The Great Polish Railway Fiasco

Palace Corbelli Classroom

Obsolescence is a part of everything.  We see it every day.  Devices we once couldn’t live without now no longer serve a purpose.  It could be a record player, the cassette tape or the rotary phone.  We are now even witnessing the demise of the fixed phone for that matter.  Every generation has them and are defined by them.  For my father it might have been the milk man, my grandmother the streetcar or the horse.  Some objects seem to even have programmed obsolescence like the home computer.  The saddest obsolescence of all is when it is our very self that has lost its need.  Time carries away all things but for a shining moment in our own existence in our minds, we exist.  We live, we love and we thrive.  At least those willing to breath, willing to dream willing to love, willing to give will leave the world with a smile on our face.

Christian Tanzer and Joe Funk

I lived in Vienna the winter of 1987 and spring of 1988. I attended an American program called the Institut für Europäische Estudian (IES) located on a side street not far from Stephansplatz. In the fall I lived with a young Austrian guy and two other roommates in the outskirts somewhere past Schonbrun the once distant summer palace. The second semester I lived with an old Hungarian woman named Eva Sartori who was a 1956 Hungarian Revolution refugee.  She lived right in the city in a small apartment near Praterstern, a small very old amusement park in downtown Vienna. 

The Awkward Austrian

It was a time of awakening for me, a time when I truly felt I was a part of a larger world.  As a child I visited Europe with my parents but it was just a trip and I knew I would be returning home.  When I arrived in Vienna, I knew that this Central European capital for the next year would be my home.  During my life there I tried to live as an Austrian.  In reality I was probably a pimple on a beautiful face but it didn't matter, I felt grand.  I found an outdated Loden jacket at a used clothing store. It was probably last worn by a fashion deprived dead man but it didn't matter.  While no one else wore them for me it was as native as the day was long and it made me feel Austrian at least until I tried to speak.

The political situation in Europe was vastly different than from this time.  It was the age of the Cold War and the United States and Western Europe occupied one sphere while the Soviet Block led by the Soviet Union occupied the other.  Vienna was right on the edge on the western side and was a political crossroads between the two markedly different ideologies.   I was fascinated by this dynamic and decided to focus my course of study on Communist political systems and their impact on Eastern Europe.  

Carey Pieratt (Bk) Peter Kruger, Torsten

At one point during my studies I attended a program for a week in East Berlin.  It was a time almost unimaginable to children today.  A time of distance and isolation.  Half of Europe was largely forbidden to Americans, yet it was once home to so many of the people depicted in the aging portraits that hang on our walls.  Pictures of the great-grand-mothers or grand-fathers our parents once spoke of.  The people whom we call our family.   I stood on the Communist side of the wall that divided East and West like a dagger through the heart of a city and watched as the Western tourists pointed their finger at me.  "Oh look at the poor captive."  They seemed to say. 

For my part I looked up at the guards with machine guns patrolling the East German sector and felt my passport swell inside my pocket.  It meant I could leave when I wanted, a gift not afforded to the students that were hosting me.  The Hochschule fur Economia was the most prestigious East German university.  It was a school dedicated toward schooling students for a lifetime in East German leadership.  I sat in a pub for hours debating the merits of the west with a high level East German economics adviser Peter Krueger.  The students hosting us seemed to harbor a quiet lament that when our time was up we would return to a world where they could never go.  One female student spent a day with me taking me around East Berlin.  She was tall, had a black hair bob and dreamed of some day owning one of the little fiberglass cars running around the city called Trabants.  I felt naughty being with her.  I was the capitalist spending my time with a communist.  It made me want her.

On a different occasion a friend of mine decided to travel with me into Poland.  It would be a quest to find some family members my father had previously made contact with.   In many ways it felt like an expedition, two young men setting out into a world alien and forbidding to most Americans.  By train we journeyed deep into Poland and found our way to an industrial city named Łódź.  It was a town as dirty and gray as the perpetually cloudy sky.  Buildings were soiled by the endless accumulation of coal dust floating in the air. 

Helena, Adam, Dwight Larson, Me

Łódź was the home of Helena, the wife of a man who had immigrated to the United States and was living in my child hood home town of Anchorage, Alaska named Gregory.  She met our train and invited us to stay with her and her son in their apartment.  It was then that I realized that without question that Polish people are the most generous and caring people on the surface of the earth.  Somewhere beneath the tremendous sacrifice and hardships they were forced to endure was a sense of a world beyond themselves.  If we ever had a true ally in the world the Poles are likely it and unbeknownst to most Americans still remain.  Helena cooked us dinner and in the morning she made us the best tasting eggs I have ever eaten.  

