"Now you're going to see Nazi Poland"

This is what a Polish colleague said to me as we sat down in the lecture theatre for a talk by Zygmunt Bauman, which was held to mark 150 years of German social democracy. Upon entering the lecture theatre, it was pointed out to me that we could see a large number of nationalists in the audience on the other side.  They were clearly identifiable in an academic crowd as several rows of young men, many with skinheads and wearing similar clothing.  Someone had been handing out leaflets for the far-right party National Revival of Poland (NOP) (Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski), which accused Bauman of murdering Poles in his role in the communist regime.  It is a small nationalist, anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and anti-communist organisation.

As soon as Bauman entered the lecture theatre and sat down at the front, the booing started, and then they all stood up and started aggressively chanting and blowing whistles.  I couldn't understand any of it but I have been told they were shouting things like "Nuremberg for communists", "better dead than red" and "we are Poland".  They also had some banners including one for the Wrocław football team, which my colleague told me was linked to the growth of far-right groups in the city.  It was really quite a terrifying moment, realising you are in an enclosed space with a large group of nationalist thugs clearly ready for a fight rather than just a verbal exchange.

The following video shows some of the chanting, and then the moment when the police, and then a few minutes later the anti-terrorist police, arrive in the lecture theatre.  What was really great to see was the reaction from the rest of the audience, who shouted back at them, applauded when the police arrived and chanted "do widzenia" (goodbye) when they were being removed from the hall.  After they left, they gave a standing ovation to Professor Bauman (also in the video).

Thankfully, and contrary to the aims of these thugs, the lecture took place and was really wonderful.  The Major of Wrocław, Rafał Dutkiewicz, apologised profusely to Professor Bauman, who started his lecture by commenting that the event served to demonstrate that a problem which had existed throughout the 150-year period he was there to discuss had not yet been overcome.  Indeed, we should use this as a reminder that right-wing extremism is a growing problem not just in Poland, but across Europe - including the UK, Germany, and perhaps most worryingly, in Greece.

Britain has two far-right/nationalist groups.  The British National Party, originally part of the National Front and lead by Nick Griffin, has two Members of the European Parliament and until local elections this year quite a significant number of local councillors.  They are a fascist, racist party which have thankfully lost a lot of electoral support this year.  Unsurprisingly, a brief Google search showed that the BNP has links with the NOP in Poland.  Unfortunately, and perhaps more worryingly, however, we also have the English Defence League (EDL), which is an Islamophobic protest movement consisting of football hooligans which stage street protests against Islam.  According to the Wiki article, its membership is estimated to be from 35,000-100,000, a far higher number than the apparently 1000-strong National Revival of Poland.

(Nazi salutes from the EDL)

Of greatest concern in Europe, however, is the dramatic rise of Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn in Greece, which currently has 18 MPs in Parliament, which amounted to 6.92% of the vote (425,970 votes) in the last election in 2012.  According to The Guardian, it is currently sitting at around 12% in the polls and has been implicated in a growing number of violent attacks on immigrants across Greece.  This is a serious concern, and something European politicians need to consider very carefully as social inequality and poverty rises across the continent.

Golden Dawn:

First language breakthrough

I always tell people that learning a language involves a series of 'clicks' when suddenly something clicks in to place and you realise you have made progress.  In Germany I remember having the first click after about 3 months when I suddenly realised I could understand the lecture I was sitting in.  And then after 6 months after spending a lot of time with my German flatmate I suddenly realised that I could talk relatively fluently.  

I feel like I've had the first of what will hopefully be a series of 'clicks' with Polish this week.  After a month here I now feel like I can communicate verbally in a relatively acceptable (yet basic) way and form comprehensible sentences and hold up some kind of basic conversation.  I have enough confidence to initiate a conversation or ask something in Polish and I have Polish words floating round my head (they sometimes jump unannounced into my German, which I speak daily at the university - this makes for some very weird German sentences…).   This mini breakthrough was probably precipitated last week by having to communicate with my physiotherapist (trying to fix my knee), the doctors’ surgery, having language classes, and talking to colleagues and other people I have met along the way.  While I still have a long way to go, I feel like I’ve made the first step in my language learning journey.

