My experience with Poland started back in 1987 when I arrived in Warsaw to visit a friend of mine whom I had first met in New York while we were both students at Hunter College. There was something about that morning which I will never forget as I got of the train at Warsaw’s Central train station which was and is still called “Warszawa Centralna”. My friend, a girl from Warsaw whose name I do not disclose told me she would be there waiting for me at the station when my train arrived and true to her word there she was.

My first impressions of Warsaw were not particularly memorable or innumerable for that matter as this city seemed like any other though in many ways there was a mood about the city that reminded my of Budapest; another city behind the “iron curtain”. Warsaw upon stepping out of the train station I noticed also had streetcars, and very small cars with most of them being of a particular model which was the “Polski Fiat”, (Polish Fiat) which I would find out was by far Poland’s best selling at the time.

My friend took me to the apartment she and her parents inhabited in the center of Warsaw not far from the train station on a street which then was called “Marchalewskiego” (now a days “John Paul II”) where I was introduced to her mother though not her father who was still back in the States. As for their apartment it had one room which for Polish standards was not bad.

I naturally offered to invite my friend and her mother to have dinner with me in any restaurant they chose but was however refused as my friend’s mother had cooked up a simple but tasty chicken dinner which included wine which must have been quit expensive for what was these people’s budget. This being that my friend’s mother though a doctor only earned twenty dollars a month; naturally this taking in to account that the Polish Zloty (then the old one as opposed to today’s new one) had an official exchange rate of 100 to the dollar. However Polish people were not allowed to buy dollars at this price so when ever they did the exchange rate they got was a lot higher. So what Polish people would do when ever they wanted to get dollars was to get them on the black market at a rate of 400 Zloty to the dollar which of course was much higher then the official rate making this lady’s salary came out to 20 USD a month though at the official rate her monthly wages would have been 80 USD a month. Black market purchases of dollars however were illegal after all that is why it was called a “black market”; this meaning that Polish people could be arrested for attempting to buy or sell dollars on the black market while foreigners were simply deported.

As for myself I was required to exchange 7 USD for everyday that I spent in Poland (naturally at official rates) and this because I was a student for if I had not been one I would have had to exchange 15 a day. Many other things though were strange about Poland  back then. This being a communist country, for instance a one night stay in a hotel room for a Polish citizen cost about 3 USD a night while the same service for a foreigner cost 30 USD. One could imagine that even this 3 USD was a lot of money for most Polish people. 

As for the meal at my friend’s; it would be served in the early evening meaning that my friend and I had time to go do some shopping which we did in a store called “Pewex”. This being one of a chain of stores that sold imported items for “hard currency” (this meaning money that can be exchanged outside its country of origin) only and at surprisingly low prices. For instance I remember a pack of Marlboro cigarettes were half the price of what they were in America and many other things were also cheaper. My friend did inform me though that for many people in Poland even those prices were much too high.

Another thing that struck me as strange about Pewex stores was that they had coupons called “Bony” which one got back as change when ever they did not have it to give back in dollars. For instance if one paid with a ten dollar bill for something that cost nine one would get back a one dollar bill or a piece of paper that was called a “bony” which in reality was like a coupon for Pewex stores. Some people who bought dollars, which they could only buy from the government which sold them at a much higher price then that which they purchased them at, sometimes even bought bony which were slightly cheaper since they could only be used in Pewex stores.   

After getting some things for the meal which I paid for my friend and I went to her house where we watched a Latin American “telenovella”. What seemed strange to me was not so much that a soap opera from Latin America was being shown on Polish television but the way it was being dubbed. In most countries what happens is that subtitles are used or the voices are dubbed by other actors however here in Poland it was different. They used a narrator much in the way they do on CNN (when ever someone speaks in a language that is not English) to dub the whole program which at times made it confusing as to who was speaking and even hard to hear what was being said because one could still hear the original language which in this case was Spanish in the background. This by the way is a method still being used in Poland today with regards to television though one need not worry about this when one goes to the cinema, where subtitles are used.