She lived in one of the vast complexes of apartments erected during the communist era.  I remember looking out and making a comment about how old all the buildings looked.  They seemed so run down and neglected.  Ana smiled a confused smile and told me they were only 8 years old.  Later that day she introduced us to her brother Adam.  

Adam was one of those people that if you met him, you would never forget him.  He is a caricature that stands out like a beacon in the mind.  He was middle age with only one functioning eye causing a perpetual squint in the one good one.  He had an incredible sense of enterprise and even living in a nation under communism ran a thriving business selling clothing.    I have not had contact with him since the opening of Poland to the world however I have no doubt he is probably worth 20 million dollars today.  

My goal in Poland was to look up our long lost relatives and catch a glimpse of the town where my father’s family came from.  Dwight and I really just wanted help in finding a bus but Helena and Adam wouldn’t have it instead, Adam insisted on personally driving us there.  So we boarded his Skoda, a kind of sporty Czech car that in those days was considered modern by Eastern European standards.  The car was tricked out with every gauge imaginable seemingly purchased directly from the pages of a JC Whitney Auto parts catalog and was definitely Adam's pride and joy.  

Setting off toward the farm town of Busko-Zdrój we quickly reached the limits of the Polish highway system and embarked on a journey down two lane country roads.  Adam drove at break neck speeds thrilled with the performance of his steel stallion as we weaved around horse drawn carts filled with hay.  We were likely navigating the same roads traveled for the last thousand years by farmers and conquering armies.  I was sitting in the front seat and more then once I think my eyes became giant white orbs filled with terror as breaks squealed and Adam wrenched the steering wheel from one direction to another nearly missing plowing into a cart or a tractor.  All the while he squinted with his one good eye calculating his next move.

My Polish Family

We must have set some kind of speed record and when we reached Busko-Zdrój the day was growing long.  It was a tiny speck of a town probably little changed in the last hundred years.  Adam asked where to go and I consulted my hand written address book.  I pulled out a name and address and in short time we located a small cottage like house.  We knocked on the door and what followed was a scene similar to the Griswald clan finding their long lost German relatives in the movie European Vacation.  Everyone was bubbling with excitement as if a foreign dignitary had just arrived. After a short explanation in Polish of why we were there, a rotund woman grabbed me, embraced me with an enormous hug.  She led us into the most humble of houses.  On the wall hung a few photos in crooked broken frames and a number of family members escorted us to a kitchen table.

Immediately bottles of liquor were placed on the table followed by glasses all around.  It was more booze then I could have ever consumed in my life.  The number of glasses in front of me continued to grow, each containing something different.  At time of austerity in Poland they were pulling out the good stuff.   Dwight and I sat knowing that if we consumed everything they were giving us we would be crocked off our asses in a minute.  I wanted to poor it all back in the bottles and tell them to enjoy it yet for this family trying to give so much it would have been an insult.   A haze of smoke hung over the room as the majority of those present puffed on unfiltered cigarettes. 

We participated in toast after toast to God knows what and the rotund woman sitting next to me proceeded to squeeze my cheeks over and over again telling me I looked so Polish.  I had not the heart to tell her that the relations I was representing were all through my stepfather and in truth I didn’t have an ounce of Polish blood.  In reality it didn't matter, in that moment I was as Polish as the day is long.

My Real Polish Family

After a dinner of potatoes and cabbage they found us accommodations at another relative’s apartment.  Dwight and I shared a bed and wondered together what it all meant.  The next day it was on to Krakow and before leaving I wanted to check out one other address that I had.  We only had a few hours and fortunately in a town the size of a postage stamp we located the house quickly.  My Grandmother’s maiden name was painted above the door of a small store in large capital letters “ZOCH.”  The elderly man that greeted us and his wife remembered the family and in short order I realized I had made an enormous mistake.  

While the rotund woman was apparently some form of relation, these were the close relatives.  The elderly man was the son of my great grandfather’s brother.  I imagined as we left the other people with hugs and smiles like the German family that welcomed Chevy Chase and family in the movie, they must have looked at each other and said in Polish, “who the hell was that?”