The Polish really help you to learn the language.  In a lot of countries like Germany, you meet a lot of people who want the opportunity to practise their English.  However, many people in Poland do not speak a lot of English.  The older generation (educated prior to 1989) mostly learned Russian and German in school, meaning that it is generally speaking only the young, highly educated generation which has a high level of English.  This means that I can’t always get away with speaking English in my day-to-day life.  The Poles are also quite a self-conscious people.  Even if they do have some knowledge of English, they are often reluctant to try because (I get the impression) they feel that their knowledge should be better. I have also had Poles apologise to me for their poor English skills.  While I can imagine a British person apologising when they are abroad for their poor knowledge of the local language, somehow I just cannot imagine one apologising to a foreigner, when in the UK, that they do not speak their language.

I also find that the Polish are incredibly happy and excited when you show you can speak a bit of the language, and they always laugh with no small amount of joy and tell you how wonderfully well you speak (even if you have just said ‘hello, how are you?’!). Generally you don’t meet a lot of foreigners who can speak much Polish, and it’s obviously not one of the first languages people learn (and indeed, usually their first question is, “Why did you start learning Polish?!”).  They are aware that it is a really hard language to learn so they are always impressed to see people attempting to battle with its crazy grammar, spelling and pronunciation.  All this has the effect that I am often not too shy to attempt to speak because I know that they won’t judge me.

All in all, so far I am happy to have made the progress I have so far but I have a long way to go!

Hiking in Jelenia Góra

Today I ended up going hiking with two Polish girls I met on Friday night.  The Lower Silesian railway were running a special promotion where you could travel on specific trains from Wroclaw to a town called Jelenia Góra, just over 100km away, for free to promote some brand new trains they have just added to the line.  

We went to the Sudetes mountain range which spans the Polish, Czech and German borders, starting our hike from a village called Janowice Wielkie.  We walked for about 4 or so hours, explored some castle ruins:

hiked up some quite difficult trails (for me):

and enjoyed some pretty amazing views at the top: 

When we descended and arrived into a small village we needed to get back to the train station for 17.50, which was quite a distance away.  To my surprise the girls said we were going hitchhike ('autostopy') and hopefully someone will pick us up so we could get there on time.  Hitchhiking is something I would never ever do in Britain because it is something I perceive to be far too dangerous to be worth the risk, at least for women.  But it seems completely normal in Poland and the girls had plenty of amusing stories to tell about their hitchhiking experiences.  It was nice not to treat every stranger as a potential murderer/rapist - I think this is perhaps symptomatic of living in a more trusting society with lower levels of violent crime!

I was also amazed at the friendliness of other people we met along the way on the trails, at the train station and on the train.  Everyone makes friendly conversation with everyone else and they seem to talk to each other like they all know each other perfectly well.  We spent the whole 2 hour train journey back to Wroclaw talking to two other hikers we found at the station waiting to leave.

All in all a great day out and lovely to leave the city and see some more of the Polish countryside!

And just because I find rural Polish train stations extremely quaint:

1,000 miles by train: the UK to Poland

Whilst planning a move to 'The Continent' - 5 months in Wroclaw, Poland and 12 months in Berlin - I was faced with a dilemma: how shall I get myself and all my stuff there? Do I beg my dad to drive me, with a car full of stuff, or do I try to squeeze my life into a case weighing less than 20kg? At this time a dear person in my life, Shaz, the passionate and committed Friends of the Earth campaigner who loves the environment so much he once dressed up as a bee, encouraged (read: bullied) me to take the carbon-light option: the train. At the same time, another friend, Vickie, pointed me towards the site seat61.com, an amazing website which explains in impressive detail how to reach all the far-flung corners of the continent from the UK by train. I started to think that a long train adventure would be a great way to start the new chapter in my life, plus I could take whatever I could manage to carry!

According to seat61.com, the best route to Wrocław was via Paris and Berlin, including the Eurostar from London and a sleeper train from Paris, picking up the 5 hour train to Wrocław in Berlin.  I decided to extend the journey a bit by giving myself 6 hours in Paris and a day in Berlin to soak up a bit of the atmosphere and eat some patisserie in Paris and enjoy Kaffee und Kuchen in Berlin. 

I left my home town of Wivenhoe on the 0724 train to London. This was rush hour on a commuter train so it was busy. On arrival in London I needed to take the tube from London Liverpool Street to St. Pancras. Getting the London Underground with a lot of luggage is not fun, but somehow I managed.  St. Pancras International is a brand new shiny station. 

