Poland

I was in Poland for the month of June, came home, went to Montana for a family event, came home, the basement flooded, and now school has started. This explains a bit of what we experienced in Poland.

Poland
On June 5th, I left Cedar Rapids with five Iowa Mennonite School students for Poland as part of the US-Poland Parliamentary Youth Leadership Exchange Program. The goal of the program is to build and improve relationships between Poland and the US and is funded by the US State Department. Two other US high schools also participated in the program, one from Des Moines and the other from Chicago.

The group from IMS spent three weeks in Łodź (pronounced “woodge”), a city of approximately 800,000 people. I stayed with Angelika, the Polish teacher who was here in February and her parents. They lived in a relatively new home on the edge of the city. In, Łodź we attended classes and visited many different historical and cultural sites. Łodź had been the leading industrial center of Poland but since the fall of communism the factories have closed and the city has had to reinvent itself. Currently Łodź is competing to become “the European city of Culture” for 2016. The city is home to a famous film school, hosts several important film festivals and bills itself as “Holly Łodź.” In addition to the cultural activities and sites the city has attracted new industries including a large Dell plant and Infosys.

After the home stays, we traveled by train to Warsaw and met the other US schools. In Warsaw we were hosted by the European Academy of Diplomacy. We spent much of the time in Warsaw meeting government officials, politicians, and former diplomats. We were also shown some of Warsaw’s historic buildings. The impressive thing to note is that 90 per cent of the buildings in Warsaw were destroyed during World War II, so most of what we saw had been painstakingly rebuilt since 1945.

One of the more sobering visits was to the newly opened “Uprising Museum.” This museum was built to commemorate the attempt by Poles to resist the German army after nearly four years of occupation. At least 6 million Poles, including 3 million Jewish Poles, were killed during the war, if not by the Germans, then by their Russian “liberators.” Nearly every Polish person I asked could tell stories of family members who were killed, or who disappeared during the war.

From Warsaw we traveled to Krakow where we met the Polish students. This portion of the trip was led by the Kosciuszko Foundation. The students worked on developing community service projects for the host Polish cities along with visiting some of the historic spots in the city.

Some observations:
95 % of Poles identify themselves as Roman Catholic. Of these, 80% describe themselves as attending mass regularly. http://countrystudies.us/poland/38.htm. During the 19th century when Poland did not exist on the maps, it was the Catholic Church which kept alive the Polish language, culture and sense of national identity. More recently, the Catholic Church played a key role leading to the fall of communism. When Pope John Paul II, the first Polish pope, traveled to Warsaw, the communist government was powerless to stop people from going to hear him say mass. We saw many statues of Pope John Paul II as we traveled. As Poland becomes more in tune with the more secular western Europe there is debate about what role the Catholic Church should play in the life of the nation.

Religious identity is important. It felt odd to have people ask if I “was a Christian.” This usually happened when people noticed I did not know how to cross myself, when to kneel, or when to put my hands in the holy water. Discussions about sin, confessionals, and the role of Mary, also raised concerns about my salvation as I was the one expressing a view very different from most Polish Catholics.

Similarly, when we said which school we were from we were often asked to explain “what is a Mennonite?” This included both Polish people we met as well as the students and teachers from the US. One US student admitted she was surprised the IMS girls were not wearing bonnets.

The average Pole is much more knowledgeable about foreign affairs than is the average American. Situated between Germany and Russia, Poles are keenly aware of the actions of those countries as well as the US. Poland sought and gained membership in NATO and the European Union and is pushing its neighbors, Ukraine and Belarus to join in spite of strong Russian opposition. Poland is sometimes described as the European country most supportive of the U.S. Unfortunately, many Poles feel the US government takes this support for granted.

Many Poles assume that all Americans are wealthy, carry guns and have sex with many different people. These ideas come from watching American television shows and movies. TV shows which are popular include, House, The Bold and Beautiful, Grey’s Anatomy, the CSI and Law and Order shows along with some of the reality shows.

The food in Poland is fairly basic. I ate lots of pork, kielbasa (sausage), potatoes and cabbage. The majority of this was locally grown.

Farms in eastern Poland are much smaller than in Iowa. The largest tractor I saw was similar to a John Deere 4010. One day when were driving through the countryside many farmers were raking hay. The surprising thing was to see people using long wooden hand rakes in addition to the tractor pulled rakes. The most common crops were wheat, barley, potatoes, cabbage and strawberries.

Gasoline is expensive; approximately $5.60 a gallon and most people drive small cars. On most purchases there is a Value Added Tax (sales tax) of 22%. This is in addition to personal income tax rates similar to the US. The current exchange rate is around $1 US to 3 zlotys. Poland is scheduled to switch to the Euro in early 2012, the year they host European Soccer championships.

Finally, the people we met were friendly, open, and glad we were visiting. A number of times I was asked, “why would you visit Poland?” They seemed surprised, yet pleased, when we told them how beautiful the country is and how well we were being treated. It was a wonderful learning experience for myself and the students.