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.