Post by pjotr on Mar 3, 2020 0:53:03 GMT 1
Dear Bo and Jeanne,
Memories of Poznań, Kraków and Warsaw are memories of connection, connecting to relatives, digging into family history, and being there. The senses of watching, feeling, smelling, tasting and hearing and experiencing.
Poznań for me was a mystery and farytale world of a Slavic country that was communist and stuck into the past with some twenties/thirties, forties/fifties elements in the seventies and eighties.
For instance ancient cars from the fifties, an extremely old tiny black and white tv from the late fifties (my grandparents one), old antique furniture, the complete lack of modernity in the old apartment building which had the atmosphere of the thirties.
We children went into an old Art House movie when we entered Poznań. The contrast with the capitalist, Western, Free and Democratic harbour town Vlissingen with it’s Olau Lines Ferry 🚢 connection with Sheerness (the UK 🇬🇧), and the French, Belgian and British (Expat neighbours) was large.
Poznań was an exciting, strange, alien city to us with about half a million people we couldn’t understand. Therefor instaid I watched, experienced, enjoyed and went to Poznań sam’s (supermarkets), shops, bar mlechny, the littlle charming Poznań zoo with the Indian Elefant, all these homes of Polish family members.
The apartment block of my grandparents was a microcosmos of the multi-layered Polish society. From typical Polish lower middle class people and Polish workers to sophisticated French, English and German speaking Polish aristocrats (both magnats and Schlachta people) to Polish upper middle class, lower middle class, civil servants, a busdriver and his wife (my grandparents neighbours) to a nasty, disturbed, Polish antisemitic psychopath who called my bancia a dirty jew and was obsessed with the idea that we were an Israeli family (in staid of Dutch) and that we were Zionist invaders who wanted to take over Poland. He sang antisemitic German songs in the ancient nearly 19th century ‘collective’ kitchen of people who rented a room in the apartment building. We were afraid of that guy as kids. He believed in conspiracy theories, propaganda and was clearly mentally instable. Most people were pleasent, decent and well behaved though.
In the backyard there were scarry, wild, lynx like looking city cats. You had to watch out for these nasty creatures as a kid. It was an adventure to be in Poznań. Just walking the streets, boulevards, alleys, squares and parks. Watching the pedestrians go by, watching the traffick. Different cars, different vans, different busses, different cabs and different trucks and trams we were used to in Dutch cities, on Dutch roads and Dutch highways.
Cheers,
Pieter
Memories of Poznań, Kraków and Warsaw are memories of connection, connecting to relatives, digging into family history, and being there. The senses of watching, feeling, smelling, tasting and hearing and experiencing.
Poznań for me was a mystery and farytale world of a Slavic country that was communist and stuck into the past with some twenties/thirties, forties/fifties elements in the seventies and eighties.
For instance ancient cars from the fifties, an extremely old tiny black and white tv from the late fifties (my grandparents one), old antique furniture, the complete lack of modernity in the old apartment building which had the atmosphere of the thirties.
We children went into an old Art House movie when we entered Poznań. The contrast with the capitalist, Western, Free and Democratic harbour town Vlissingen with it’s Olau Lines Ferry 🚢 connection with Sheerness (the UK 🇬🇧), and the French, Belgian and British (Expat neighbours) was large.
Poznań was an exciting, strange, alien city to us with about half a million people we couldn’t understand. Therefor instaid I watched, experienced, enjoyed and went to Poznań sam’s (supermarkets), shops, bar mlechny, the littlle charming Poznań zoo with the Indian Elefant, all these homes of Polish family members.
The apartment block of my grandparents was a microcosmos of the multi-layered Polish society. From typical Polish lower middle class people and Polish workers to sophisticated French, English and German speaking Polish aristocrats (both magnats and Schlachta people) to Polish upper middle class, lower middle class, civil servants, a busdriver and his wife (my grandparents neighbours) to a nasty, disturbed, Polish antisemitic psychopath who called my bancia a dirty jew and was obsessed with the idea that we were an Israeli family (in staid of Dutch) and that we were Zionist invaders who wanted to take over Poland. He sang antisemitic German songs in the ancient nearly 19th century ‘collective’ kitchen of people who rented a room in the apartment building. We were afraid of that guy as kids. He believed in conspiracy theories, propaganda and was clearly mentally instable. Most people were pleasent, decent and well behaved though.
In the backyard there were scarry, wild, lynx like looking city cats. You had to watch out for these nasty creatures as a kid. It was an adventure to be in Poznań. Just walking the streets, boulevards, alleys, squares and parks. Watching the pedestrians go by, watching the traffick. Different cars, different vans, different busses, different cabs and different trucks and trams we were used to in Dutch cities, on Dutch roads and Dutch highways.
Cheers,
Pieter