Majdanek

Fulbright had its mid-year meeting in Lublin this weekend, and during that visit we went to see the concentration camp at Majdanek. This was the first concentration camp I had ever visited, and I am still trying to make sense of the experience.

Majdanek was established by the Germans in 1941 and operated until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1944. Because it was captured suddenly, the Germans were not able to completely destroy the camp and so Majdanek is perhaps the best-preserved concentration camp of all of them, though it is overshadowed by ones that killed more people such as Auschwitz and Treblinka, as well as ones that were overrun by the Western allies such as Belsen and Dachau. The number of people who lost their lives there is unclear, but the accepted figure is around 80,000, including 18,000 killed in a single day.

We were given a choice as to whether we wanted to visit the camp or not, and I opted to go mostly out of a sense of obligation. A concentration camp is one of the worst places on the face of the earth. I don't think anybody really wants to go to one. I want to remember my time in Poland as being as pleasant as possible. That sense of obligation, at least for me, came from a sense that avoiding the camps entirely while spending a year here was too close to trying to pretend that the Holocaust never happened.

We visited the camp when it was under about 5 cm (or about 1.5 inches) of accumulated snow, with a temperature hovering around -10 C (+14 F). It was cold and unpleasant, and I was well-dressed against the cold. Abstracting that to living as an inmate with poor clothing and no food was an awful prospect.

The thing that sank in most for me was a feeling of unreality about the whole thing. I can't describe it exactly, but I felt a kind of detachment. It was as if my visit wasn't actually happening while it was actually happening, almost as if it were a dream or a movie that I was watching. We saw a short film about the camp before our visit, and what was perhaps most perturbing was that the SS guards who carried out these horrible crimes had ID photos in which they looked more or less like normal people. Some of them probably had wives and families who asked them how their day was at the office. There was probably a "guard of the month" too. The fact that people led normal lives while murdering people in carload lots, and bringing about the same sights that we were seeing in a film that was impossible to not be sickened by is a disturbing realization.

I understand that everybody has a different reaction to visiting a concentration camp, and mine felt odd in that I thought I would feel more emotional than I did while I was there. While I did shudder at times, there was that detachment. It wasn't until after the visit was over that I started to really feel it and I'm having a hard time writing some of this now. I keep flashing back to it, like when I shower in the morning or when I'm in a confined space. I keep trying to make sense of it, thought evil on that scale never can make sense.

There were some impressions that stayed with me from the camp. Majdanek is one of the few camps where the gas chambers were captured intact and are not reconstructions. Zyklon B left a distinct blue-green stain on the walls of the gas chamber where it was used, the other one being a carbon monoxide chamber. I remember just staring at that stain, unable to move as if transfixed by something. That same feeling came when looking into one of the barracks. I stood at the edge of the door, close enough that I could smell what was a cross between rotting potatoes, mildew, and something else I can't put my finger on. The door was open, but I simply could not cross that threshold. I felt a sixth sense that I didn't want to go in there. I also couldn't tear myself away. I heard that some of the barracks at Majdanek are actually reconstructions, but some of them are original, and I would be willing to bet that this was original.

Majdanek was a major center for the processing of stolen property, and the camp's specialty was the repair of shoes. When the Russians took the camp, they found 56,000 or so pairs of shoes, which are now preserved in several giant bins about 8 feet high by about 30 yards long. These shoes are of all kinds and in varying states of repair: oxfords, boots, slippers, and in varying states of repair. They are various sizes too, from babies booties to full-grown men. Each shoe once had a person in them. 

The guard towers all had lightning rods on them. Because after all, we wouldn't want people to get hurt by lightning now would we? A camp designed to kill people has its safety features for those doing the killing.

What contributed to the unreality of the entire scene was the fact that the camp had initially been constructed as a prisoner of war facility. It looked a lot like the set of Hogan's Heroes. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch that show the same way again.

From the camp it is possible to see Lublin quite well, and there are people living just outside the fence of the camp itself. There are people for whom this is the first thing they see when they wake up. Majdanek has its own bus stop, and there's a bus line than runs out to it. No, this isn't a special bus for those just going to the camp, but rather a normal, city bus on a normal city line. 

There have been mass murders throughout human history. Religious persecutions, racial persecutions, political persecutions, this is part of our collective history. So why does the Holocaust stand out? I think part of the reason is that it was an extremely well-planned and executed slaughter, carried out with scientific exactitude and meticulous precision. It was not enough to just kill people: the Nazis meticulously took and cataloged their belongings, and re-used body parts such as hair and ashes. At Majdanek the crematorium was used to heat water and ashes were used to fertilize the SS garden the prisoners were working in. Nothing went to waste. There were also so many extra touches of cruelty and generally macabre behavior. The "you must be this tall to enter" line that Josef Mengele drew at Auschwitz comes to mind, whereby children shorter than a line drawn on a wall were immediately sent to the gas chambers. At Majdanek, the prisoners who were selected to be gassed were made to wait around in the open air, sometimes for hours, before being chivvied into the gas chambers. Bread given to prisoners contained sawdust. The random cruelty was bad enough, but what's worse is that it was all so calculated, and so much thought went into making life as short and as unpleasant as possible.