During the meal I found out that my friend and I would be spending the night traveling to a far away town called “Zakopane” (Buried when translated in to English) which was right on the boarder between Poland and Czechoslovakia. It was at six in the morning that we arrived in Zakopane where we went to the house we would be staying in that till this day I am not sure if it was owned or just run by a priest who was a very good friend of my friend whom if I have not mentioned was a girl. It was in this house that her and eight friends of hers (one of them being her boyfriend) had rented two rooms, which had been divided by gender meaning one room for the six men (me now included) and another smaller room for the ladies who with my friend amongst them numbered four.

Upon my first day in Zakopane I recall going to do the shopping at a small grocery store and being amazed at how little there was on the shelves. Flour,(or what appeared to be), loaves of bread, sugar, butter, milk and very few other things were all that one could buy. I would later find out from one of the members in this group that one was required to have certain papers called “ration cards” in order to purchase certain products such as meat and many other items. I at that time thought that perhaps this was just a small town and that shopping in Warsaw would be different after all even in America, what one could find in a small town was never as much as what one could find in a big city; though later when in Warsaw the following year on another visit I would discover that there was as much or as little to be found in Warsaw as there was in that small town. 

On the lighter side of this issue I remember going back to America after my second stay in Warsaw and seeing for the first time how much American supermarkets had to offer. I had never really stopped to think about how many items and varieties of which were available in America as opposed to a communist country like Poland that barely offered the essentials. Observing this difference for the first time with the knowledge of how little other countries had in a way even confused me as to what to buy; making me even feel lost as there was so much that I did not know from where to begin shopping. It was as if a real life scene that was reminiscent of the film “Moscow On The Hudson” in which actor Robin Williams becomes hysteric when faced with all that an American supermarket has to offer. I must confess when I first saw this film; I was of the opinion that something of the sort was comic though not possible but after having experienced what I did that day I can full well imagine that something of the sort was feasible believing that if I felt like that. Me being someone who had grown up with so much abundance and still felt the difference; how would it be for someone who was seeing it for the first time.

During my time in Zakopane, the meals I had with my newly met acquaintances were simple; consisting almost exclusively of cold cuts of ham accompanied by bread, butter, some apples and very little else. I at the time thought that these people were eating like this because after all they were on vacation and perhaps this was not how they ate at home where they had more food which there parents would be cooking for them but this was not the case for even at home the meals these people ate were basically the same.

One thing however in all this could not have escaped anybody’s attention that to the girl who was my friend, though I would like to make clear that ours was not and had never been a relationship that include sexual intimacy of any kind though this mostly applied to her friends I was a novelty. Most of which had never been outside of Poland and I think I was the first American they had ever seen in person which made me the object of quit a few stares. Of course it was clear to many given my slightly darker complexion then the average Polish person that I was not Polish but once it was found out that I was from the United States it made those whom I encountered ever so eager to find out as much as they could about me from minor details to more intimate ones. What I did? What part of the states I was from? How much money I made? These were the most commonly asked questions; some of which I was not willing to answer but could tolerate. I even recall how some people, men and women a like who could not speak a word of English or any language I could, would come to the house were I was staying just to look at me, “The American”. In a way all this attention did make me feel like a circus attraction or perhaps a fish in a tank.

Naturally my Polish is now fluent but in those early days my knowledge of this language did not include more then the two words which I had picked up in a book about Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary which said that in Poland that most commonly uttered words were “nie ma” which roughly translated were “we don’t have any”. I at the time of reading this book did not pay much attention to what I read; thinking it all could be possible but after a few days in Poland I realized that the answer to everything was “nie ma”.

