Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Poland in the company of some interesting writers and creative types, and the whole experience was thought provoking in a way that I hadn’t expected.
Because it was primarily a working trip, I wasn’t expecting to do much in the way of sightseeing or tourist-type stuff. And since I’d been trying to attend to other matters that seemed fairly pressing beforehand, I didn’t really have, or take, any time to research where we were going; no learning train routes, no memorizing phrasebook questions, not even taking the time to look closely at a map. I was going to try and treat Poland like a blank slate.
As it turns out, I thought I knew a few things that turned out to be almost completely unhelpful in terms of providing a scale or context for understanding where I went. What did history class teach leave in my head? A much desired, ice-free port on the Baltic, serious population losses during WWII, something or other about cowboys and unions in 1989, and not much else of use. So being confronted with both present realities of life and explanations from different people about what they thought had brought the present was fairly overwhelming.
For a week I had the opportunity to meet some fascinating individuals, eat some of the heartiest meals eastern Europe has to offer, and to be looked after with good humor and hospitality by people with starling explanations for some of the ways their country came to be the way it is. But it will take some time to digest. Particularly the food from some of the milk bars.