The last part of the tour was the mausoleum. When the Germans abandoned the camp they tried to destroy as much of it as they could, but they could not get rid of a lot of ashes. So they simply left them in a large pile next to the crematorium. Before the wind could scatter the ashes, the locals collected other ashes lying around the camp and placed them in a large heap. That heap is now covered by a mausoleum that prevents them from being scattered. I walked to the far end of the mausoleum and heard a nearby church bell tolling the start of mass. All else was perfectly quiet. In this pile of ash there were poets, philosophers, scientists, and people who had promising futures. All of them had dreams, fears, aspirations, thoughts, likes, dislikes. In life they may never have met, but in death they lie together. As the bell stopped, all that was left was a penetrating quiet and an entire loss for words or thoughts. There is nothing to say or think when confronted with a large black pile that is all that remains of those thousands of people and thousands of stories.

I realize that this post is more roughly written than some of the others I have written, but I can't bring myself to edit it. I also realize that no matter how much I try or how well I write, it's still going to feel flat to me and cannot match what I feel after having been there.

Thanksgiving in Warsaw

This was my first Thanksgiving spent overseas, and I would like to extend my complements to the Fulbright Commission and the staff of Restauracja Stary Dom, which is at ul. Puławska 104/106. While it was not exactly like a Thanksgiving at home (the stuffing was a little bit different, and the cranberry sauce had the consistency of salad dressing rather than the half-pudding relish that is more traditional), under the circumstances it was an excellent approximation. I felt very blessed to have a surrogate family for the holiday in the form of my fellow Fulbright scholars and their guests, some of whom were Poles experiencing their first taste of the great American ritual meal.

The Fulbrighters were asked to write a short summary of the holiday for the Commission, my piece was read by our director to the assembled guests before dinner. What I wrote appears below:

Thanksgiving is perhaps the most important holiday in the American calendar. Though it lacks the pomp of the Fourth of July, the religiosity of Easter and general cheer of Christmas, it has something that all those others lack, namely a ritual meal that is celebrated by Americans of every race, religion, ethic background and social class. Thanksgiving is a holiday that links all Americans in a culture where national identity has always been loosely defined and unclear.  The holiday has also lost little of its meaning over the years, in contrast to Christmas which many bemoan has become too commercial and Memorial Day, which has become more about barbeques and softball than honoring the war dead.

                The holiday itself revolves around dinner, which consists of a number of dishes that must be there. Grandpa may hate green beans, but will be very upset if they aren’t on the Thanksgiving table. More Americans can probably name the major courses of this dinner (turkey, stuffing, cranberries, green beans, white and sweet mashed potatoes, squash, corn, pumpkin pie) than can name the current Speaker of the House of Representatives or at least half of the Supreme Court justices. The other tradition is, of course, to watch American football. Who sits around the table is just as important as what is on it: there is an expectation that people will travel home for this holiday. Not being able to make it to Thanksgiving is very unusual, and one of the complicating factors in some families is who will be spending Thanksgiving with whom. This is only the second Thanksgiving I am spending away from my parents, and one of the very few I will be spending away from extended family. The analogy I would draw for those in Poland is Wigilia dinner, with considerably less religion involved.

                To speak plainly, Thanksgiving is about three things: food, family, and feeling thankful to have both. It can also function as a day of remembrance. We do not celebrate All Saint’s Day as is done in Poland, and there is no equivalent day in the U.S. As certain people are expected to be at dinner, when they die or get married and spend Thanksgiving with another family, this is noticeable, and an opportunity to reminisce. Thanksgiving is a holiday I always think of fondly. Now, please pass the stuffing.   

 

Review of Tragedia Makbeta (17 Nov. 2012)

The Teatr Słowackiego put on a performance of Tragedia Makbeta this last Saturday which made for an interesting cultural experience. The interpretation of the play was slightly loose and did not exactly follow the original Shakespeare. That much was evident from the performance itself, but I heard today that apparently the Shakespeare play is known only as "Makbet" or "Macbeth" in Polish, and the different title was a way of distinguishing the interpretation from the play itself.

Like many interpretations of Shakespeare I have seen over the years, this one suffered from an overdose of creativity. So many performances of The Bard's work have been put on that directors and theater companies strain to do something that hasn't been done before. This has reached such proportions that I think if a famous company were to put on a wholly straight version of Macbeth, in period dress, on a bare stage and with minimal changes to the script it would be hailed as something revolutionary.