For instance with regards to what most people did not have apart from the items they could not readily purchase at stores was telephones. There was even a list on which some had to wait as long as 10 years. This however to me was nothing new as I knew from the time I had spent in South America that some people were required to wait just as long for a telephone, even those who had strong financial resources. In reference to the telephones in Poland I would later discover when I moved to Poland in October of 1989 and lived there till August of 1991 that the lines did not always work. For instance very often it would happen that I would pick up the phone and their was no signal or I would hear a conversation on the line and would have to ask those on the line to simply get off and call each other one more time. The quality of the service may have been low but so were prices as a call to the states was much cheaper in those days to make from Poland to the states then the other way around.

As for the people of Poland; they were relatively friendly and warm toward me perhaps because most of them had never seen an American and I could say that the women were attractive; more so then in the States though this in truth I did not mark till I moved to Poland in October of 1989. Women in Poland apart from being more attractive then in the States tended to put more of an effort in to looking their best despite having more limited means to do so not only with regards to money but the availability of cosmetics and clothes they could get. I even found it strange how most women wore clothes that in America tended to be worn by women of a more advanced age such as long skirts with mostly pantyhose or stockings and chiffon blouses that in an odd way did not look bad. Their was also something about their Slavic ethnic group that gave these women an old fashioned type of beauty like the kind I use to describe Gosia (the main character in New York’s Opera Society) that made their facial features softer and nicer then the Saxon women I had known in the States or in other countries such as the UK.

Restaurants during the time of communism though limited in the variety of food one could get as there were very few foreign ones were extremely cheap for those like myself who brought money from abroad. I specifically recall on one occasion in 1988 which unfortunately will not repeat itself that saw me take out five people (myself included) to a three course dinner at a rather elegant restaurant. As for the meal itself it was roast duck that was had by all along with a soup and desert and coffee. All which came to a grand total of 12 dollars (at black market rates though at the official one it would have been four times that amount) with a good tip included.

Hotels however were a different issue because hotels contrary to restaurants required me to pay in Dollars (or any other hard currency), this eliminating the chance that I could change my dollars on the black market and then pay for the hotel. There was even a system that allowed me to pay for hotels in local currency but I had to have a receipt that verified that the Zloty I was using to pay for the hotel had been purchased legally and not on the black market after which the receipt was marked that I had spent some of that money on a hotel so others would know how much money I had left from the money exchange I had made.

Hotels however as I have already stated were much cheaper for Polish people then they were for foreigners making this the case that some of the guests in the hotels were Polish who even kept permanent rooms there mostly for business purposes. By “business purposes” I have in mind mostly though not only prostitutes who lived in hotels rooms which they only paid three dollars the night for while they took about thirty dollars a night for their services. It is through word of mouth and not personal experience that I discovered this as one night a lady knocked on my door saying “sex, little money”. This being an offer which I did refuse to take advantage of though I did present her with a pack of cigarettes for her troubles.

In October of 1989 I would move to Warsaw for a stay that would last almost two years in which I would rent an apartment on a street called “Trebacka” which unlike many has not had its name changed since then. It was during this time in 1990 that I would enroll in Warsaw University where I took a course specially for foreigners in Polish which was at least to my budget as well as that of any other westerner what could be considered “dirt cheap”. Twenty USD was the price of this three month course in which lessons were held everyday from Monday through Thursday from 8 am till noon. This was specially cheap to me who had taken private Polish lessons in New York at a cost of the same 20 USD an hour with each hour lasting 60 minutes.

As for the course itself it was taught by a teacher whose name was Gosia (like the character in “New York’s Opera Society”) whose English was good enough to be understood by us; her pupils and whose teaching I must say was not bad as her lessons gave me the basis of what my Polish is till this day. I for my part twice enrolled in her lessons in a time period that stretched from January 3, 1990 till the first week of June.

