Mostly on the road for the last few weeks. Back home, the house is full of bowls being painted. For the full story visit www.dishinit.co.uk. After Easter, doing some workshops in Warsaw. Meantime, up to Glasgow to see some artists, then straight down to Dorchester to give an illustrated slide lecture to a small but appreciative audience at the County Museum. (Crossing Borders: from the Piddle Valley to Poland, from Sandwell to Sarajevo, with a few places in-between…) This was part of Travellers Tales, organised by Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. Then over to Southampton and visit the Isle of Wight. Back up to Brum to get a haircut and miss most of the opening at Curzon Street Station of The Event, a series of artist run activities in permanent and temporary spaces throughout the city centre. Lots of people dressing up as if they’d time-warped from Liverpool 1982… Oh well.

Went on to Epic Skate Park in Moseley to catch midnight samba masque thing (pretty good, actually). Photo from the ubiquitous camera phone (borrowed).

I agree with Paolo Coehlo’s simple travel advice: Frequent bars. It’s where you’ll find city life. Always in a Warsaw bar, many times I have been asked about which parts of Poland I have visited. The truthful answer - Szczecin, Warsaw, Białystok, Sejny and so on - seems to be an unexpected and wholly unsatisfactorily reply. “You have not been to Kraków? Or Zakopane?” Sorry, no, I haven’t. Usually this is followed by a look of disdain or sorrow or just confusion, a sad shake of the head and a look that asks Why? or What is wrong with you?  (Though one person did tell me, rather forcefully, ‘Forget about Warsaw and all the other places! Leave Poland! My advice is go to Prague!’) I finally hit on the perfect answer. “I’m visiting vodka factories…” This seems to make some kind of perfect sense to the questioner. “Ah, rozumien… I understand.” 

Fortunately, I have now been to both Kraków and Zakopane and very nice they are too.  But this weekend, in Kraków, there was a small but disturbing march of the ONR - a Polish nationalist political party from the 1930’s, which was recreated in the 1990’s.  Deriving its philosophy from fascist models, they are wearing Brownshirts and use Nazi salutes, and carry a banner that reads Niesiemy Polsce Odrozenie. My Nowe Pokolenie. We bring Poland revival. We, the New Generation.

There is also a very vocal anti-fascist demonstration, and a lot of riot police, all in amidst the tourists taking in the picturesque views of Wawel Castle and taking photographs of the balcony where Pope John Paul II once stood. Photographs of the riot police seemed less popular. You’ll find some more commentary at: www.ainfos.ca/en/ and photo-documentation at miasta.gazeta.pl/krakow/

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest concentration/death camp complex organised by the Nazis in the Second World War, lies some 70 kilometres west of Kraków. This weekend is also when the March of the Living occurs, with Jewish teenagers from all over the world coming to Poland on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Speilberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’, filmed locally, is the Saturday movie playing on Polish television. The definite book on the subject, for me, is  ‘Auschwitz – The Nazis and the Final Solution’ by Laurence Rees (BBC Books, 2005) and there’s some sobering thoughts on Auschwitz logic in contemporary Middle East politics at spectrezine.org/war/Auschwitz.htm

Meanwhile, we sit in Alchemia, a bar in the Kasimierz district, formerly one of the main cultural centres of Polish Jewry, discussing a new law passed by the country’s ruling conservatives. The anti-communist lustration law, which previously affected only lawmakers, government ministers and judges, was extended in March to include academics, journalists (or anyone who had anything published), managers of state-owned firms, school principals, diplomats and lawyers, potentially affecting nearly three-quarters of a million Poles. The law allows the Institute of National Remembrance, which holds the communist security-service files, to identify collaborators - however that might be defined. Individuals have to submit their declarations to this Institute or risk losing their jobs. They also face a ban if they are considered to be economical with the truth. Lustration, from Latin, means purification through ceremony or sacrifice but the words purge and witch-hunt also come to mind, with uncomfortable resonances from the not-so-distant past in Central and Eastern Europe. The issue of what consists of collaboration is a thorny and diffuse one for many people – in future, might I be considered a collaborator in the war in Iraq if I vote for the Labour Party in the forthcoming local authority elections on May 3rd?

A group of journalists from Gazeta Wyborcza, which is one of Poland’s most influential newspapers - originally created by anti-communist dissidents - has announced they are boycotting the law. Warsaw University also has called for the suspension of the new law. Many critics of the law feel it is a specific attempt to stifle critics of the government and control an independent and free media. Miss Vodka Regrets, we may be culling the intelligensia today… All in all, a very peculiar weekend indeed.

Guidebooks sometimes provide us with a guide to what we already know. They invite us to admire, but not to be curious. They lead us down certain (well-worn) tracks and perhaps confirm some existing prejudices. “The railway station was not among Poland’s finest” is a polite invitation to visit somewhere other than this particular town with the unremarkable railway station.

You may spend your entire journey reading the guidebook from beginning to end and no longer have any need to experience the real city, to go to the streets, museums and churches that have been described to you in great detail. In Warsaw,  I have never been to Museum Narodowe and stood in front of The Battle of Grunwald by Matejko, but I feel as if I know this painting intimately.

I consider one of the more interesting guidebooks to be by the travel writer Jan Morris. ‘Fifty Years of Europe: An Album’ is a both a personal map and contemplative portrait, as the writer reflects on his/her experiences of the continent since 1946, with overlapping geographical and historical references and memories. Poland does not feature very much in this book, a still unknowable and rarely visited place of which Morris writes: “At first I thought the country infinitely dispiriting, because nobody seemed to have much hope of changing things.”

Last week there was a meeting at the Institute of Polish Culture to discuss the future of cultural animation. There was concern from the older generation that the heroes of yesteryear, the heroes of our youth, our influences and inspirations, are no longer an influence on - or even of any interest to - the new generation. I ask, does this really matter? The counter-culture moves into the mainstream. The mainstream adapts and changes.

Perhaps it is the role of the older generation to preserve rather than pontificate – to act as librarians and archivists. (I know, it doesn’t sound so very exciting to someone whose youth was full of revolutionary vim and vigour!) I do not mean ‘to preserve’ as in to contain something in permanent stasis, or like an insect caught in amber 200 million years ago, but ‘to preserve’ as in terms of both maintenance and advocacy. To create the conditions for curiosity and exploration. To open a door and invite someone in, rather than simply stand behind a closed door.

For me, I find it interesting that my daughter (who is now 18) is plundering my punk rock record collection and discovering this for herself. As she explores this period of social upheaval in the UK (1976-1980 I would say) she asks me questions and she wonders why so many of her own friends are unquestioning and uncritical of the status quo in this late-Blair period. Though they have the opportunity and freedom to travel far more extensively than their parents did, taking a casual cheap flight to weekends in Prague or Barcelona - or even Montreal - their curiosity does not appear to extend beyond the bar and club. (The words quoted above that Morris used to describe Poland may now be applicable to the UK.) I can see a little anger in her eyes and attitude, a little revolution stirring – it is not something that is taught or prescribed but a natural irrepressible energy about to burst forth.

It is wonderful to inadvertently find someone such as the author of ‘Conversations when cutting down a forest’ (Stanisław Tym) or the gothic tales of Stefan Grabinski. This is not to say that I believe we should be complacent and make no effort – our stories need to be told, our voices need to be heard – but we need to find a role as a guide, as a mentor, as a sharer,  as a guardian of culture rather than as some kind of cultural policeman.

This post is also found on www.culturalanimation.com

Episodes 31 - 41 of Zero Siedem added.