On the Baltic coast, the city of Gdansk – founded in 997 AD – is preparing to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Solidarity’s battle for basic rights for the workers, which a lot of us will remember from TV reports of striking dock workers at the time. The momentous happenings signalled the end of communism in Europe. A huge image of a youthful Lech Walesa, looking a bit like Che Guevara, is projected on to one of the big office blocks in readiness for the celebrations on 4th July.
Gdansk is another Polish city that was reduced to piles of rubble post war – but, so skillful were the craftsmen who rebuilt it as it was, you’d never guess that the buildings were relatively new. They seem to have the authentic patina of age – faded paintwork, Flemish-style gables and extraordinary drainage systems from their five-storey-high roofs which culminate in gargoyle-like stone mouths at street level.
Gdansk is the capital of amber and we learnt that authentic amber floats in brackish water (10 per cent salt, 90 per cent water – the same as the tideless Baltic Sea) while imitation amber sinks. Good shops will have a tank of water for test purposes and will supply a certificate of authenticity. One of Gdansk’s red-brick churches, dating from 1600, was built to accommodate 25,000 worshippers, which is surmised to be the entire population of the town at the time.
I probably couldn’t have named a famous Pole apart from Walesa and Pope John Paul II before our visit but now know that Copernicus the astronomer, Fahrenheit, Marie Curie, Chopin and Joseph Conrad the writer are amongst many others.
Poland is both full of surprises and a much larger country than you might suppose – well worth a visit. Next time, I shall aim to take in the former capital of Katowice too. Sue Ockwell.
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1,000 dominoes fall in Berlin, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009School children in Berlin individually designed and painted 1,000 dominoes – probably twice the size of the children themselves – and were arranged in curves and lines close to where the wall itself stood; a transient and see-through barrier to remind people that, just 20 years ago, East and West Germany were separate entities, with communism one side and capitalism the other – and, terrifyingly, death by shooting if one dared to try to cross the dividing wall. Lech Walesa, whose Gdansk-based shipyard union, Solidarity, lead the way in ending communism in Poland, pushed over the first domino yesterday evening, at approximately the time that the wall itself started to fall 20 years ago.
The past 20 years have seen huge changes worldwide to the political scene, often felt to be for the overall good, so it was strange to hear an East German woman interviewed on Radio 4 saying that she preferred the old system, when her children were guaranteed jobs and there was some sort of stability and predictability about life. I’ve heard similar interviews with Russians who crave the good old days, too – but, of course, for every person missing the old regime, there are probably many others who are relishing their new freedoms.
Today, the last divided city in the world is Nicosia, or Lefkosia as it’s now known, split between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish north. The barrier dates back to 1974, when the Turks invaded Cyprus, so it’s been there 35 years now and is guarded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. How long will it be, I wonder, before that wall falls, and what will the trigger be? Turkey is aiming for European Union membership, but the wounds still fester on both sides of the barrier and many have lost family property and land in the dispute, so it won’t be an easy one to solve. However, the signs of movement are there – people, both locals and visitors, can now cross at various check points from south to north and vice-versa. Let’s hope that a fair solution can be reached and that Turks and Cypriots can again live peaceably together, as they always used to do. Sue Ockwell
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