There were definitely a few times I imagined the headline in the Daily Herald:
Local Woman Killed in Trabant Accident In Former Soviet Bloc Country - Member of Communist Party Was Driver
Like any of my former classmates would have been surprised. I had been called a Commie in High School the moment I espoused a mildly liberal view. To be fair, I don't think any of my peers actually knew what a Communist was - they just knew it was Bad! Like, anti-Reagan bad. It became ridiculous - a joke, almost - until I participated in a show called "Peace Child" with several Russian exchange students between my junior and senior year of high school. They brought souvenirs and postcards and were a revelation after all the US propaganda I had been exposed to. Did you know that Russians didn't all secretly desire to be Americans? That the government and the people were separate? Senior year I decorated my locker in red, with pictures, matroishka dolls, postcards and hammers & sickles everywhere. If I was going to get called a Commie, I may as well steal their fabulous icons. (*)
The last Monday we were in Poland we took a tour with a group called the Crazy Guides. Catering to American and English-speaking tourists, they have a fleet of Trabis in which they take their guests on a tour of Nova Huta and boast of having a Genuine Member of the Communist Party on staff. Built as the housing community for a new steelworks, Stalin planned Nova Huta ("New Steelworks) as a middle finger to the intellectual and religious bourgeoisie in nearby Krakow. The steelworks, hundreds of miles from the nearest mine, were a heavy polluter whose effects you can still see in the layer of grime covering the gorgeous turn of the century buildings in Krakow.
Originally only TR and I were going to take this tour - having spent all of our pre-college lives with the specter of Communism and Mutually Assured Destruction hanging over our heads, the break-up of the Soviet Union was a shock to us. TR remembers the Berlin Wall coming down. She wearily told her mother "I don't know what the big deal is - they'll just put it back up again." As scary as Those People were made to us, it was inconceivable that Communism would just go away. What we learned later is that it collapsed under the weight of its own corruption - the dictatorially paranoid government never even paying lip-service to the ideology of Socialism. In hindsight, it seemed they were never a threat. Well, there were still those nukes of course... but how much our own ramping up of anti-Communist hysteria fueled the Soviet's own propaganda and fear-mongering?
Eventually, TR's sister, who had studied in post-Soviet Russia for a time, expressed a desire to join us, and their mother reluctantly gave in. Two cars came to meet us at our hotel and TR and I decided to split up. The two of us are rather substantial in size, while her mother and sister are not. Seeing the Trabants for the first time, we worried that two lard-asses in one Trabi might actually crush the thing. TR and her mom followed a young blonde lady who looked an awful lot like my former cello teacher and her sister L and I shared a car with a shorter dude closer to my height who was never without a cigarette during the entire tour.
I wouldn't call it comfortable, but it certainly wasn't any worse than '73 VW Beetle. Except of course for the times we had to pull over so our driver could pop the hood and fix something. And the sparks coming from the ignition everytime he started the car were alarming. And that time where I thought some dude on a bus was smiling and checking me out when he was actually pointing and laughing at the car. And the dude with the broke-down rusted out hooptie of a Ford Festiva who glowered several times at us. Dude, the Trabant would be a step up for you, dipshit. L and I joked a bit on our way to Nowa Huta. We were getting a little defensive of the car, but also, somewhat fearful of our lives. Polish drivers are reputed to be the worst in the EU. I'm not sure about that (they were certainly more courteous than your average LA driver) but there is something about sitting in the back of the automotive equivalent of a Spam can being driven by a taciturn chain-smoker to make you rethink your position on praying the Rosary in public.
Stopped for gas - note the hood's up.
Eventually we made it to a milk bar in Nova Huta, where I enjoyed a lovely hot chocolate while TR's guide was joined by another and they told us the story of Nova Huta, of Communism in Poland. Soviet pictures translated, tricks of propaganda revealed, stories about parents meeting in a food line, tales of the young, pre-pope Karol Wojtyla. It was fascinating and personal, and not really something that could be fully comprehended by reading a book about the time. They took us around the town which was no more horrifying than lots of Western cities (and to be honest, I didn't find the Socialist Realism architecture all that icky - I'll take that any day over some of the useless Frank Gehry monstrosities that have been popping up around here. I have no taste.) That the Poles were greatly mistreated and oppressed by the Soviets is a matter of public record, but you don't comprehend the slow-acting depression of the whole thing unless you visit. Nova Huta was the site of my second Ugly American incident - they had shown us pictures of a shop taken in the 50's, and then took us to the actual shop, in which absolutely nothing had been changed. It was lovely, but lovelier still was a reverse-painted glass icon that was Just The Thing I had been looking for to give to a friend. So yeah, I delayed the Communist tour with my blatant American Capitalistic desire to buy religious iconography. I felt like a big dork, but the icon was unique. (**)
Naturally, they renamed Lenin Square shortly after breaking away from the Soviet Union -
After the tour of the city center, we got back into our respective Trabis and drove over to the actual steelworks, and then to the first new Church allowed by Communism - built because they couldn't keep Catholics from gathering for mass in public places. Karol Wojtyla was also responsible for this and it became clearer to me why the Poles were so glad to have him, why they were extremely proud when he became Pope. For centuries as the Polish state was conquered, occupied, partitioned and absorbed into other countries, they could call themselves Catholic when identifying themselves as Polish was forbidden. They weren't always supported by Rome, but they had Catholic traditions unique to Poland. Despite the fact that I found the church to be remarkably ugly in that way I find many modern churches, I was touched by the message of it; the outer walls of the Arka Pana are covered in tens of thousands of small stones, each one sent by a Pole to help build the church.
Here's our driver checking out something malfunctiony outside the Steelworks -
That was our last stop on the trip. Instead of driving us to our hotel as previously discussed, our guide dropped us off near the main square of Krakow. L and I took another moment to be alarmed - we were supposed to meet TR and their mom at the hotel! The guide turned off the car and said, "No hotel. Tour is done. You get out now." We asked if our friends would be meeting us. "They come. You can go now." Our guide spoke about as much English as we did Polish, but he agreed to stay until TR and her mom got there, which they did an agonizing 10 minutes or so later. So I guess we got the more authentic ride, with the actual member of the Communist Party.
(*) My senior year of high school I protested our involvement with the first Gulf War by wearing the yellow sash that had been part of my Peace Child costume. Heard "Commie" and "Hippie" all day in the halls. A month later a "Yellow Ribbon" day was held at school. Every last jack-bag who had called me a commie was wearing their own precious yellow ribbon now that it was OK to do so.
(**) Also, it never made it to my friend - it's on my bookcase right now. I always buy neat stuff for other people when I travel but never anything for myself.
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