Looking around the Warsaw Centrum, one can easily imagine being in any of the big European cities. Fancy cars drive all around you, young trendy hipsters prance up and down the sidewalk just like they do in New York, Paris, etc. (Some of them don't prance, they just strut in that "I'm to sexy for my country" way. Just like all the other stuck-up hipsters of the Western world.)
There are huge shopping malls, tons of restaurants, an efficient transportation system (depending who you ask,) and as an English teacher, I've seen many spiffy flats in various parts of Poland (then again I make a point to aim for the rich clients.)
While it surely has its own kinks and eccentricities, (like the single subway line, or the sprawling senior population, or the popularity of cats, or the...) It's just like any other major city I've been to.
An ignorant foreigner like me for example, would have no clue that but only a few decades ago, within the lifetime of many of its citizens, Warsaw was wrecked through and through, sandwiched as it was between two demented tyrants, Hitler and Stalin, who both made it a personal matter to see Poland destroyed; the result was that Warsaw took quite a beating.
In fact, one would be surprised to learn that Poland's history is an extraordinary tale of survival against the assholish warmongering of Various Russian and German empires. In the same period when Warsaw was levelled during WWII, Poland had much of its intelligentsia shot dead almost one by one at Katyn, by soviet zombies who used to be men. Furthermore, Poland was the victim of ethnic cleansing, 3million of its Jews, 3 million of its non Jews. That was a shock for me to learn. As an American who has to bear Jewish whining about the Holocaust, I just though the Holocaust was when Hitler killed 6 million Jews, without any idea about Polish ethnic-cleansing.
A quick Wikipedia search and you learn that Warsaw "experienced numerous plagues, invasions, devastating fires and administrative restrictions on its growth." Having learned American history in school, I knew that shortly after the US was created, other countries followed its example, one of them being Poland with its May 3rd constitution. A good thing, but I never knew what happened afterwards. I never knew that Poland was then attacked by its neighbors, and erased from the map for over one hundred years.
Yet despite being one of the most embattled group of people in Europe, The Poles somehow got their act together and reestablished Poland as one of the major economies of Europe. Wow.
Yet I never hear a peep out of the mouths of Poles "we've had to fight everyone to survive,,,blah blah blah." Though I guess that mostly old people would whine about that, but seeing that I don't speak Polish, I never hear of it. I guess the Poles are made of tougher stuff than most of us.
So to that I say...
Na zdrowie!
There are huge shopping malls, tons of restaurants, an efficient transportation system (depending who you ask,) and as an English teacher, I've seen many spiffy flats in various parts of Poland (then again I make a point to aim for the rich clients.)
While it surely has its own kinks and eccentricities, (like the single subway line, or the sprawling senior population, or the popularity of cats, or the...) It's just like any other major city I've been to.
An ignorant foreigner like me for example, would have no clue that but only a few decades ago, within the lifetime of many of its citizens, Warsaw was wrecked through and through, sandwiched as it was between two demented tyrants, Hitler and Stalin, who both made it a personal matter to see Poland destroyed; the result was that Warsaw took quite a beating.
In fact, one would be surprised to learn that Poland's history is an extraordinary tale of survival against the assholish warmongering of Various Russian and German empires. In the same period when Warsaw was levelled during WWII, Poland had much of its intelligentsia shot dead almost one by one at Katyn, by soviet zombies who used to be men. Furthermore, Poland was the victim of ethnic cleansing, 3million of its Jews, 3 million of its non Jews. That was a shock for me to learn. As an American who has to bear Jewish whining about the Holocaust, I just though the Holocaust was when Hitler killed 6 million Jews, without any idea about Polish ethnic-cleansing.
A quick Wikipedia search and you learn that Warsaw "experienced numerous plagues, invasions, devastating fires and administrative restrictions on its growth." Having learned American history in school, I knew that shortly after the US was created, other countries followed its example, one of them being Poland with its May 3rd constitution. A good thing, but I never knew what happened afterwards. I never knew that Poland was then attacked by its neighbors, and erased from the map for over one hundred years.
Yet despite being one of the most embattled group of people in Europe, The Poles somehow got their act together and reestablished Poland as one of the major economies of Europe. Wow.
Yet I never hear a peep out of the mouths of Poles "we've had to fight everyone to survive,,,blah blah blah." Though I guess that mostly old people would whine about that, but seeing that I don't speak Polish, I never hear of it. I guess the Poles are made of tougher stuff than most of us.
So to that I say...
Na zdrowie!
