Poland 2003

I have returned from an intensive 10 day tour of eastern Poland,
specifically the city of Bialystok and the Podlaskie region. I was
there, along with several others, for a workshop on the recovery of a
timber synagogue. This area of Poland borders Lithuanian, Bialorus, and
Russia to the north. I think it was September 24 that Vitek (svante) and
I arrived in Warsaw via an all night flight and a stop in Vienna.
Members of the workshop were arriving on differently scheduled flights.
Throughout the workshop new members joined us as others left. Not
everyone spoke English, many spoke Polish, and there was Czech, German
and we were not able always to tell what else was being spoken. It was a
mad rush from the beginning as there was so much territory to cover in
too short of a time. Within minutes of landing in Warsaw we were on a
bus, after walking through the Old Town of Warsaw we found beer. By that
time some of us had zlotys, and some of us did not, but eventually it
was apparent that what an individual did not have did not matter as the
group coalesced to look out for everyone together.

Once all of the arrivals in Warsaw for the day had gathered the bus took
off for the two hour trip in the night to Bialystok. Driving in Poland
seems a chaotic affair. Early on there was an incident where there was a
horse drawn cart moving ahead of us along the road and the bus driver
pulled up quickly on the cart and then honked the bus horn as the bus
lurched to the left (they drive on the right the same as in America) and
the horse cart, with a frantic horse, lurched to the right.

We became quickly impressed with the long stretches of narrow roads
connecting the cities, main roads that in the American experience would
be considered back country roads. There are no three lane highways that
I noticed. We became accustomed to the bus coming upon a slower moving
vehicle, a truck or another bus, and the other vehicle continuing to
move forward on the shoulder while our bus veered around then to the
left while the oncoming traffic moved over to the shoulder. In effect
there would be three vehicles at one time side-by-side occupying the
road. We also became accustomed to the bus negotiating cobble roads,
long stretches of cobble roads, or the narrow corners of small streets
in a village. We spent a great deal of time on the bus. Towards the end
of the workshop, on an afternoon, we did have occasion to ride in the
bus as it went over a small village bridge that we possibly should not
have been going over for the load. On top of all this we were never
quite sure if we were lost or not as though we were told where we were
going, we did not have maps until nearly the end of the adventure.

We were accommodated at the Wiking (Viking, part hotel, part restaurant,
part bar, and part beer garden complete with all sorts of tacky motif in
an area where the Vikings were quite unlikely to have wandered) north of
Bialystok nearby to the Bialystok Skansen. A skansen is an historic
interpretive village, an outdoor museum of timber architecture. The
Bialystok Skansen, already an impressive collection of timber buildings,
is where it is intended that a recreation of the annihilated Zabludow
synagogue will be created using traditional timber and log building
craft. It is a complex project with many layers of involvement and meaning.

At one time in Poland there was a mixing of the Catholic, Orthodox,
Muslim and Jewish religions. Prior to World War 2 and German occupation
to the south-southeast of Bialystok there was Zabludow, a thriving
community of mixed religions with a population of 50,000 Jews. The
Germans in retreat from the Soviet army burnt down the timber synagogue,
a particularly unique timber structure, which they may have been using
for the warehousing of munitions. Today in Zabludow there are only two
churches, a small village, and a few remnants including a Jewish
cemetery. A descendent of the Jews of Zabludow, Tilford Bartman from the
Boston area, is a member of the project. Though his personal historic
research he gave us a context for the place, showing us where his
grandfather's blacksmith shop had been located, as well as making clear
to all of us the significance of the act of recreation of an annihilated
heritage. My discussion with him and his presentation were engaging.
Following after his presentation a Polish survivor, a structural
engineer who had presented his work on repairs of timber roof trusses,
stood and gave (in Polish) his testimony to what he had witnessed and to
his mother's instruction when he was a child that he bear witness. It
was a bit over the top, it was not planned, and quite a few of us were
in tears. Others of the group who had extensive reading in the subject
of the genocide of the Polish Jews made a very succinct contribution to
the workshop, not in providing a presentation, but in the depth of
one-on-one conversations. I never quite knew that I wanted to know in
detail how the containment camps and the gas chambers worked.

The Wiking, as hotels go was inexpensive and demonstrated right off that
the project, and the workshop, is something more than the reconstruction
of a building but a workshop in transcending the confusions of a
multi-mix of language, emotion and culture. The Polish have odd
impressions of the practice of hotel business. It can be noted that in
the bathroom we were provided with one roll of toilet paper, a smaller,
rougher and brown version of what American's are used to. There was no
soap, there was no place to buy soap and it took me several days to
figure out to ask and borrow soap. We were given one towel to each bed.
The beds were narrow and short and consisted of a thin mat with a sheet
and one blanket. The pillows were very large, down feather, and opulent.
The room was unheated, which for the beginning of October was not too
terribly bad. The doors to the rooms, opened with a key, did not have
locking latches on the interior; one had to insert the key in to the
lock. It was a few days before this little piece of cultural technology
and custom was figured out by the visiting America group, seeming such a
simple thing, but it was the clash of simple things that seemed to occur
on a regular basis to make the adventure interesting. Several had
opportunity, for the failure to lock their room doors, to talk about the
mysterious intruder into their rooms. No harm seemed to have been done
more than to create a mild paranoia and to accelerate the group learning
curve.

