted by small red and white floral displays tucked under diverse memorials in main squares and along back streets.

Across Avenue Jerozolimskie from the grotesque Palace of Culture is the Beaux Arts facade of the classy Hotel Polonia Palace, much of which survived wartime demolition due to its usefulness for Nazi officers. The plaque at its entrance commemorates the 19 foreign legations that were stationed there from the end of WWII, waiting to see how the results of the Teheran Conference played out, then observing the strategic takeover of the Polish government, and harassment of remnant Polish armed forces, resistance fighters and exiled government officials and military who did not “fit” Stalin’s socialist dream for the Polish state.

Parked right next door is the Hotel Metropol: a boxy communist-era affair for approved tourists, much “loved” by foreign visitors for its severe floor ladies, seated in  concierge desks at the elevators to mind the keys and to phone guest rooms at random hours to make sure that guests were where they should be (and nowhere beyond official oversight, and therefore reportable to the Tourist Police).

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Day 1:    A wander around Warsaw on a cheap 24 hour Bilet Dobowy Ulgowy/Strefa 1 (Reduced Tram Fare).

No English was spoken at the transport museum where I was the only visitor, ushered in by the serious doorman, dour reception lady and taciturn outside sweeper, then stalked by a creeping supervisor who shadowed me around the indoor exhibits. I could hear the floors of the old railway station waiting hall creaking behind me - until I gave supervision the slip for a few minutes in the Gents - then snuck through double-swing doors to the outdoor exhibits. The first was the Nazis’ armoured diesel train whose cannons were used by the Poles in the post-war program to “encourage” Ukrainians to depart from the new Polish borders and return to a reduced Ukraine within the USSR). Adjacent to the armaments was a bile-green streamlined steam locomotive specially designed in the 1920’s to chuff across the Polish Corridor hauling locked trains of Germans from Prussia to the isolated East Prussian state beyond the neutral city of Danzig. In the background of my photos lurks the distantly hideous Stalinist “Palace of Culture”.

Later in the afternoon in the deep autumn colours of the newer western suburbs, I overcame any urge to take lovely tree-hued-landscapes as I found myself crammed in a peak hour tram load of taciturn, super-fit uniformed soldiers and technology students home bound from the adjacent army camp.

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Day 2: The Wisdom of the Tour Guides: #1:

On the map provided, I was in the right place to meet my “English Language Old Town Tour Guide”. In reality, I was one monument too far to the left. A passing tour en francaise had a helpful guide who - between babbling vast amounts of information - muttered: “Those other groups are over there. Just go up to each one and you will find the English.” It was fun, tuning in to each commentary then wandering on… until I met the dour English guide. He was good on information, though. Here’s some stuff I learnt:

·      The Warsaw “Old Town” is a faithful(ish) external reconstruction, based upon contemporary pre-war engravings and painted landscapes, although the Communist government tended not to favour rebuilding religious sites.

·      One religious building faithfully rebuilt is the early Gothic cathedral. On a side wall, facing the rebuilt Royal Palace, a German caterpillar tank track has been concreted into the stone wall adjacent to a buttress. The old cathedral was bulldozed by the Nazis; their act of bastardry is now memorialised using parts of a bombed Nazi tank on the reconstructed edifice.

·      Poland had one of the world’s first democratic constitutional governments, second only to the US, run by the nobles and elected by landowners. And it had the first “ELECTED Constitutional Monarch”. Such frivolous liberalism was frowned upon by the adjacent Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires who conspired to swallow the nation state of Poland between them during a time of democratic dysfunction. Plus ca Change…

The extended line of Thai and Asian Fusion restaurants as you wander from the Metro towards the Old Town does seem to undermine the reconstructed authenticity, just a tad.

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West of the reconstructed Old Town with its reconstructed Barbican and reconstructed city wall and lovingly reconstructed Royal Palace and reconstructed Pity Square (and so on), the Communist government became serious about rebuilding Warsaw as a Parisian-Haussmann-style Showpiece Socialist Metropolis along what is now Avenue Gen. W Andersa. The flattened city of 1945, enabled the creation of broad boulevards with central tramways and vast colonnaded shop fronts above which are three or four floors of apartments. They lack garages, of course. If provided at all, motor vehicle garages were (and are) deliberately and inconveniently built well away from apartments as so few workers were expected to own cars. The autumn trees soften the socialist realist architecture into what seems to be a pleasant, convenient and human-scaled local environment of apartments above ground level shops.

Not so pleasant to the north of this development, in Skwer Match Sybiraczki, is the stark monument “to those deported and murdered in the east”, constructed in safely post-Communist 1995. A chaotic line of charred railway sleepers is inscribed with the destinations of forcibly deported Poles who were seen as ideological enemies by Stalin when the Nazis generously handed the north east of Poland to the USSR as they grabbed the rest in 1939. The sculpted, charred sleepers lead to a single scarred railway goods van: the preferred vehicle for exporting politically undesirable Soviet citizens to Siberia.

