Month: October 2024

Note from Vienna

~ kasia1965 ~ 2 Comments


Aloisia commissioned the artwork in her husband Franz’s memory in 1906. The mosaic, depicting St. Jerome holding a cross and skull, is one of several adorning the exterior of the St. Anthony of Padua Church in the Favoriten DIstrict of Vienna. I wondered about Aloisia and Franz and their lives in Vienna as subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I loved how the mosaic serves as an enduring representation of their love.

Franz Joseph 1 (1830-1916), Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, laid the corner stone of St. Anthony’s on November 10, 1896. The massive Romanesque and Byzantine church was created to meet the demand of a burgeoning Roman Catholic population. There were marriages to consecrate, babies to baptize, and funerals to commemorate lives lived. I stood outside taking in the soaring towers, arched windows and raised dome of the red brick edifice.

I chose to stay in the Favoriten District of Vienna for its proximity to the main train station and walkability to the city center. I booked a room at the newly renovated Boutique Hotel Kolbeck, noted for being friendly to solo travelers. I’ve learned—from my mistakes—to scrupulously study reviews of accommodations, inserting words like “clean” and “quiet” into search tools. My room was, indeed, clean and quiet with crisp sheets and a pristine private bathroom. My space was small, reminiscent of a single in a dorm. It suited me just fine as I was only there to sleep. My window overlooked an inner courtyard. 

The five-hour train from Katowice, Poland, chugged through the Czech Republic and skimmed near the Hungarian border before depositing me in Vienna. The largely agrarian landscape hosted occasional solar arrays and wind farms, reminders of the need to seek alternative energy as the region recovers from Storm Boris. 

Arriving in Vienna in late afternoon, I ditched my luggage and set out in search of dinner and familiarity—on foot. The pedestrian way along Favoriten Street was bustling. Packs of high schoolers carried backpacks and ate kaiser pommes (french fries) doused with mayonnaise or ketchup. Toddlers played on the plaza under the watchful eyes of their mothers. The neighborhood evoked a familiar, working class vibe, with practical shops dispensing kitchen utensils, linens, and hosiery. I noticed many women wearing hijabs as I walked past Halal butchers and grocery stores. A food kiosk boldly advertised “Noodle – Kebap- Falafel – Hotdog” in a nod to diversity.  Men sat at outdoor cafes sipping tiny cups of coffee or glasses of hot tea. So many of them smoked. The smoke triggered a headache, thankfully cured by Advil in my backpack. I heard lots of German and Arabic with smatterings of English, Polish and Ukrainian. 

It was on this walk the I happened upon St. Anthony’s. Its spires caught my eye, peripherally, as I walked along Favoriten Street. I chose to detour.  A young boy was shooting baskets with his father on a court adjacent to the church. A group of teens sat outside on a bench, smoking. A woman left the church and I noted graffiti on the door as it closed. The massive entrance doors were locked due to the late hour. Signs advised visitors to not smoke, eat, or skateboard along the entryway.

I circled the building, snapping photos of its external mosaics peering down from above. This is how I found Aloisia and Franz. Graffiti, in German and Arabic encircled the exterior of the church. For the record, I am not a fan of graffiti. Encountering it on a place of worship is particularly troubling to me.

Later that evening, I conducted some research. I learned St. Anthony’s was vandalized with spray-painted statements including “Islam will win” and “religion over secular life.” Additionally, fifty youths broke into the sanctuary in October 2020, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”). This occurred shortly after the murder of teacher Samuel Paty in France. I further learned there has been an uptick in graffiti targeting Vienna’s Muslim, Jewish and Christian houses of worship since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

So, what are peace-seeking people to do? The website for St. Anthony’s cites a kindergarten open to and respectful of all children of varying faiths, a weekly flea market and free community meal, a meet-up for seniors every Sunday at 3:00 p.m. and, of course, Masses—in German, Polish and English, the latter for African congregants.

Here’s to the peace-seekers, the bridge-builders, and the enduring legacy of love.

Sources:   https://at.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/70/2020/12/2023-Report-on-International-Religious-Freedom-in-Austria.pdf, https://www.intoleranceagainstchristians.eu/index.php?id=12&case=8021

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What would George think?

~ kasia1965 ~ 1 Comment


I slid open the wooden drawer of the university library’s card catalog to thumb through weathered index cards bearing authors’ names, titles of their works, and call numbers. I searched for a particular mid-alphabet author. Somewhere between Okolski, Szymon and Orzeszkowa, Eliza, I found what I was looking for:  Orwell, George (1903-1950), 1984. This listing contained a subtle warning: Access requires permission from faculty. 

It was 1984. I was studying on exchange in Communist Poland at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University. Soviet-style repression—limiting freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom to gather, and freedom to read books censored by the government—like Orwell’s—defined the confining parameters under which Poles lived. 

To seek permission from a professor to read a censored book could bring one under suspicion and, potentially, risk a highly-coveted place at the university. 