What sorts of excessive creativity am I complaining about? The Weird Sisters (i.e. the witches) got transformed into the Andrews Sisters, with 30s and 40s-era costumes and songs to match. The play used videocameras extensively, projecting the recordings of said cameras onto a screen on top of the set. This was also used to enable conversations between a player on the stage and one waiting in the wings: significantly, we never see the murderers of Lady MacDuff and MacDuff Jr. on the stage itself. This videography was also used for asides. However, the cameras were also used for entirely unclear purposes, such as focusing on the chin of an actor giving a speech, focusing on the face of an actor whose back was turned to the house, use of cameras in low-light mode to enable the audience to see a grainy picture of action that was taking place when the stage lights were all off, or focusing on an ashtray that was simply sitting in the middle of a table during a dialogue. While some of this camera-work did have an interesting and desirable effect, that effect was overused. Furthermore, if the director intends to show the audience a view of the actor's chin, it helps if he has a good reason for doing so.

The interpretation was also notable for its surrealism. In the scene where the witches give him those two famous guarantees, Macbeth puts on a tuxedo yet continues to wear the paratrooper boots he has on throughout the play. My companion that evening astutely pointed out that costuming, staging, and other elements were an odd hodgepodge of a number of historical eras and styles. The setup of the dinner scene, at which Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo, was accompanied by an alto singing "Where have all the flowers gone?" in German. The porter gave a 10-15 minute standup routine, and led the house in a known Polish song before being essentially forced off the stage by Ross and Banquo. Fleance (Banquo's kid) has a much larger role in this play than I remember, and while the director clearly intended to show that Banquo loved his son very much, the fact that the actor playing Banquo looked to be in his 20s and Fleance a teenager made this interaction seem downright bizarre. MacDuff was presented as a half-comical character. Malcolm, however, was handled in an interesting manner, as it was implied that his reign would likely be little better than that of Macbeth.

The performance's central faults were ones of excess as well as dragging pace. The entire play took about 3 hours from start to finish, and Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shorter plays. The excessive use of bells and whistles came at the expense of the text and dialogue itself. Lady Macbeth was particularly guilty of exaggeration: she seemed half-crazed throughout, which takes away from one of the central characteristics of the play, namely the humanization of a character initially presented as heartless, calculating, and entirely without redeeming features. The final breakdown of Lady Macbeth was similarly disappointing. The character came out on stage, struck matches, made some gurgling noises, and walked off in a manner that was almost funny. The death of Macbeth had a deliberately humorous treatment that just didn't seem quite appropriate and also made MacDuff's character seem entirely inconsistent. In this interpretation, MacDuff wanted Macbeth to surrender and killed the title character almost by accident. MacDuff then stumbled around the stage for a few minutes, the ghost of Lady MacDuff comes on stage, MacDuff hollers "sing! sing!" and the ghost does, the curtain falls....and MacDuff appears in the next scene carrying Macbeth's head? The character is made totally inconsistent in this way.

Lest I be accused of focusing too much on the negative, there were some aspects of this production that were excellent. The lighting of Lady Macbeth in her final scene was superb: it made it appear that she had blood on her face and body. The addition of a bit more humor into this play was welcome. Some of the bells and whistles and surrealism was wholly appropriate, considering that this is a play involving apparitions, changes in the natural order, witches etc. etc. I actually kind of like the idea of the ghost of Lady MacDuff appearing after Macbeth is killed, though doing so in a traditional staging is difficult as Macbeth dies off-stage. In a weird way, I could almost see playing MacDuff as a half-comical character who sobers up suddenly. And of course, Agnes, Ross and Caithness can easily be condensed into one character. The bottom line is, though there were some interesting innovations in this play, I only wish there were fewer of them.

Independence Day

"13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant."

-Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points speech to a joint session of the 65th United States Congress, 8 January 1918

A German, an Englishman and a Pole are tasked with writing an essay about elephants. The German writes an essay about the anatomy and behavior of an elephant. The Englishman writes about hunting them. The Pole writes an essay that begins "the elephant is a Polish question."

- Joke circulating around the time of the Treaty of Versailles, as related by Richard M. Watt in Bitter Glory: Poland and its Fate 1918-1939.

November 11th is celebrated as Veteran's Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day in Western Europe, days of remembrance, thoughts of the war dead, occasions to wear paper poppies on the lapel if you're a Brit and so forth. It's a semi-solemn holiday. Here in Poland it is festive, celebrated as National Independence Day. This was the day that Polish militias and paramilitaries began disarming German troops, Jósef Piłsudski took control of the country, and of course the guns on the Western Front fell silent, leading eventually to a newly established, but very old, nation.

Unfortunately, I didn't see much in the way of festivities, and in some cases this was simply the result of not looking around the corner of St. Mary's Church. There was some singing of patriotic songs in the Rynek that I missed, but I didn't hear any fireworks. So it was a little anti-climactic.

What I did see was interesting. I thought Americans were nuts about displaying the flag, particularly as on an ordinary day you don't really see many Polish flags out. I know that not everybody reading this blog is an American so let me explain: we routinely fly the flag at gas stations, car dealerships, KFCs, private houses, government buildings, schools, in the middle of traffic circles and so forth. That's generally not the case in Europe, and in Poland even government buildings don't always (or even typically) fly a flag: there's typically a Polish white eagle on the building and that's how you know it's official. However, on Independence Day the Poles make us look like a bunch of pikers. All the buses had flags on their front fender. The trams were flying twin flags above their route and destination bars. Every other house had a flag on it. About a quarter to a half of people, possibly more, were carrying little Polish flags. The Rynek had these vertical flags of both the country and the city (blue and white bicolor), the Ratusz had a large flag about 30 meters in length draped on it, and St. Mary's Church had crossed city and national flags, as well as a bouquet between them made of red and white roses. Every stall in the Sukiennice had crossed national and city flags. The streets between the Florian Gate and Wawel Castle also had signs and flags hung over them. I suspect that politicians were wearing red and white undershorts.

