A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland

http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-western-kid-living-in-communist-poland/?

by octopus • 12 years ago

118 31 12 years ago

gambiting3• 12 years ago

As a Polish person myself - I have to say it's fascinating. I know everything about the communist times from the inside, from the million stories told by my parents, and I know this exact process in reverse - getting out of Poland, and then being fascinated that there are no queues,that you can buy anything you like, that everything is organized and seems like people care about their surroundings a lot more(which is ironic,if you think that the very foundation of a communist country is that everything belongs to everyone so everyone should care about it - well, you couldn't be more wrong. If something belongs to everyone then no one cares about it).

the_watcher• 12 years ago

> which is ironic,if you think that the very foundation of a communist country is that everything belongs to everyone so everyone should care about it - well, you couldn't be more wrong. If something belongs to everyone then no one cares about it

So, basically, the tragedy of the commons is painfully accurate.

mercer2• 12 years ago

I spent a decade in Albania, starting right after the fall of communism in 1991, and it is (or at least was) true there as well.

People would just throw their trash out of the window of their apartment building, because why not? Never mind that this created a terrible smell and there would be trash right where people walked.

They meticulously cleaned the tiny bits of concrete road in front of their house, but not care about the very dangerous open pothole that would be hidden in a puddle after a little bit of rain. In fact, someone probably took the pothole because it was somehow useful to them.

From what I remember, this changed over time, and people became more aware of the fact that the public space was also their space.

In a way, it's a bit like doing chores because your authoritarian, cold parents force you to. You'll do the minimum, and never do it because you feel it's a good thing to do.

Maybe it's not so much that people don't want to work for the common good, but rather that forcing them too just doesn't work.

Either way, great blog post and it reminded me of my own experiences!

yread• 12 years ago

Beautiful story! Thanks for sharing

pling4• 12 years ago

Slight diversion from the point, but a DS anecdote: A friend of mine at university had a 1973 Citroen DS. This was in 1997. The hydraulic system failed violently (rapid depressurisation) whilst we were going up the M1 in the UK. The steering basically stopped working and thing sunk like a ship over the space of 30 seconds. I imagine it was sort of like an Apollo 13 moment for him driving.

The AA guy turned up, shook his head and said "Bloody French crap" and ordered a flatbed to pick it up. By the time it turned up, all the hydralic fluid was all over the road. This was 15 miles from Manchester so the poor AA guy dragged us back to London begrudgingly.

He bought a Mitsibishi Galant VR4 after that which was a wonderful car.

hcho• 12 years ago

Citroen the company was always underfunded and they could never invest in quality control.

I wonder how a hydraulic suspension would fare if produced by today's technology and quality standards. DS has a flying carpet ride feel to it and even the most upmarket cars of today can't reach that.

pling4• 12 years ago

Yeah the ride was pretty awesome. Until it broke. Spot on.

Then again I have a FIAT (Fix It Again Tony) with a MultiJet engine which has been hellishly expensive to keep alive so today's technology and quality standards are debatable.

gambiting3• 12 years ago

I've driven the latest Range Rover(the big one,not Sport), and although it has a pneumatic, rather than hydraulic suspension, the ride was smoother than anything I have ever experienced. It did feel like a magic carpet, frankly.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

I've had that happen to me once, hydraulic leaks are fun. You lose (in that order) power steering

- with all the weight of the engine over the front wheels imagine you're instantly the proud owner of a non-power assisted tank, you can still steer but it takes real muscle and it is impossible if the car has no forward speed, everything happens in slow motion. A quick evasive manouver would be impossible but with some long term planning you might be able to make turn of about 3 miles in radius.

- the suspension goes. Depending on how big the leak is you either fall like a brick or float down like a feather. After that even a chalkline will feel like you've just hit a kerb.

- the brakes go. This is a really neat extra kick in the pants, especially once the lack of steering has caused you to come aimed at something you'd rather avoid contact with.

Fun times.

That said, when it works it's the best ride you'll ever encounter bar none. And it mostly works.

One problem with the ancients is that you're so far out of regular maintenance schedules that it is next to impossible to predict with any accuracy what will fail next. So you carry a lot of spares and you get to know the owners of the major DS garages in all European capitals :)

eshvk• 12 years ago

Loved the story. Reminds me of my own odd immigrant story: In the 1970s, my dad decides he had enough of living off the family, takes off on a 30-day tourist visa to Communist Ethiopia. Grabs a cab to the Ministry of Education, somehow finds convinces that person that he, a non-native speaker of English (Indian origin), is the best person to teach English to rebels in the south of the country. He does that for five years. Gets married, lives there for the next twenty more years. I was born, grew up there. It always amuses me how a random whim 30 years ago has influenced so much of my life. (And also proves to be entertaining to sit in the back of a cab with an Ethiopian cab driver and occasionally startle them by speaking fluent Amharic. ;-)

brianmcc• 12 years ago

Glad it all worked out so well, what a nice story. It's crazy how much of our lives can be decided by such a small moment - like helping a couple of hitchhikers on an otherwise boring, routine day!

mercer2• 12 years ago

This is the very reason why I still hitchhike and love couchsurfing-style initiatives, potluck dinners, and such, and why I encourage younger people to give these things a shot.