I arrived in Poland a few months before, a wet-behind-the-ears, novice traveler. At nineteen, I’d flown only twice before. I purchased a Boston to Brussels plane ticket and another ticket for a thirty-hour train to Warsaw. The last leg of the trip would be a three-hour express train from Warsaw to Krakow. I was young, excited and looking forward to the 60-hour, 4092-mile journey.

I purchased an enormous travel trunk. Ten months of clothing, shampoo, soap and deodorant were stuffed inside as I prepared for fall, winter and spring in a country where consumer goods were in short supply. I stupidly packed (heavy) books. My Mom commandeered part of my trunk, adding clothing, coffee, chocolate and Polish ham for me to bring to family. The irony of the last item: Polish ham was sent out for export to bring in cold, hard cash from the West. Ham was rarely available in Polish stores.

My carry-on luggage included sealed envelopes bearing names of family members containing hard-earned cash gifts from my parents. Amid shortages and rationing, the Communist government established special stores called Pewex that sold medicines, coffee, chocolate, calculators and appliances—items not readily available in shops. What was the hitch? You could only buy these items with foreign hard currencies like U.S. Dollars, West German Deutsche Marks, French Francs and British Pounds. What was the problem? Private ownership of hard currencies was forbidden by the government. This spawned an elaborate Czarny Rynek – Black Market of currency exchanges. I remembered my Aunt Jancia hid carefully folded dollars in a nondescript coffee can in her kitchen.

Landing in Brussels, I retrieved my enormous trunk from the conveyor belt. One of its four wheels went missing somewhere between Boston and Brussels. I spent the day DRAGGING my laden luggage around Brussels. Bumping along the cobbled Grand-Place square provided lots of “eye candy” for my sleep-deprived eyes. I remember ornate guild houses, the soaring Cathedral of St. Gudula, and Manneken Pis, the famed water fountain with a sculpture of a little boy peeing. 

I dragged my trunk and myself to Brussels’ Central Station for the thirty-hour train to Warsaw. I slept haphazardly, keeping half an eye on my trunk in the corridor – it was too large to fit in the compartment. 

Somehow, I landed at my Krakow dorm – Dom Studencki “Piast” at 47 Piastowska Street in Krakow. Directed to my room, I walked through the dimly lit corridor on the second floor and noticed two things: cloth baby diapers drying on an improvised clothesline in the hallway and the aroma of simmering soup.

I entered a new world, a Communist world. I learned. I listened. I observed.

My classroom lessons were complemented by learning to covertly trade dollars on the Black Market while mastering the art of securing a spot in long lines for rationed pieces of kielbasa and scratchy, gray and speckled toilet paper. I passed large images of Lenin and red-lettered banners around the city extolling the virtues of socialism and the ills of capitalism. I quietly gathered illegal, pro-Solidarity newsletters dispersed by the underground. A vicious political regime imprisoned dissenters. Soon after I arrived, secret police kidnapped and murdered Jerzy Popieluszko, an outspoken, pro-democracy Roman Catholic Priest.

Communist dogma espoused creation of a classless society. This was a lie. Soviet-imposed communism in Poland at the end of WWII created special privileges for those who agreed to a Faustian bargain, signing on to membership to the Communist Party. (Note: Poland had the lowest Communist Party membership within the Eastern Block.) These privileges included express lanes to securing job promotions, a telephone, a flat, or a humble Polski Fiat. Young married couples waited years for apartments and were forced to lived on the other side of the wall of their parents in their childhood bedrooms in drab Socialist Realist housing estates.

Orwell had Big Brother. Poles had “Uncle” – their reference to the Soviet Union and its interference in their lives. Poles were not fools. They learned navigate this unjust political and economic system via a vast subterranean world where people bartered for needed items in their kitchens, in dorm rooms, and via the trunks of their cars…if they had a car.  Words like załatwić and kombinować — references to “arranging for” hard-to-find items — entered the Polish lexicon. Poets, playwrights, artists, musicians and filmmakers plied their crafts, promoting pro-democracy ideas, engaging metaphor and symbolism, to push past censors.  

I decided to not request special permission to read Orwell’s book. I’d already read it in the U.S.  Forty years later, I am back in Krakow. It is 2024, not 1984. I recently stepped inside the Księgarnia pod Globusem bookstore on Długa Street and spotted Orwell’s book, in Polish. Who could have imagined?

Today, Poland is a parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Poles voted out the right-wing Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) ruling party in 2023, handing victory to the centrist Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform). Poland is experiencing slow but steady cultural shifts that are more aligned with western Europe. 

Poland opened its borders to millions of Ukrainians seeking refuge from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Today, Ukrainian is commonly heard on the streets and in shops. Poland’s response reflects compassion for human suffering in spite of complicated Polish-Ukrainian history. I suspect another factor is at play. Polish collective memory is marked by a deep, visceral trauma and awareness of Russian and, later, Soviet occupations, deportations, subjugations, displacements and murder of its people at the hands of its neighbor to the East. 