Also notable was that there were much larger crowds out and about than on a normal Sunday, with more shops open to serve them than usual. Mostly, they were just kind of walking around. One thing I love about this city is that that's what a lot of people do, and there are a lot of places to do it. Krakow is one of the best cities I know to just take a walk in.

I understand there were some political protests as well. In general, from what I'm given to understand generally Polish politicians don't go harassing babies, but rather spend their time at rallies whipping up the multitudes. Piotrek (one of my labmates) was saying that there were two protests, one in the Mały Rynek (around the corner from St. Mary's), and the other at Wawel. I know there were also demonstrations in Warsaw against Fascism and some that were in favor of radicalism of some kind or another. The State Department issued a "be somewhat afraid" posting about the latter series of protests, but I haven't heard that any of our people up there had to spend the night in the hospital or the hoosegow, so I take it all is well.

So, what am I working on anyway?

At this point, you may be wondering what I'm doing over here other than intermittently updating this blog. My primary project looks like it's going to be about tribology, which is the study of how things behave when under friction.

Our basic goal is to reinforce polymers with nanomaterials (as well as some materials that are somewhat larger, on the order of microns), and increase the wear resistance of those polymers by doing so. We are also hoping to be able to exercise some kind of control over the coefficient of friction, which in effect determines how slippery or sticky the final material will be. There are some applications where you want as sticky a surface as possible, such as brake pads. Other applications, like in bearings or pistons, you want as little friction as possible. Polymers are already outperformed in these applications by metals and ceramics, and it is also important to note that polymers are not as temperature-stable as either of the other two types of materials. However, if polymer composites can be made good enough to replace metals and ceramics, such composites have three major advantages, namely, they are lighter, they are (potentially) cheaper and could (potentially) be used without additional lubrication.

To make the composites we first have to make the filler. Right now I'm working on doing so using a method known as high-energy ball milling. Envision a coffee can filled with ball-bearings. Now, put some powders in that coffee can, and in some way shake the can at high speed, letting the ball-bearings rattle around in there for 10 hours. That's basically what this process is, more or less. This is a solid-state method, meaning that chemical powders are being reacted as solids rather than dissolved in some kind of solvent.

Not using a solvent can be advantageous for a few reasons. First and foremost, a lot of solvents are dangerous for the environment as well as human health. Please don't misunderstand, this doesn't mean all solvents are equally dangerous or that you should be afraid of chemists and chemistry. Just that this is a consideration when doing chemical work that can be bothersome. Second, solvents can often have an effect on a reaction, from either participating directly in said reaction or by making some types of reagents more or less reactive. This is not always a bad thing: indeed, choosing the right solvent can make a world of difference. But sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about solvent effects. Finally, solvents can be expensive. Combining this with environmental concerns means that there are some reactions that we can easily accomplish on a small scale in a laboratory that simply do not work on the industrial scale. Solid-state is a way around some of these disadvantages.

However, solid-state chemistry has a few issues. First and foremost, when something is dissolved, molecules can diffuse easily, bump into each other, and react. When powders are used, this doesn't happen. Furthermore, a dissolved molecule is separated from other molecules of the same type a lot better than molecules that are stuck in a crystalline structure. So, your effective surface area is lower in the solid state than it is in solution. In short, fewer molecules can react at one time when powders are mixed than when they are dispersed in a solvent. Last, if your reaction is exothermic, meaning that it gives off heat, a solvent will help disperse some of that heat whereas solid-state doesn't have this kind of advantage. Generally, solid-state reactions need to be run at very high temperatures if they are to work, and that creates other problems.

Ball milling is a way of avoiding some of the problems of conventional solid-state reactions. The balls crashing into the chemical powders transfer some of their energy to those powders. This causes a distortion in the crystal structure of those reactants that in essence "stores" that energy. That stored energy can be used to initiate reactions with other materials present in the reaction vessel. The reactant powders are also being mixed at a high rate of speed. Further, when balls collide with each other or with the walls, because energy has to be conserved a lot of heat is generated locally. Therefore, it is possible to have locally-high temperatures exactly where the reactions will be taking place rather than having to heat the whole darn thing all the time. These factors combined means that a milled reaction can be carried out at room temperature over a span of time comparable or less than conventional methods.  Of course, there are some drawbacks to this method such as generally low-crystalline product and the need to cool the reaction vessel. But in general, it's a reasonably good method as far as I can tell.