Naturally with this being a course of very basic Polish, all the students were foreigners like myself in a classroom that included students from Ireland, Norway, France, Yugoslavia (this being before the breakup), Soviet Union (also before the breakup), Austria (for some reason unknown to me students from Germany had there own group), Japan, Italy, Mexico with me and another man who had spent 18 years in Spain being the only Americans in the group. There were many nationalities being represented in our class but none as large as the one from Libya which numbered nine with its four males all sharing the name Abdul. It was not that I had anything personal against people from Libya but this was in the days in which relationships between our two countries were not exactly at their best however all would turn out very nicely as those Libyans in my group were quit friendly; specially on one occasion in which a Libyan classmate of mine defended me from Gosia’s yelling because I could not pronounce the Polish g.

By the start 1990 many things had changed like I was no longer required to change money at official rates for everyday that that I was in the country as now the official rate of exchange had gone up to meet the black market one which by then had gone up to 10,000 Zloty to the USD. By then no longer was it illegal to sell USD or any other foreign currency for that matter in private, making it possible for money exchange places called “Kantors” to pop up all over Poland.

Life had definitely changed in Poland by the start of 1990 as more things were available in stores though to most people in Poland this made very little difference since they still could not afford them. I even remember a comment being made during the 1990 World Cup in Italy by a TV announcer that Adidas was sponsoring the World Cup and showing their commercials before the games but how many Polish people had enough money to get a pair of Adidas?

As for what was my time in Poland during the year 1989 which lasted from October to the end of the year; there was a shopping episode that I will never forget one day I went out and went to every store I knew looking for something and no matter where I went I heard the now famous at least to me line “nie ma”. At the end of the day after not having found the luxury item I was looking for I called a friend and asked her where I could find what I was in real need of which was “toilet paper” to which she told me that this was what in Warsaw could not be found. I of course said but “some people have it, I have seen it in people’s homes, there has to be a way to get it!”. My friend; Iwona (whom I had first met in New York) laughed at my despair and simply said that people just have it but nobody can buy it. The next day bearing this in mind I went to a hotel called “Victoria” (at one point the best hotel in the city and where Reagan stayed in 1991) and simply put stole two roles of this precious commodity. It was not that I did not have the financial means to get this item but that I could not find it that made me turn to crime though I did give the lady outside the toilet who one paid for the use of this facility a larger then standard tip.

I do not think that I would have had serious legal problems had I been caught stealing toilet paper but in those days in which what today is called policia (Police) was called milicia it was better not to have any dealings with them just the same. I however do recall an occasion on which I was taking photographs of trees next to a milicia station (unknowingly at the time) and was asked inside where my passport, documents and visa were check before I was allowed to go about my business with my film even being returned to me once I was asked to take it out of the camera. I must say in all this that the milicia were courteous toward me in their treatment.

During this almost two year stay of mine in Poland I must not forget to include the fact that I did make several trips outside of Poland. Two of them to the States and one of them to Italy but it was during a trip to the States that my mother told me that every time she met a Polish person she would tell them that I was living in Poland to which she would be asked if I was really living there or perhaps just visiting. It was when she confirmed to these Polish people that I was living in Poland that she was asked as politely as these people could manage if there was something “mentally not right with me?” even asking my mother if I knew that this was a country were most people wanted to get out of and not move to. It even occurred that when my sister who has been living in Rome since 1989 met in 1991 the then Polish Pope “John Paul II”; he too asked my sister a similar question when confronted by the fact that there was an American who wanted to live in Poland.

Life was much different in Poland in those days of communism; perhaps for me it was just a novelty of living in country where things were so different from what I had known all my life that made me want to move to Poland back in 1989 or perhaps it was the fact that one could really live almost a life of luxury with as little as 500 dollars a month which was what I had to spend back then. This being how much greater the purchasing power of my money was back then or perhaps it was the desire to live in Europe and use Poland as a base to travel around which I did often in those days that also included two trips to the Soviet Union and other eastern block countries along with several in the west but what ever it was it was an époque in my life which I will never forget and though the Poland my daughter is now growing up in is much different I will always in a strange way cherish those days way back when Poland was still communist. This being the case though I at heart am not only completely anticommunist but antisocialist in everyway possible and then some.