To the west of these broad avenues is the vast but simply designed Jewish Ghetto Uprising Museum building (with its wall-memorial opposite the main entrance) constructed in the landscape cleared of humanity by the Nazis then completely bulldozed. An adjacent small park contains a simple stone memorial to the “Victims of Stalin’s Terror”; further along the pathway is a slightly bemused looking, single, sculpted soldier memorialising the 5th Army campaign to take Berlin from the Nazis.

South of all of this, in the corner square of an anonymous, modernised, green-glass building is the vast series of grimly determined bronze civilian and guerilla figures scattered within a corner forecourt: the official memorial of the Warsaw Uprising of September 2, 1944.

On the wander back to the Arsenal Metro station, I followed a laneway around a park to find a deserted cobblestoned street with its curve of rusted tram lines. This is a remnant of a once vibrant local suburb with apartments and busy shops along a roadway crowded with trams, traffic, pedestrians and street hawkers. There’s a large outdoor photo exhibition of this busy pre-war inner-city community going about its business. It’s all gone now apart from ghost tram tracks in cobbles, the suburban hubbub replaced by the distant breeze rustling parkland leaves and the rear view of the Brave New World: Haussman-Soviet-style Socialist Warsaw development in Avenue Gen. W Andersa.

South of Centrum is the even grander Place Konstytucji: a spectacular Socialist Realist gateway square to downtown Warsaw projected to be an “expression of creative optimism and peaceful work within the socialist system” (well that’s what the propaganda film at a local museum said). Constructed in the 1950’s, there’s a lot more neon and traffic these days, but even the grand Soviet Classicist Realist floodlighting and statues of optimistic workers have survived the onslaught of capitalism.

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Day 3: The wisdom of the Tour Guides #2:

“Please don’t lean against the windows: SERIOUSLY, we don’t want to lose them or you!”

We’re on a “cucumber” tour bus from the 1950’s. It’s an out-of-date Italian Fiat design with rounded fast-back that was mass produced in Poland until the 1980’s for long distance or tourist services. Very retro: this is the Communist era tour in a Communist era bus.

“Just pretend you have all brought paper-wrapped cold sausage and pickles and bread from home to eat on the journey: there wasn’t much in the shops, and the day I dressed in my best suit to go to the opening of Warsaw’s first MacDonalds is still many years away…”

There is much wry humour about central planning:

“Oh yes, our centrally planned football stadium. Good for many things but not professional football. Players are allowed a 15 minute half time break but it takes more than ten minutes to just  get from the field to the change rooms making it completely unfit for professional football. The acoustics are terrible, but Taylor Swift didn’t seem to mind.”

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“Over there is where the old Warsaw East station used to be, where the trains from Russia used to arrive. It was once surrounded by slums and bomb damage as far as you could see over to your left. The Communist party wanted arriving Russians to only see the new modern Poland, so the solution was to build this one VERY long block of apartments from as far as you can see from south to north to hide the wasteland views. It’s the longest block of flats in the country. In Poland, this kind of thinking is called “painting the grass green”….

Many of the bombed out or de-industrialised wastelands still remain in the working class Praga (eastern) side of the river. From a poor working-class area it became a high-unemployment and high-crime and high-drug area following the fall of Communism and the collapse of the old state-subsidised dirty industries. Gentrification has now arrived as a brewery is now a repurposed apartment development and vodka museum. The same development company is looking at other derelict sites for improvement.

The "cucumber" bus amongst war damaged and neglected buildings in Praga with wired "masonry catchers" to protect passing pedestrians.

“The terrible, terrible quality of the few consumer products available under Communism did spawn a small entrepreneurial industry: re-tailoring shoddy clothes to actually fit human bodies by re-glueing and stitching shirts, frocks, shoes and boots that fell apart in the first few days of use. Factory-made “fashions” were taken apart and restitched into more stylish cuts. If there was a queue outside of a shop, you joined it. Whatever was being sold may not be available tomorrow, and ration books and tickets were there to be used. Only the Vodka was always available and plentiful.”

At a small Chopin concert in the Old Town (the only bit of the former royal palace I could enter, as most tourist sites cut their hours or close completely from October until March), they served small glasses of honey wine during interval.

In 1977, one of the few Polish imports available in Australia (apart from bottled pickles, red cabbage and eastern bloc jam with a distant whiff of Chernobyl) was “Wawel”.  Braham, my Baxter College neighbour, had connections who could source this stuff.  Wawel came in a half-sized wine bottle with a colourful gilt and blue label. In order to open the thing, you had to unwind what seemed like metres of flakey waxed string to reveal a snug cork. I seem to remember it was served in an elegant port glass full of sticky golden nectar with which to recover from the daily horror of college-slop catering. 

The honey wine during interval on a cold, cold night under the heavy cloud in Warsaw tasted half as good.

#Warsaw #Poland #History #Food #TrainTravel #BusTravel