Now that the reinforcing material has been made it has to be introduced to the polymer matrix in some way or another. We haven't gotten to this point quite yet, but when we do there are are number of ways of going about it. Most likely, since we will be using a thermoset, we will simply mix the polymer resin together with the reinforcing material, and then polymerize. The trick is going to be getting a good, even dispersion of the particles, particularly as those particles tend to stick together particularly if we are able to get particles on the nanoscale. The short explanation is that very small particles have a very high surface area relative to their volume, and that surfaces are energetic. So, high surface area means high surface energy. One of the most important concepts in chemistry is that whenever something is high-energy it tries to reduce that energy in some way or another. The easiest way to do that is to reduce the total surface area by forming larger agglomerations of particles, as larger particles have a lower surface-area to volume ratio. We don't want agglomerates! It defeats the whole purpose of having small particles in there to begin with, and empirical evidence indicates that composites with a lot of agglomerates have much worse properties than those where the reinforcing material is evenly dispersed.  

I think I'll hold off on a theoretical discussion of tribological mechanisms for another day, as those are a little complicated. But, I hope that this little discussion has at least made it clear what I more-or-less aim to do here in Poland, and generally how I aim to do it.

Politics in Poland

After the most political of days in the United States, I'd like to talk about some of the pressing issues here in Poland. If you thought the United States had a monopoly in political nastiness, think again. I've heard some things on Polish TV that are probably nastier, and some things that are considered mostly harmless fun in the States are blown into epic proportions over here.

Part of the reason politics is so nasty in Poland, as far as I can tell, is that the political parties really aren't all that different. The ruling party, Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform, henceforth PO) is described as a center-right party that favors a minimalist government. The opposition, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, henceforth PiS), favors a strong but limited government. PO is generally Pro-EU, PiS is more Eurosceptic. PO is a bit more liberal on social issues, but as far as I can tell economically the parties are not that different. Generally, the main political players in this country represent roughly the two wings of the Republican Party. Granted, this covers a lot of ground, but as far as I can tell the major parties really aren't especially different. I've also heard that there is a tendency for the opposition to oppose something, and then once they are in government continue doing the same things they railed against.

Now, some of the smaller parties are a bit different. There's the Ruch Palikota (Palikot's Movement, henceforth RP), which is kind of like a more serious version of the Rent is Too Damn High Party, and is named after its leader Palikot, a comedian (that's not being used pejoratively, that's his real job). There's the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish People's Party or PSL), which I thought was a Communist party based on the name, but it isn't. They're a weird hybrid of social conservative and economical Social Democrats. Hence, centrists. There's the Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (Union of the Democratic Left or SLD), which generally represents the left wing. Finally, there's Solidarna Polska (United Poland or SP), which is, in short, the Pat Buchanan Party. There are a bunch of other parties running around out there, but I think these six are the only ones with representation in Parliament.

I haven't been up on all the latest political issues, and I know that some of them are rather large like abortion. There's actually a movement on to pretty much ban it here unless the mother is going to die without it, and I understand that it is already only possible to obtain an abortion in Poland in cases of rape, incest, and when the health of the mother is in danger. Considering that 90+% of the country is Catholic, this is less surprising. However, I don't know a lot about this issue, so I'll move on to something I've been hearing a lot about recently, namely the tragedy in Smolensk.

On April 10th, 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft carrying Polish president Lech Kacziński, his wife, the Chief of the General Staff, a bunch of other generals, the president of the national bank and other assorted dignitaries crashed en route to a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Katyn massacre in Smolensk. This was potentially a big deal diplomatically: the Russian president was also going to be at the commemoration, which served as an acknowledgement of the fact that the Soviet government committed the massacre. Unfortunately, what happened has seriously damaged Polish-Russian relations, which haven't been very good since, oh I don't know, about 1500 or so. There was a heavy fog in Smolensk that day, and the pilot probably should not have tried to land in it. The plane crashed, killing all 96 aboard and effectively decimating the Polish government. Since then there have been all kinds of unanswered questions, the one most important in my mind being: why the hell were all those important people on one plane? But there are all kinds of questions that are more pressing from a political standpoint.

First, a lot of Poles are convinced that this tragedy represented some kind of tricky business. I've firmly added the word "zamach" (which based on the contexts in which it's been used I translate as "conspiracy" but the dictionary says "assassination") to my vocabulary, as I'm hearing a lot of it. It didn't help that the Russians largely handled the investigation and didn't let the Poles oversee a lot of things. The Russians also didn't return the black boxes promptly, and when they were returned, chunks of the tape were blank. When the plane was returned, it had been cleaned by the Russians, and it didn't help that the initial Russian explanation for the accident was "uh, we don't know. Maybe the pilot was drunk. Or a Polish general was drunk and ordered the pilots to land stupidly." Finally, it doesn't help that Poles tend not to trust Russians in the first place, the same way, say, Koreans don't trust the Japanese.

The Polish government did not immediately demand an international commission to investigate the crash, which was probably a mistake as the issue remains unburied. There is thus an incentive for the opposition to politicize this tragedy as much as possible, as the governing party looks bad. PO looks bad whether there was foul play or not, as it turns out that some of the bodies were mixed up and buried in the wrong place. Does that mean we should disinter all of the bodies, including those buried in Wawel Cathedral?

