Christmas in Poland, the Season to Be Jostled

The Englishman next to us has obviously been to Poland before. You can tell by the extraordinary bulk of his cabin luggage. The bags contain a melange of citrus fruits, women’s hosiery, French wine and toilet paper topped, rather fancifully, by a pineapple. The contents bespeak a visitor who knows what the country’s most sought-after commodities are likely to be.

“Is this your first Christmas in Poland?”

I answer in the affirmative, prompting a smile of paternal forbearance. “Try not to be too sad,” he advised.

Going to Poland is probably the safest way to get an idea of what life is like during wartime. The army no longer patrols the streets and demonstrations are rare, but day-to-day living conditions remind you that Poland is a country where the war never really ended.

“Nie ma!” These words become indelibly stamped into consciousness. We hear them as the negative reply to requests for everything from Kleenex to menswear to as many as three-fourths of the items on the average restaurant menu. Poland’s world famous shortages become aggravated at Christmas by a wave of panic purchasing in anticipation of government price increases. No one knows what’s going to go up or by how much. An extra raincoat or leather bag in the closet may be worth its weight in zlotys tomorrow, so consumer goods become a form of investment.

At a gas station outside Warsaw, black marketeers roll up in trucks and fill drum after drum with diesel fuel--favored by Polish motorists because it’s not subject to rationing.

The Poles are as eager to explain their current hardships as they are to show off the monuments and artifacts of their heroic past. In Wroclaw, a tour of churches and museums is interrupted for a visit to a former prison building, its cells now being used as apartments. The iron, refrigerator-style doors are grim witness to the scarcity of accommodations. Families can wait up to five years for housing. Singles and childless couples wait much longer.

“There are two types of architecture in Wroclaw,” a guide said, “baroque and barrack.”

The Poles keep their sense of humor intact with an arsenal of wry witticisms. Favorite targets include the Russians, the national airline and the absurdities of the system in general: “At first, in Poland, there was socialism. Then came communism. Next will be cannibalism.”

One of the saddest aspects of the post-Solidarity era is that when the going gets tough, it’s every comrade for himself. Jostling and queue-jumping have become basic survival skills in the scramble to secure life’s essentials. At railway stations, holiday crowds jump platforms in front of incoming trains in the competition for seats. Among shop clerks, lavatory attendants, waiters and most other people who serve the public, civility is rare and cordiality extinct. Aboard the train from Wroclaw to Krakow, a conductor ejects a young mother from a carriage after she has had the effrontery to request a place in the compartment he has reserved entirely to himself; meanwhile, paying passengers stand in the corridors. At the telephone exchange in Krakow, attendants chatter on the phone to friends, ignoring shouted requests for change and information. The vicious circle of frustration and resentment widens daily.

There is little hope for change; lack of prospects is the main reason one in four young Poles wants to emigrate. Our guide says he’s not prepared to leave just yet but if he did, it would be because of the environment. The Poles believe that their country is now the most polluted in Europe. A train ride through Silesia, the industrial heartland, suggests they may be right. At Katowice, the route goes through the yards of decrepit coal mines and chemical plants. A tourist can peer into the heart of the asthmatic steel works, at the sulfuric flames of open smelters and the red hot ingots set to cool like rows of inflamed molars.

Workers are lured to Silesia by high wages, only to find themselves entombed in an environment where acid rains and fogs eat through women’s stockings and infect children with chronic lung disorders. Acid fallout is also speeding the degeneration of the buildings and monuments of Krakow, the ancient capital.

“Yes, you must see Krakow,” relatives say, “before it dissolves.”

Krakow is one of the great walled cities of Europe. The cozy underground bistros, colorful buildings and a majestic central market square almost carry a visitor back to a more cheerful time. High above the square, atop the vertiginous tower of St. Mary’s Church, a bugler makes his hourly rounds, playing a slow mournful air at each lookout point.

Down below are the less heroic calls of the black marketeers, nondescript men in nylon coats who circle furtively among tourists muttering as if in prayer. “Change money? Change money? Dollary? Marky? Poundy?”

The way to escape is to make for the mountains. We head for Bialy Dunajec, a small “Goralski” village in the Tatras, where friends have rented rooms for New Year’s Eve. As we drive past the village police station, our taxi driver chuckles and says “You won’t be seeing much of them tonight. When the parties start up in this town, the police just lock their doors. They don’t want to know about it.”

The Goralski, or mountaineers, are Poland’s most distinctive ethnic subgroup--a sharp-featured people who speak their own dialect and are known for their whooping, axe-swinging style of song and dance. At the local church, we hear a sampling of Goralski carol singing. Traditional Polish hymns are rendered in an incantational style that carries an Oriental quality with droning, extemporized harmonies. The priest’s hour-long sermon is less mystical--an impassioned lecture to male parishioners on the evils of drink.

Three million Poles are said to be drunk at any given moment of the day. The problem is by no means specific to the mountaineers but its impact on their rowdy character has been particularly devastating. By 9 p.m., the parties are in full swing and energy charges the moonlit streets. Eerie whoops rise from dark pine groves and echo off the mountainsides. As we cross the village, we’re confronted by a group of young toughs in black jackets, white shirts and narrow black ties. I am knocked to the ground, then kicked and punched. Our guide tries to intervene and is dragged off into a neighboring field for the full treatment.

The next day, locals assure us that our assailants were not from the village. “No one in Bialy Dunajec even owns a tie,” we are told. They were probably “hooligani,” one of the street gangs that regularly come up from Silesia to test their mettle against the Goralskis so celebrated for their brawling propensities. There are no broken bones among us, no cuts or bruises, but the anger at having been humiliated while hopelessly outnumbered sticks with me for the rest of the trip. It’s as if the chain of frustration that circumscribes Polish life has opened to include me in its links.

My inclusion is mercifully temporary. A few days later we are at Warsaw’s Okecie Airport, saying goodby to the friend and guide who has tirelessly bucked lineups, bureaucrats and hoodlums on our behalf over the past two weeks. It’s not easy. “Look,” he jokes over the barrier at passport control, “you are already abroad.” The Duty Free shelves in the departures hall teem with coveted Western goods. In the restaurant, I’m distracted from bacon and eggs by a rapping noise above me. It’s our guide, peering in through a skylight on the terminal’s observation deck, his face pressed to the glass like a beggar barred from our feast. The sight of his silhouette against the gray Polish dawn is one I’ll remember for a long, long time.

DR, MICHAEL R. HALL / Los Angeles Times