The light in the parking lot was so bright that when we turned off the
lights in our room I could read a book, but I was too tired always to
want to read anything. There were noises of the nearby road all night,
as well as on one night a particularly unfortunate local guest, not of
our party, who spent the evening yelling, retching, and being cursed by
his wife. There was a noticeable lack of soundproofing in the hotel.

Though I describe the scene of the hotel as relatively unpleasant, the
conditions from my perspective were a hell of a lot better than being
holed up in a room for intensive cardiac care, the situation I had been
in on my last visit to Poland. The immediate lesson in going to eastern
Poland is that not only do you not have soap in your hotel room, or a
telephone, but that the surrounding population of the region does not
always have soap or a telephone. There always seems to be an
availability of beer, almost beer and vodka. It took a while to figure
out the red handle on the sink was for cold water and in the shower it
was for hot water. I never did figure out how to use the one telephone
as the operators and staff of the hotel spoke only Polish, which I do
not speak or understand more than to be polite and say, "Thank you."
Someone in the party did have a phrase book, but it was rarely used.
Though a few of the party did eventually 'secure' telephone access and
even the internet to check their e-mails, there was a shortage of time
and a shortage of resources and you had to really really want to use the
phone or the internet to overcome the hurdles. It was also apparent on
several occasions that the hotel staff did not quite know what to do
with us. The food in the hotel varied from just OK to atrociously
unpleasant. I hope never again to be served boiled hot dogs, reheated
potato sausage, or warm milk for breakfast. It took several days for the
hotel staff to realize that Americans like to drink a lot of coffee, for
a while there was not nearly enough of the substance. The comment of
conclusion on the hotel food was that they were trying to create
authentic Polish food but they did not know how. I must add, though,
that on a few occasions we were presented with incredible feasts...
particularly when we visited the weaver Teresa Pryzmont in Wasilówka who
laid out a table in a pole barn on the farm where she lives that set us
all to a standard of excellent Polish cuisine. Comparing our options for
dining at the hotel we regretted leaving her farm and in the process
several very fine weavings were purchased.

The Polish have a very high carbohydrate diet with little vegetables
other than cabbage, beets and the occasional carrots. It was
demonstrated to me that the health of a nation is dependent on the
infrastructure of their food supply. As a diabetic Poland has a
dangerous cuisine. The food was bland by American standards and as a
rule neither salt nor pepper was available at the table. The table
napkins were also perplexing, rectangles of a tough paper approximately
6 inches square very well adapted for sketches to reinforce a discussion
of timber joinery details, or wiping the fingers, but not a whole lot more.

Having a background trade as a stone mason I have seen enough timber
joinery to last me a few weeks more. We toured a great number of
structures including a masonry synagogue in Tykocin, where we also
visited the Catholic Church (church complex of Holy trinity, built
1742-50) where three of us broke off from the group touring the church
roof to climb the interior of the steeple. It was a resplendent and for
me significant view. Poland in this region is relatively flat land with
trees and a big sky. The stones are glacial till, igneous for the most
part with no evidence of sandstone, marble or shale, but otherwise the
land feels very much like the high and flat agricultural plateaus of
Upstate New York between the Finger Lakes. I say that we broke off from
the main group as since most of the time we did not know what we were
supposed to be doing with ourselves we seemed to quickly divide into
small groups pushing the boundaries of exploration. The bus would pull
up on a small town in front of a 17^th century wood frame church in a
small village and we would be told to get off the bus, which we did, and
the fact that we then dispersed as a group not only into the church, in
most cases quickly moving to view roof timbers, but off down the road or
into a field or into a yard or into a small store to buy beer I do not
think was exactly in the original plan. As a group we got very good at
running loose around eastern Poland. Everyone that we met was friendly
and curious to see Americans. With the digital cameras I am certain that
we took several thousands of photographs for the time that we were visiting.

There was one particularly moving visit to an Orthodox church where
there was a service in progress. The scene is a remote village church
and a bus pulls up our front and suddenly there is a mixed group of
people running around in the church yard -- one crazy American
photographing the outhouse, others flocking around and photographing
windows and wood shingles. We did not have an official interpreter,
which was a good thing actually as we relied on the resources of the
group to understand our environment and the people that we encountered
within it. We were quickly being yelled at by one woman, apparently the
choir director, and then we were being embraced by another woman, having
no idea what she was saying to us, then as quickly we found ourselves
inside of the church during the service on the balcony as observers,
which meant that we had to walk our way through the congregation. The
entire episode, with the women's heads covered, the chanting song, the
incense, the robed priest walking around saying whatever it was we had
no idea in an old wooden church with a wealth of iconography on the
walls and the muted sunlight of the afternoon sun... became for many of
us an emotional encounter. From there it became difficult to not find
emotion in our experience of Poland.