The reason that this is such an issue right now is that a prominent Polish daily, Rzeczpospolita ("Republic") published an article that said that Polish investigators had tested components of the plane and found some residue that might, maybe, have been from explosives possibly. The language used was something along the lines of "we cannot eliminate the possibility that there may have been explosives" though even the article itself said that most likely, there were no explosives. The headline was a lot more inflammatory, but the article itself really didn't say much. This did not prevent the leader of the opposition from running out and immediately saying that this represented proof that 96 people including his twin brother had been murdered, and that the government should be ashamed for standing in the way of finding out the truth.

"Rz" backed down from its earlier article, and the journalist responsible for it has been fired. I think the editor-in-chief also went, as did some other important figure.

This touched off extremely contentious debate, and I saw several talk shows where PiS largely accused the government (PO) of covering things up and bending over backwards to not irritate the Russians. PO for its part has largely said that PiS is taking advantage of the fresh graves of the dead. The other parties, for their parts, mostly beat up on PiS with a few swipes at PO. "Rz" has also taken a beating, with some suggesting that it became merely a shill for the conservative opposition. Since the changes in personnel over at the newspaper, there is now another debate: did the government lean on the paper at all? Was there some kind of repression of freedom of speech and the press? Was it irresponsible to have published that article in the first place?  Is the country in danger of shaking itself apart, when one side believes that the others aided and abetted an assassination?

At any rate, about 33% of Poles are convinced that this crash represented a Russian plot. Basically, if 33% of America was convinced that 9/11 was an inside job done by the government, you can well imagine that our political discourse would be an awful lot nastier than it is today. Thatt might not be the best analogy as it was obvious that 9/11 was a plot by SOMEBODY at least. Here the official explanation is that this was just a tragic accident. 

There's an interesting dynamic in the panel discussions I've heard about the Smolensk tragedy. Generally, PO and PiS shoot it out, as is to be expected with something like this. But, the members of the minor parties generally snipe at both PO and PiS, PO for botching the investigation and PiS for making a big deal about it for political points. Occasionally, you'll see the PiS and PO panelists actually unite and try to slap down the members of the other parties. What's interesting is that since the fall of Communism the system of political parties has been extremely unstable. The SLD used to be the governing party, and is now a fairly minor one. Both PO and PiS are only about 8 years old. A lot of other parties such as Solidarity Electoral Action have enjoyed brief success, had schisms, and then fallen apart. So I sense that part of this defensiveness is an attempt by both parties to stay where they are, because parties on top don't tend to stay on top. That said, it is remarkable how many old politicians are in these "new" parties.

I have heard complaints from a number of Poles that despite the fact that 6 parties are in the Parliament, they don't feel like anybody really represents them. Some feel that the parties are just a way of personally aggrandizing particular politicians, and that politicians are ultimately all flip-floppers to the point where it seems like Orrin Hatch comes out in support of gay marriage and Charles Schumer comes out in favor of mandatory concealed carry, all in order to get elected. And the parties that act or think differently are dismissed as just doing so to distinguish themselves and gain votes. Granted, I have a limited sample, but I would say that this gives the lie to the "third parties would solve all our partisanship problems" ideas we hear floating around in the States from time to time. If anything, Poland could probably do with fewer parties with clearer ideological differences: the two largest parties are hard to distinguish, and the distinguishable parties are hardly influential.

Another common complaint I have heard is that politics is still very much dominated by the same old farts who were in charge when Poland was still communist. I don't know how true this is, except that I did see a Polish supreme court justice at the Ambassador's reception in Warsaw, and it was surprising to me how this high official in post-Communist Poland turned out to be an equally high official before 1989. Anecdotal evidence, of course, but it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch considering that Poland never passed something that disqualified Communist officials from holding political office. This does make me wonder if that was part of some deal that Solidarity and the PRL government worked out in 1989. If so, it does seem like a small price to pay.

I'm hoping to get a chance to talk with some people more about what Poland was like and how it has changed these last 20 years. The trick is, I need to find someone at least 40 years old to have this conversation with..... 

Nov. 1st: All-Saint's Day

Halloween is not really a big deal in Poland. Sure, you see some people walking around in costumes, but it seems to me that it is seen as a more American thing, and thus the purview of the "hip and with-it" crowd. The day after it? That's a different matter entirely.

Traditionally, Nov. 1st is the day that Poles go out to the cemetery to leave flowers and candles on the gravestones of their relatives. Prof. Kowal described what I was going to see at a cemetery as a "tłok", which translates as a press or throng of people, and he was absolutely right. I went to two separate cemeteries in three separate visits. In the early afternoon I went out to Rakowicki Cemetery, and in the evening first to a cemetery in Salwator and then a return to Rakowicki to see what the place looked like at night. What made this all very convenient is that these cemeteries are on the ends of a major tram line which runs literally below my apartment windows.

