Statues of libertiski (photos)

In addition to the photo I posted last week, there are a ton of statues here:

This isn’t a statue. It’s called the Belvedere and Poles call it their White House. Except the President doesn’t live there (any more). It’s used for balls every now and then, though.

Centre of the universe

Just finished googling Nicolaus Copernicus. Found out that he is credited with putting forward the theory that the earth does not lie at the centre of the universe.

You would have thought I’d have already known that. Not only because he’s a pretty famous guy but also because I visited his house (and museum) earlier today. We’re in Torun, Copernicus’ birthplace and, right there on Kopernika Street, sits a pair of old 16th Century tenament houses where Copernicus is thought to have lived as a child and where he may have been born.

The buildings themselves are interesting, the layout sort of antithetical to homebuilders today, involving lots of stairs and something of a terraced floor plan. Inside the rooms are various instruments, documents, paintings and drawings linked, in some way, either to Copernicus or to Torun or Krakow, where he studied.

As we made our way from room to room, though, I had no idea why Copernicus was such a big deal. Of course I knew he was a big deal – we paid five bucks to enter the museum after all. But I didn’t have a sense of the big picture. Unlike the Warsaw Uprising Museum, there was no storyline holding together all of the scattered documents and artifacts. And it wasn’t just the fact that I was reading in English. Everything was displayed equally in Polish, English and German. Not once did I ask Magda for a translation.

No, it seems the museum just needs to learn that putting together a good story isn’t just important for movies, novels and cheating couples. Museums also thrive on a good plot. Unfortunately, as the British would say, the Copernicus Museum lost theirs.

Government-sanctioned rioting

December 13 is the anniversary of the 1981 declaration of martial law by Wojciech Jaruzelski.  The declaration saw the leaders of the popular trade union Solidarity inprisoned and the army sent to quell any signs of anti-communist protest.

Hence the above scene in Plac Zamkowy, Warsaw’s central tourist square, yesterday. Dozens of media outlets and hundreds of people gathered to watch a recreation of the military’s repression of a Solidarity march. It was all quite impressive, even with the finger-numbing weather conditions and poor sight-lines.

For a Canadian raised in a culture where the police and the military are “always right,” if, sometimes, a little too passionate about the use of tazers, the event does raise some questions about the public’s view of authority institutions in countries where the police and the military were once directly opposed to the interests of the population as a whole.

In Poland the police and the military (possibly because they still, for another month, at least, have conscription) each seem to have earned the respect of the people. But with popular lore including tales of brave citizens standing up to the misguided military, one wonders about the effect on citizen-authority interactions.

In the end, though, it’s probably s a good thing to have citizens, politicians, police and the military aware that the moral authority of authority institutions is always conditional and entirely dependent upon the support of the people.

(photo above was taken by Magda)

Out of the wild

The middle of a foest in Poland can be quite interesting. Particularly if the wilderness isn’t really that wild and certainly not isolated in the Canadian sense of the term. Yesterday we drove a few hours north deep into Lithuania to visit Vilnius, the country’s capital which boasts a UNESCO certified old town.

The day before it was an hour in the opposite direction to bunkers used by Hitler in the war. This was the complex where he escaped an assassination attempt. It is somewhat creepy but more just sad. The bunkers aren’t what I thought they’d be. The only thing below ground is the sauna. That they had a sauna is disturbing enough. But the bunkers are actually huge cement bricks with some rooms on the ground floor. The ceilings, if you can call them that, are probably 40 feet of concrete thick. It’s a little awe-inspiring, but again, more just sad when considering the human effort that went into them and was likely then gunned down. Hitler wasn’t lifting his own bricks.

That said, the internet connection here is slow so I will post more on these spots once we return to Warsaw.

Let’s Split

Yesterday we explored Split, which boasts a UNESCO World Heritage old town (our third UNESCO site so far) and narrow little streets similar to those of Dubrovnik but with less stairs and fewer tourists. The centrepiece of Split is the 1,700 year-old Diocletian’s Palace, which was built by the old Roman emperor Diocletian as something of a retirement home. I guess he realized that being emperor wasn’t all what it was cracked out to be, particularly when one could build a massive comnplex on the Adriatic Sea and staff it with servants, soldiers and anything else one could possibly need or want or just have lying around.

Split’s waterfront resembles that of Nice, with its palm trees, lit up buildings and bustling activity. A large open space rests between the start of the buildings and the water. The space is taken up by smooth pavement, benches and plants. As Borat would say, “very niiiiiiiiiice.”

We also found the golden toe. That’s right, the big toe of a massive statue near the old town’s gates is gold coloured and apparently, if you rub it, you will receive good luck. Unfortunately we didn’t have a golden toe to rub in Dubrovnik and now are left carting around a 100 kuna (about $20) counterfeit bill. On closer inspection, the background of the bill is orangey-blue, noth the orangey-white of most real 100 kn bills. But what did I know? I think I picked it up from a lady selling bus tickets, which makes the 15-minute bus ride from Dubrovnik’s old city to the stairs below our hostel nearly as expensive as the ride from Split to Dubrovnik.

But beyond counterfeit bills, the trip is going nicely. Of particular note is the fact that both Split and Dubrovnik are concrete jungles with a very personal, and natural feel. I’ll expand upon this later.

And now an update, I managed to trade in the counterfeit bill for a good one at the national bank here. More on our trip to Trogir today later.

Split as seen from the bell tower of the St. Doimus Cathedral.

Said bell tower from the ground.

A vendor at Split’s sprawling market

The ugliest fish I’d ever seen in Split’s fish market

A huge statue of Gregory of Nin rests outside the gates of the Diocletian’s Palace. He’s the guy with the golden toe.