As we were leaving this church our guide and leader, Marik Banaski, was
latched onto by an elderly gentleman and the two of them took off in a
small car. We had no idea what it was about, some of us may have
understood, but it happened quickly and others of us were left loose
wondering what to do next. In about twenty minutes Mark returned with
the old man who had with him a landscape painting. It was explained to
us that the old man was the painter and that he would sell the painting.
There were close to 24 of us by this time and here was only one
painting. In a change of plan the group persuaded Marik to take us to
the man's house. It was a small house and all there was on the walls
were the man's paintings, all of them for sale. I believe that we bought
him out, but we also, I am sure, made him famous in his village.

We were visiting at a wooden mosque and the elderly woman, animated with
life yet short of stature, that had welcomed us into the mosque was
standing with a few of us in the entry room. We often found reasons to
laugh at our adventures and the woman wanted to know why we were
laughing so that she could share in the humor. The woman asked us to
tell her a story that she would be able to remember us by. Ed Levin, a
legendary timber framer was telling her a story about Japanese
carpenters using fiber grass... and as she moved towards me I thought
that she was going to give me a hug but as I leaned forward to embrace
her, she was chattering quite a bit in Polish, she slipped beneath my
arms to turn on the light switch behind me. I had already been
designated by the group as the clown, an authority on Polish sex toys or
in physical humor apt to fall under a seat on the bus during the odd
lurching movements or to make clumsy dance in the village streets to the
consternation of the residents, and my misinterpretation of the woman's
act of friendship put everyone of the group on warning to keep me away
from a desire to hug Muslim women.

The entire trip to Poland was disjointed and rife with misunderstandings
and a desire to on the part of everyone to get beyond their selves and
to more closely understand each other.

There are many stories to be told, but I will end with one that affected
me very much.

I met Georgi, a man from Bialorus who is the director of a Skansen
there. He joined the group about halfway through the ten days. He spoke
no English. A strong man of stocky and muscular build, when you shook
hands with him you had to be cautions of his grip -- later I found you
had to be cautious of his vodka and our dancing around together in
inter-cultural pantomime at the concluding party was something else
altogether. One of his employees, Angelika, a shy and quite young woman
had been with us from the beginning of the workshop. At one lunch I was
sitting at table with the man from Bialorus and with a woman from East
Germany and another from Israel. The two women, both of varied abilities
in English, were translating. There was considerable question and
answer, and the interview took close to forty minutes.

Here is the story.

The nuclear reactor site of Chernobyl is in the Ukraine. The radioactive
contaminated area of Chernobyl is roughly 50 kilometers in size and
overlaps the borders of Russia and Bialorus. The contaminated area
extends 30 kilometers into Bialorus. Georgi has a predicament in that
there are 200 heritage structures located within the contaminated area.
There is no technology to bring the buildings out of the area, and the
zone will remain contaminated for another 300,000 years. The people of
Bialorus are upset that they have lost access to their heritage
architecture, to their cultural landscape. There is documentation of the
structures, and Georgi has been suited up and has visited the sites, and
it is hoped that in Bialorus that they will be able to recreate the lost
structures. It is an incredible task. Georgi hopes that by his
participation in the recreation of a lost timber synagogue in Poland
that he will be able to learn better how to recreate the lost heritage
in Bialorus. It gets more interesting. The containment structure over
the reactor is possibly cracked and leaking radiation. The cooling water
is leaking out into the ground water, and there is a river that flows
nearby carrying radiation with it. Within the area of contamination
there are no animals, no birds, no squirrels, no bison... the plants are
contaminated, there is a mushroom that grows outside of the
contamination area that particularly harbors radioactivity and people
who eat it then get sick and die. Wild mushrooms are particularly
popular in the region -- I found in the woods and photographed an
absolutely beautiful amanita muscaria. When a free-range chicken in the
contaminated area eats anything it becomes radioactive, and then it is
eaten. There are people to the number of 40,000 living within the
contaminated region of Bialorus. Though the people had been evacuated to
Kiev the grandmothers proclaimed that they would rather die than leave
their ancestral lands, and as the families are close knit entire
families moved back into the contaminated area. The people have several
cancers, particularly of the blood; there is widespread poverty (nothing
can be exported from the area), there is a cultural attitude to neglect
the malformed, and there are children being born with deformities.
Georgi ended his story by saying that with the dissolution of the Soviet
Union everyone all around in the villages destroyed their statues of
Lenin, but that Chernobyl is the monument to the socialist dream that
cannot be vanished.

][<en

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>