The crowds really were something to behold. Typically, trams are run with two cars, but on the 1st they were run with three. On the morning tram I didn't have space to turn around, though the latter car was actually only half-full. Polish trams operate on a ticket system: you buy a ticket from either a kiosk or an automatic ticket machine located on the tram itself. Increasingly, these "automats" are starting to be located at the stops themselves, but this is a relatively new thing. So, if you can't buy a ticket from a kiosk, you have to board the first car and get a ticket there. Normally this system works very well, except on days when all the kiosks are closed and few people (myself included) had the foresight to get a ticket beforehand. So it felt more crowded than it needed to be.

The atmosphere at the cemetery itself was kind of odd. There was a huge cluster of people all pressing to get into the gates, boy and girl scouts doing various things, candle and flower merchants doing land-office business, hawkers in the employ of the cemetery asking for donations, it all had the air of going to a football game. All it needed was somebody selling peanuts and....oh, there's a bagel vendor!  Yet standing in contrast to all of this was another, very solemn emotional current. I don't think I've ever seen such a carnival-like atmosphere surrounding death before.

At the gate, the crowd pressed down the central path towards a chapel located in the center of the cemetery, where prayers were said pretty much continuously all day. There were a number of monuments that everyone seemed to make a stop at, chief amongst these being a collective memorial to, as far as I could make out, all the Polish victims of Communism ever. When I talked to a couple of random Poles later, they said that in general, people leave candles at these kind of collective memorials, as well as candles at the tombs of famous people.

This last point was particularly interesting, because even in death we have a way of showing how important somebody was. In Poland, as in the States, the more elaborate the headstone the more elaborate the person was. The grave goods left behind showed that some of the dead were important in a particular way. A bouquet with a blue and white ribbon came from the President of Krakow, for instance. Others displayed the flag of either Cracovia or Wisła, the two soccer teams in town. And some graves had a hundred or more candles on them, which I don't think means that that person's family was that big.

What was very surprising was that the cemetery in Salwator had more modest headstones, but those headstones had more stuff on them. Whether this means that that particular parish is more tightly-knit, or whether there are just more recent burials there I don't know. Also striking was that early in the afternoon it seemed more solemn, and later, as the sun was setting, I got the sense that more people were just having a look around rather than discharging their duties to the dead.

Being in those cemeteries gave me an opportunity to reflect on how humans handle death, as well as think of contrasts between how it seems to be handled over here and how it is handled back at home. Just observing people at the cemetery, it was possible to see all kinds of emotions. Some were very, very upset. Others just went through the motions and left. Some seemed pensive. Some people just stood at the graves and didn't talk. Others chatted and smoked. Still others seemed strangely happy, which actually made sense considering that this was an occasion to see and be with family. Catharsis takes many different forms. It dawned on me that I had seen all of this before, just never quite in this context.

This change in context was interesting, too. The United States doesn't really have a day dedicated specifically to remembrance of the dead. Memorial Day is supposed to be like this in theory, and I think I may have gone out to the cemetery with my grandfather on All Saint's when I was little. But it's not like everybody takes a day off and travels 300 kilometers to remember their relatives. How, exactly, do we remember our dead in the U.S.? It is in a very informal manner, from time to time, rather than having a ritualized day every year. Which method is healthier? I can't say. All Saint's just seemed to dwell a bit too much on death for my taste, but it may be better to just have that one day of emotional release rather than have the inevitable memory of loved ones come creeping up at unexpected moments.

I wanted to talk with some people at the cemetery about what the day meant to them, but was not quite sure how to go about it. It just didn't seem right to walk up to someone at the grave of a relative and say "Hi! I'm from America! Will you talk to me?" I was able to chat a bit with three groups of two, with varying degrees of success. However, what they said about the holiday was surprisingly short on details. It is a day of memory and prayer. That's about it. What it was, and what it meant, was evident enough that they didn't need to say more.   

Lost in my first translation

 Tradurre e` Tradire (translation is treason)
 -Italian Proverb

I have just completed the rough draft of my first formal translation of a journal article from Polish to English, and let me just say, I am glad to be writing some of my own stuff for a change. It turned out to be a much trickier job than I thought it would be, and oddly, the hardest part has been dealing with ENGLISH.

People in our lab group have been kind of running around for the last few days, as everything is happening at once. I have been a little bit restless recently, as this general busyness means that nobody has really gotten around to thoroughly talking to me about my project. I have been doing some reactions, and an awful lot of reading of the scientific literature, but that gets old pretty quickly. So I rather eagerly took the opportunity to translate a paper that the group hopes to submit for publication shortly. And it has been quite a challenge, which is surprising considering that 1) English is my native language, 2) I had 16 years of writing practice in school and 3) on top of that, I wrote for a newspaper once a week, and was actively involved in speech and debate for 8 years in one capacity or another. I think my expository writing is pretty good, and considering that you are reading this, evidently so do you. But translating is a different skill.  