It opens you up to so many unique, wonderful (and occasionally scary) situations, and has a way of 'shaking loose' the structures that one inevitably builds up over time.

In fact, I caught myself hitchhiking sometimes just because of how much the people who picked me up seemed to enjoy or need it. I've had people give me their life story, or share something deeply personal that they really wanted to share, or simply enjoy my 'youthful' presence on a long, boring drive. Part of what makes it amazing is that there are so few pre-suppositions in the whole thing. You are likely to never meet the person who just shared his woes again, and sometimes that's exactly why they let themselves talk. But it's also possible that this one connection is the start of a wonderful, lifelong friendship.

I met one of my current best friends through CouchSurfing on the other side of the globe. It was quite likely that we'd never meet again, but instead we ended up spending a few years in the same city, even working together.

(plus, these kinds of thing have way of restoring one's faith in humanity. They're a great counter to the insulating processes that are especially present in Western-European society)

arb99• 12 years ago

Nowadays Poland seems like any other European country (for me, being a tourist it does anyway).

And this article is referencing a time only around 25-30 years ago...

wtbob• 12 years ago

I like to think of centrally planned economies (e.g. Warsaw Pact, pre-reform India or pre-reform China) as helium balloons held under water; all they need is to be released in order to fly up.

What I find extraordinarily sad is how many people still want to return to central planning. I think it's very attractive to the sort of Bright Young Thing who's never held a real job and dealt with real people, and who ends up living his life mooching off of those who have and do.

tomp• 12 years ago

Your analogy is more accurate than you imagine; they are helium balloons, and can easily burst. Just look at what happened to Slovenia (first communist, then 15 years of GDP growth, and looting and stealing by the former communists who were now democratically elected, and now the population is paying off the debts).

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

Poland is what Russia should be and Putin's worst nightmare.

aluhut2• 12 years ago

In some parts it looks like I imagine the USA. I live in Germany now and the malls in Poland still stun me. It's unbelivable how fast those malls and french hyper-markets came out of nothing.

I still don't understand how they survive. There've been 3 malls within few kilometers on the same road in Slupsk.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

Slupsk has one dead mall in the South so apparently it is possible to have too many malls, some land developer got a bit greedy I think.

drags• 12 years ago

If this story piqued your interest in late Communist Poland, give Timothy Garton Ash a read.

His "The Polish Revolution" is a great in depth account of the 1980/81 Polish uprising, and "The Magic Lantern" is a romping retelling of the last few months of Communist rule.

Beautiful books.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

So that's why he was saying he's learning Romanian. Btw, watch out for Duolingo's Romanian course (should take half a year or so to be finished):

http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ro/en/status

Until then maybe Livemocha will do.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Great story Jacques!

"A tent on wheels", that is an excellent description of the 2CV. I saw a frustrated owner who couldn't get the key working literally pull off the side door, and put it in the back and drive off.

The descriptions of the forms and questions was also great, and I've concluded that there is a corollary to the Spiderman "Great Power" quote that goes something like "With great Bureaucracies comes great ass covering." Basically everyone in those systems seem to be in fear that a colleague or a supervisor is going to "get them" if they screwed up something, and the endless forms and papers and signing is a way of creating defensive evidence that they were not the ones the screwed up, if what ever it is that is happening turns out to be a problem. It is really a cancerous organizational dynamic and one that leads to huge inefficiencies.

omilu• 12 years ago

This is the best summary of the cause and effect of bureaucracy I've ever seen.

josephjrobison• 12 years ago

So are you still married to her?!

soperj• 12 years ago

Exactly what I wanted to know.

scrumper• 12 years ago

Wonderful story, nicely told. Thanks.

I had a 2CV as my first car too. Friends nicknamed it the "Can of Death," for reasons you're very familiar with. My favorite trick was going camping with it and removing the back seats which made a very comfortable camp chair. It could also transport a drum kit, two guitars, two 100W amp cabs and heads, (and my band's sexy drummer) without any hassle. I loved that car, and the drummer, and every hot summer's day I spent driving with the wind in my hair and a hand on the window to keep the door shut.

cafard• 12 years ago

Sweet story.

domador• 12 years ago

It's a wonderful story, Jacques! My favorite part (spoiler alert) is how you found your future wife by the side of a tunnel. Wow!

A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland

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