As in 1984, I am here to learn, listen and observe, clear-eyed and with an awareness of the history of this beautiful, resilient, and complicated place that I love. I wonder what George would think.

What’s up next in the Present TIme Blog? I’ll offer a look at Poland’s response to Europe’s migrant crisis as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk takes a page from Finland’s controversial playbook for managing the Russo-Finnish Border. Stay tuned.

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Raging Waters — Finding Hope

~ kasia1965 ~ 2 Comments

“Now I know what it feels like to be a refugee,” my sister Jane said. She’s been forced from her home in Weaverville, North Carolina. Her house, which she thoughtfully designed and moved into in 2022, was spared Hurricane Helene’s flood waters, but the storm knocked out electricity, water and cell service for an indeterminate period of time. Residents were advised to evacuate. My sister drove a winding and mottled path, around washed out, hilly roads as segments of the highway were impassible. She found refuge at the home of a friend who offered a place to stay with warm showers and functioning toilets.

Jane was drawn to the beauty of western North Carolina decades ago. Settling in Asheville provided robust entrepreneurial opportunities, quality schools for her sons, and an emergent arts and culture scene. Asheville was considered a climate haven. Today, Asheville is caked in mud. Receding floodwaters reveal a landscape ravaged by the once calm French Broad River.

“Our home has flooded and we’ve lost our apiary,” read the message on my cousin’s Go Fund Me page. His home, in a bucolic town just outside Nysa, Poland, was flooded when Storm Boris swept through Central Europe in mid-September. Photos accompanying the request for assistance show the interior of a modern, airy home, with furniture and housewares floating in brown water. My cousin is a beekeeper. His carefully tended hives are toppled and scattered in mud, devastated by the swollen Klodzka River.

Storm Boris brought record heavy rainfall to Central Europe, flooding areas in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. My Poland-based cousins are gathering funds to help our family near Nysa. I, too, made a donation even though I have not met this particular cousin. His father was my mother’s eldest brother who, as a teenager, managed to escape the Germans who snapped him up from the road in Radgoszcz — as the Germans did in WWII actions called “Lapanki” — to deport him to Germany as a Forced Laborer. (I will share the story of his brave escape another time.)

My father’s family lives in Prudnik, Poland, which lies sixteen miles west of Nysa, on the Czech Border. The New York Times showed drone film footage of flooding in tiny, quaint Prudnik. I thought, “I know this place. I’ve walked here. My family lives here.”

The scene of the cemetery where my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are buried —  including my beloved Uncle Czeslaw, a Carpathian mountaineer, who died in February at age 94 — under water broke my heart. I’ve walked along those graves to place flowers or light a candle. My family didn’t exactly “choose” Prudnik. My father’s parents settled in Western Ukraine, near Lwow (Lviv) in the 1920s when it was part of Poland. They were forced to evacuate at the end of WWII, as borders shifted and their region was absorbed into the U.S.S.R.

Vermont experienced devastating floods in 2023 and 2024. Friends in Central Vermont lost part of their back yard when the normally calm stream on their property ballooned to a torrent, tearing away part of their lawn. Images of a mud-caked Montpelier, streets lined with dumpsters, populate my mind’s eye. Montpelier residents are still waiting for the restoration of a fully functioning post office after the North Branch River flooded downtown in July 2023. Vermont was considered a climate haven.

Here in Krakow, I walk along the Vistula River past the Wawel Palace each day. The river jumped its banks in September but, fortunately, waters did not reach the city’s medieval core.

I cannot imagine. But then, I can. History repeats.

My maternal grandparents were forced to seek refuge for themselves and their children in an unheated attic in Sutkow, a neighboring village, when German soldiers occupied their home. (It’s worth noting the cruelty of the Germans: they booby-trapped the home with grenades before leaving.) Borders shifted at Yalta, forcing my paternal grandparents to become refugees, abandoning the home my grandfather designed and built overlooking the Bieszczady Mountains. They traveled via cattle car, with their children, to find a home in the resettlement area of Silesia and landed in Prudnik. My father arrived in the U.S. in 1949 as a WWII refugee, with one suitcase and hope for a better life. My mother arrived in the U.S. in 1959 with one suitcase, leaving behind her beloved parents and a life limited by a corrupt communist system.

Where do I find HOPE amid these climate uncertainties? I think of my ancestors and their resilience. I also think of several young people I know of who are contributing their intellect and talents to unraveling climate change’s emergent challenges — in atmospheric physics, in applying space science to create computer models to anticipate climate impacts on infectious disease transmission and in promoting consumptive alternatives to how we live our lives. I also think of young people creating music, art, prose and poetry that bring joy. Learning to find joy amid uncertainty is key.

I invite you to follow my blog at https://presenttime.blog.