The city that forgot tourism

Krakow may have had the culture, the ancient and prestigious university, the tourists and the stunning castle but residents of Lodz could always note that their city, in fact, was bigger. No more, while the manufacturers of Lodz struggled towards the 21st century, Krakow raced ahead, becoming a tourist and student mecca.

We are in Lodz again this week, visiting Magda’s family. The city is often compared to Manchester; a gritty past focused on clothes manufacturing having given way to an identity crisis in the post-industrial world. And while Manchester has recently taken great strides towards developing a tourist and shopping-oriented economy, Lodz is just starting to take baby steps.

There are posters everywhere touting Lodz as the best choice to be named the 2016 European culture capital and the Manufaktura, a huge shopping and entertainment complex, seeks to use the city’s past to move forward. Piotrkowska Street, meanwhile, is a large shopping stretch with many good pubs. Still, it’s hard to visit and not see untapped potential everywhere.

In many places, sides of buildings never meant to see the light of day lay bare and windowless, the structures on which they used to hug gone. On the above mentioned Piotrkowska Street many buildings have magnificent facades that nevertheless have been neglected. In a Vienna or a Dresden or a Warsaw the columns and the architecture flourishes would be lit up. Here they aren’t even cleaned.

It could be better, but it also allows one to take a look back in time and, like in Lokrum, revel in a tourist attraction without all the polish (no pun intended.)

Snake Czarmer

Today, an interesting night out on the town which ended with listening to an AC/DC knockoff bar band called Snake Charmer at a bar called the Lizard King. I don’t really need to say any more but to add that the bass player was awkwardly Scandinavian with blond hair and the pronounced jaw line that allows one to spot a Norweigian from a mile away.

Still, it was entertaining, as was our other stop, a bar called Kaliska that was the focal point of a late-eighties art movemement that apparantly confounded both the communist authorities and the art establishment.

Tomorrow, back to Warsaw and then, from there, to Gdansk in the north.

Awww shooks

So we have just decided that we will not, tonight, go to a Lodz restaurant everybody here pronounces SH-ooks. Apparantly they serve western food and their waiters dress up like cowboys and Native Americans (with whom Europeans’ fascination is worth a longer post). Anyways, SH-oooks, I just learned, is spelled Sioux which, obviously, is a band native to the Great Plains of the United States and the Canadian Prairies.

We’re not going to the restaurant (tonight at least, because I’m not up for their Mexican fare. The restaurant’s founder must have had a faulty atlas on hand.

And not-so-foggy Lodz

I’m watching history happen and it’s happening very, very slowly – especially when it’s 2:40 in the morning at home.

Anyways, here are some more Lodz photos.

We visited the Manufactura museum today and had it all to ourselves. The two dollars was well worth learning the history behind what is now a major attraction. The Manufactura is an old factory complex that once made clothing (hence the above photo) that has been turned into a large shopping and entertainment complex. It’s now one of Lodz’s main tourist attractions. See the photo of the Manufactura yesterday.

Piotrkowska Street (above) is apparently the longest pedestrian street in Europe and a large shopping district. It used to house many fashion stores but once the Manufactura opened, it became more of a pub district.

Magda took the above shot of a pretty cool fountain at the manufactura.

Grey ol’ Lodz

Lodz has been called Poland’s Manchester and, as someone who lived in Greater Manchester for around 90 days, I can attest to that fact. It’s an industrial town with some modern restoration projects aiming to turn it from gritty to nifty. Yesterday was foggy, another British staple, although we’re told that is unusual.

Piotrkowska Street.

The Manufactura.

Not THOSE All Saints

Yesterday was All Saints and Magda and I, along with her aunt, uncle and two cousins, visited the grave of her grandparents. I’ll keep my summation of All Saints experience brief, because I hope to write about it in the future and don’t want to spill all my notes.

All Saints day is a national holiday and has religious roots. But the main feature of the day are Poles flocking to cemeteries around the country to visit graves. Flowers and candles are placed. We visited a cemetery in Zgierz (a suburb of Lodz) during the day and another cemetery in Lodz in the evening. During the day there were almost as many people in the cemetery as graves, which easily number in the thousands. It is not necessarily a sombre occasion. As Magda explained it, it’s more of a celebration of the deceaseds’ lives.

During the night the candles light up the cemetery. It’s a beautiful sight and not at all spooky. It really brings home that each grave houses a real person, rather than just a name.

Of course, any holiday has its curious aspects and one that gets an observer, rather than a true participant thinking.

People have different strategies for decorating graves. Magda’s family carefully arranged a few lamps and a few bundles of flowers on the family grave. Most take a similar tact and many times the candles and the flowers on the grave are placed by successions of visitors, be they friends, acquaintances or admirers (certain graves or memorials to war heroes attract hundreds of candles). But other graves have quite obviously been purposely bombarded with as many flowers and candles as possible. Those people, it would seem, take the look-how-many-flowers-my-family-grave-has!!! approach.

Which, come to think about it, isn’t that dissimilar from the huge gothic family tomb of an obviously wealthy industrialist in the centre of the Lodz cemetery. It’s mighty impressive, and there were about 20-30 candles arranged at its base (it’s probably 30-feet-high and looks like a small gothic church). I hope that the candles were lit by family members and not people just impressed with the tomb. That, it would seem, would prove that money can buy prayers, if, like many, those who place a candle at the tomb also say a prayer.

And those annoyed about the commercialism of Christmas should take note that, in post-communist Poland, All Saints isn’t immune either. It’s clearly the make-or-break day for the flower and candle sellers that line the street outside the cemetery. I saw a guy selling blow up balloons in the shape of dalmations and other animals and priests take the opportunity to solicit money for their churches.

Still, all those minor gripes aside. It’s a mighty impressive day and its basic theme – remembering the deceased, seems as good an excuse for a public holiday as any.

Not that the holiday makes everybody happy. It seems it results in a good deal of carnage too.

“Police reported 334 serious road accidents with 32 dead and 421 injured in 48 hours, on what is the annual carnage on Poland’s accompanying one of the most widely observed Roman Catholic holidays, All Souls Day, otherwise known as the day of the Dead.” – Polskie Radio