Krakow, Poland In an hour we were back on the road with one eyed Adam at the wheel speeding once again toward the medieval polish city of Krakow.   If anyone ever wanted to find the archetypal medieval city where legends of dragons and maidens originated they should visit Krakow Poland.  For centuries it was the seat of Polish kings.  It was a center of culture and history that was mercifully spared destruction during the Second World War.  When you walk through Wawel Castle you feel it was once the lair of knights and nobles.  Even in the Central Market square there is still a medieval tradition that occurs every hour of every day from a tower of St. Mary’s Basilica.  On the hour a trumpet is heard replicating the signal alarm of a 13th century trumpeter warning of a Mongol attack.  The tune cuts off mid-stream with a gurgling sound signaling the moment the trumpeter was shot through the neck by a Mongol arrow.

Adam and Helena

When we arrived in Krakow Adam and Helena guided us to our hotel just off the main market plaza.  During the cold war tourism in the Eastern block was tightly controlled and the hotels were run by the tourist agency Intourist.  The result was a hotel of extreme austerity that occupied a building re-configured for the purpose.  Ceilings were 12 feet high and furniture was Spartan.  When we entered the room the enterprising Adam immediately seized a shoe shine cloth from a bathroom and began shining his shoes.  Moments later he disappeared.  I looked out the window and spotted him down on the street buying lottery tickets and checking for instant winners.  The man was always in motion. 

Krakow, Poland

Dwight and I said goodbye to Adam and Helena and spent the next day as tourists.  In Poland the currency was not convertible into Western currencies.  It was their way of holding on to as much hard currency as possible.   If you changed your money in a bank you would get a dreadful rate so everyone would meet these money changers on the street for clandestine transactions.  It was the closest I ever came to meeting a drug trafficker.  The man would meet you in a dark corner examine your dollars and then slyly count out a vast amount of Polish Zlotys.  One of the greatest challenges was figuring out how to liquidate your currency when departing the country because there was no way of trading it in again.  In my effort to accomplish this I found a small tourist shop that had a Polish ethnic costume I still have to this day.  It is the classical Eastern European ethnic design with red stripe pants, poofy shirt, black jacket with brass buttons and a giant square hat with a peacock feather.  Wearing it I couldn’t help but want to start dancing some strange whirling dance.  

When it came time to leave Krakow we hired a cab to take us and our duffel bags to the train station.  The signs were in Polish and there was no one that could speak English so we did our best to guess what train it was and loaded our things up.  Then we waited and waited.  Finally the thing started to move and pushed out of the train station before stopping again breaks squealing and air compressors venting.   A number of cars were detached and the train was oddly empty.  Dwight and I became concerned something was wrong so we decided he should jump down on the track and look around another train to see if he could tell if we were on the right one.  I watched as Dwight disappeared around the end of a coach and waited. 

Moments later there was a another squealing of breaks, a heavy jolt and my train suddenly started to move.  “Holy shit!”  I thought in a panic, looking for Dwight.  The car was picking up pace and started to move past the platform.  I hung out the door with a terrified look still trying to see Dwight but could not find him anywhere.  Unbeknownst to me Dwight was actually on the platform with a similarly panicked expression trying to talk to a Polish conductor in broken German.  He had a horrified look as he pointed at the train and said, “Mein freund!” (My friend)

The train was moving at a good clip and a number of people started to drift into my car.  Standing with the two large duffel bags I looked around and desperately tried to find anyone that spoke English.  I turned to one man and pointing at the train car said, “Vienna?”  The man shook his head and replied, “Katowice.”

 “Kato what?”  I was terrified.  There I was, traveling on a train I had no idea where it was going, night was falling and I was in communist Poland. I had a vision of being found by a secret police agent and locked away as a spy.  “Does anyone speak English?”  I asked pathetically.

Finally one man stepped forward, “I speak little.” he said.  

I did my best to explain my dilemma as he tried to calm me.  

“Okay, this is what you do.”  He said.  “There is train station maybe 20 – 30 minutes and we stop.  You catch train there. Or,” the gears of his mind seemed to be turning.  “or in a few minutes we will go up hill.  Train slows.  You jump, go over there and there is road.  Catch taxi there.”

He pointed off in the distance.  Between me and the road there was a field, a fence and a few houses.  I started to consider his plan as the engine began to slow.  I had just completed a detective novel about this guy in Oregon who had to jump off a moving train.  He talked about how speed is very deceiving and even going slowly it is easy to break a bone.  I looked at the two heavy duffel bags and then had a vision of not only meeting the secret police, meeting them with a broken leg. Or worse yet, I remembered one of the German students in Berlin that had hosted us.  His name was Torsten and he had a skiing accident while on holiday in Poland.  The resulting lack of health care led to the amputation of his leg below the knee.  Despite the thought of being nursed back to health by blond Polish nurses, some of the most beautiful yet underrated women in the world, I decided it was not a good idea.