To board the Eurostar, you have to go through security and have your luggage x-rayed, but it is much less stressful than an airport! After security is passport control. Britain is not in the Schengen zone (annoyingly) so this will be the only time I will have to show my passport. After that I will travel from France, through Germany and into Poland without a single border or passport official in sight. Let's not forget one of the greatest achievements of European integration!

After a total of two and a half hours we arrived into the Gare du Nord, Paris.  After locking my life into very expensive luggage lockers at the Gare de l'Est, I set off to explore the area around Canal St. Martin. The weather was glorious - clear blue sky and 20-something degrees. I had a coffee outside a cafe, walked around a bit before buying a tarte aux pommes from the first patisserie I came across which, along with a copy of Le Monde, I took to sit by the canal and enjoy the warmth. A bit later I met up with a PhD student I met at a conference in London who was coincidentally doing an internship just round the corner from the station.  I needed to eat before the 12 hour journey ahead of me so we went for some food - naturally as a vegetarian the only thing available to me in France was omelette and 'pommes frites'!.

I headed to Gare de l'Est for my sleeper train to Berlin at 8pm. I was in an economy sleeper, which was a bit more expensive than the cheap couchettes (where you are bunking with 5 others!) but a lot cheaper than the deluxe private ensuite rooms you can get. I was sharing with one other woman, a friendly microbiologist from Brazil. It was cosy, but comfortable, with a sink in the room and a shower down the hall.  

I slept for around 7 hours, waking up refreshed to the nice Deutsche Bahn man knocking on the door telling us there was a half an hour to go. He soon reappeared with a small German breakfast of coffee and bread.  In Berlin I stayed with my friend Leila, and spent the afternoon sitting in my favourite café in Neukölln and walking along the canal I had run beside many times last summer.  I also managed to meet up with my friend Natalie who was by coincidence in the city for the weekend.  A day in Berlin reminded me of how much I am looking forward to moving there in October!

The worst part of my journey was the Berlin-Wrocław leg.  For some reason my case seemed 10kg heavier that morning and I had to lug it on and off two buses to get to Berlin Hauptbahnhof.  I stressed myself out getting to the station in rush hour traffic, only to find that the train was delayed by 25 minutes due to a signal failure (apparently this happens in Germany too!).  The train was then delayed further in Cottbus, I think due to a broken down train on the line. We waited another 20-30 minutes there.  After crossing the border (where the train stops and the German train employees get off and the Polish ones get on) I was reminded that Polish trains are painfully, painfully slow.  Sometimes they just crawl through the countryside and villages, which is interesting to get an impression of the landscape but frustrating if all you want to do is reach your destination.  We even stopped in Węgliniec for a 15 minute break!  Eventually the train arrived in Wrocław and I was met on the platform by my new flatmate, Natalia.  I was so exhausted from that day’s journey that all I did was buy some food, before falling into bed and sleeping for 11 hours!

All in all, I enjoyed my mammoth train journey.  I crossed the continent and watched it change, spoke 4 different languages, and enjoyed some great food along the way. Covering 4 EU member states, I got a little snippet of the diversity of this continent and the importance of European cooperation. If you’re on a tight budget and in a hurry, though, take the plane!

Wroclaw Main Square:

Blogging about life in Poland

In April I left Britain and moved to Wroclaw, Poland for 5 months in order to learn about the country, write my PhD, research and improve my Polish.  I am based at the University of Wroclaw and trying to immerse myself as much as I can in Wroclaw life.

This blog has a number of purposes.  Firstly I would like to write something to keep my friends and family up to date with my movements as I reside over here on the big, scary "Continent" (after 5 months in Poland I will be moving to Berlin).  I would like to document my cultural experiences for the time I am over here.

Secondly, it might be useful or interesting for either Brits or other non-Poles thinking about or currently spending some time in Poland.  While I am not intending to be here long term, I will have to negotiate the Polish system with relatively weak Polish language skills and settle into life in this city.

Thirdly, while the UK is in the midst of a heated and controversial debate about its EU membership, often based on the question of EU immigration, it will perhaps serve as a reminder that for all the EU nationals (in particular the Poles) who have the right to move to the UK, Brits are likewise legally entitled, and also welcomed, to live in other EU member states.  This is something that those in the UK should note at this particular moment in European politics.