Resolved to wait for the next station I looked out the window at the passing darkness helpless and nervous.  When the train pulled into the station and came to a halt I vaulted onto the platform with a duffel bag in each hand.  The weight of the bulging bags made me feel like my arms were being pulled out of their sockets.  I ran out of the station ready to find my taxi and was confronted by a taxi line with no less than 50 people.  “Oh Christ, what next?”  I thought.

I sprinted to the front and begged a woman to let me have the next cab.  She was nice and taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of an American man in the middle of Poland.  With little consideration she agreed.  The driver pulled up in a tiny Polish car and I loaded my bags in the back seat before sitting beside him.  

“Train, Krakow, missed train.”  I said, out of breath.  “I have to go back to catch train.”  I pointed out the window with no idea what the Polish word for train was.

The driver calmly turned to me and in perfect English asked, “What time?” 

“8:30.” I said, looking at my watch.

The driver looked at his.  “That is 30 minutes… impossible.” 

“Please,” I begged him.  “I have to try.”  I pulled out a 20 dollar bill and handed it to him.  “Please try.”

Like a starter pistol firing at the Kentucky Derby, we were off.  This guy made Adam look like an old maid.  His engine roared as he jetted down dark Polish roads headed for Krakow.  Time seemed like an eternity as I watched a blur outside my window created by the passing buildings and trees.  Finally we pulled up outside the train station in Krakow and came to a screeching halt.  Again I jumped from the car, grabbed both duffel bags and set off running.  My arms burned from the weight and my lungs felt like they were about to explode as emerged on the platform and spied a waiting train. 

“Jesus Christ, there it is.”  I thought.  Moments later I caught a glimpse of Dwight hanging out a door.  The conductors were closing the door and the carriages were starting to move when I heaved the bags up a step to Dwight and pulled myself inside.  Dwight never looked so beautiful.  If he were a woman I would have kissed him.

A few weeks later Dwight and I were off again.  This time it was Prague another amazing Eastern European capital just now being found by the West.  While in Prague we stayed with a contact of my parents.  They were an elderly couple named Bruno and Gusta Siba.  Poor Bruno was suffering a painful bout of shingles and didn’t speak much English so we smiled a lot.  He was one of those guys I wish I could have spent a long time talking to.  It would have been wonderful to hear his stories about the Czech uprising against the Soviets.

. 

In Prague Dwight and I were again confronted with an excess in currency.  We had the idea that perhaps we could buy some food cheaply that we could bring back to Vienna.  So we ventured into a food market.  Shopping in the Eastern Europe in those days was a challenge.  Markets did not exist like we know them today.  The food found there was extremely limited and tend to depend on what the factories had produced at the moment.  At that moment in time all we could find were large dried salami’s and huge jars of pickles.  Not giving it a second thought, that’s what we bought.  We still had a few hours before our train departed and decided to walk around a shopping district in Central Prague.  

Walking with a huge jar of pickles and a giant salami is remarkably cumbersome.  It wasn’t long before my arms grew tired and finding a small alcove outside a store selling Czech crystal I decided to leave my jar of pickles while I walked around, salami still in tow.  It was one of those moments straight out of a hidden camera television show way before they became main stream.  The expressions on people that passed observing the giant jar of pickles was priceless.  Eventually the jar attracted the attention of several Czech police and Dwight and I made the decision to leave it to its own devices.

We bought some beer and spent the trip back to Vienna suspending beer bottles out the window to chill them and eating copious amounts of horrid salami.  When we reached the Czech border we had a stark reminder of the place and time.  The train entered a fortified area and then stopped.  Guards walked through the train car opening each train ceiling panel looking for humans trying to escape.  With our papers examined we were allowed to pass to the west and resume our lives in a world the people of the Eastern Block were not allowed to see.

If you traveled to Poland and the Czech Republic today none of this story would make sense.  They are just like us.  Billboards announce Coca Cola and Sony.  Shops are filled and people go about western lives.  There are times in life when I feel like history has passed me by.  That I was simply an ornament, a visitor in an image that no one will remember.  It is then that I realize I am walking with history.  For a fragment of time on this planet I am a pixel in the image that comprises life.  Were I not there, the picture would still exist, it just might not be so complete.  You see, the image is not just my picture, it is a picture of all the lives around me.  Each intersection, each moment of time forms its own constant as life flows as one.  At this point there is little else to do but sit back, take a deep breath of air and smile at a memory that still illuminates a corner of my mind.