Both English and Polish have some handy shortcuts that the other language does not have. For example, whenever I speak Polish I start to miss the apostrophe to indicate the possessive, and definite and indefinite articles. On the other hand, I am gradually starting to see the beauty of case-endings in Polish. It makes word order less important, as whether something is a subject, definite object or indefinite object is made clear just by looking at the word. What's funny is that I (and anybody who has ever tried to speak Polish, ever) have problems producing the correct endings for particular situations. Yet I am somehow able to pick them up when reading or listening, and they can be handy.

Unfortunately, this is part of what makes translations difficult. From time to time, I have to effectively reverse the word order when translating, as a literal, word-for-word translation is understandable but weird. For example, some literally-translated lines: "choosing the correct conditions of synthesis can allow to a large extent control of morphology of obtained ceramics and through it control of properties" or "observed in the last few years is progress in science regarding materials, which is finding application in all areas of science." I think the average reader would understand what I'm trying to say, but who writes that way? Translating also flies in the face of something that I'm trying to do while learning Polish, namely, to think in Polish, as I find that if I think in English and try to translate in my head I start having problems with finding words. What's also funny is that after translating, I have to spend about half an hour adjusting to writing my own prose in English, as certain habits of Polish writing tend to sink in after a while. 

All sorts of other things have to be considered in a translation. One important facet is a linguistic concept called "register," which just means the level of formality that is used in a piece of work. Much as you would not speak to the President of the United States by saying "how's it hangin'?", there is a certain academic style that needs to be followed when writing an academic work. The problem is, when I am translating for myself, either in my head or while reading, any word that reasonably approximates its Polish equivalent will do. All I have to do is remember that certain Polish words are "fancier" synonyms. This approach does not work when you are trying to translate something for a formal paper and the sentence that pops into your head is "A lot of folks have dealt with various things that can readily be considered members of a particular class of objects, and this paper touches on the various theories that surround them and how our results line up with the theory." If you heard that on the street, that would be OK. It's perfectly understandable. But in an encyclopedia it would look weird. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a non-native speaker writing English is the sudden inclusion of bracing colloquialisms.

I had some unexpected difficulties with the English language, and some things started to dawn on me about the language I grew up speaking. Word order is important and occasionally unforgiving. Consider "the boy eats a hot dog", "a hot dog eats a boy", "a hot boy eats a dog", "the dog eats the boy and feels hot", "the boy eats the dog, who feels not so hot." All very, very different sentences, and this in a sentence with just one subject, one object, one verb and one adjective. Imagine what a headache it must be to put together complex sentences! Don't even get me started on parenthetical thoughts. At any rate, all this taken together has forced me to occasionally write a sentence out twice, first more or less literally, then a second time in order to have it make any sense.

Translating is also strange for me as it is the first time in my life that I have had to write something in a style and with a word choice that is not my own. I have edited papers before, quite a few of which had writing styles that were different from my own, but that was entirely different as it involved changing a few words, rearranging them, but leaving the basic voice and structure roughly the same. Imagine trying to write an essay that imitates, say, Mark Twain to the point where the essay is mistaken for one of his works. Now imagine that Mark Twain didn't speak English and you are trying to write the essay as if he did. You aren't trying to imitate Mark Twain, you are trying to be Mark Twain, because as a translator to a foreign language, you are. And that's hard.  

Strangely enough, the fact that it is a technical paper means that I found it easier to translate. The experimental section and data analysis parts were easier than the introduction. I ascribe this to the fact that I already know a lot of the technical terms in English, so if I see a picture or get a description of how that picture is analyzed, I know exactly what to call the picture. There are also a fair number of cognates here, which is very helpful. It is also much easier to pull out terms from context, as I have a fair idea of what that context is.

Translating has been pretty slow work. I estimate that I translated a 1500-word document in about 6-7 hours, and that's a rough draft that still needs improvement. Google Translate has been very helpful, and I think that the second time will be easier. However, on getting home tonight I did indulge in a well-deserved cocktail.

The most familiar things are the most foreign

One thing that is always striking about being in Europe is that it feels close enough to home that there are times when it feels like you never left. The faces are familiar. So are the cars, buses, and a lot of the products in the stores. Heck, if you are surrounded by Americans, like I was during orientation in Torun, it's sometimes easy to think that you're on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago someplace having lunch. The wait staff of course speaks Polish, but you and your buddies are jabbering away in English as always.

But then there are those subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you aren't in Kansas anymore. Street signs are an obvious example, but a little bit more jarring is what happens when you walk into a supermarket and try to find stuff. The first thing I noticed is that a lot of the stuff that is readily available in any supermarket in the States is either in a specialty store or simply not available over here. Take lentils, for example. I'm aware of one store in Krakow that carries them. Also, it's not like you can hop over to the equivalent of the Giant Eagle (or the Jewel or Food Lion or Aldi or whatever) and pick up a bunch of jalapenos. And just last night I asked a woman who works in the Jubilat for baker's chocolate. Either my Polish is really bad or it simply doesn't exist over here, based on the look I got. Granted, it could be that elsewhere there is such a thing: try walking into Giant Eagle and asking for daikon root and you probably will get the same look. Still, based on a bit of shopping around, I'm going to have to change what I cook and how I cook it. I had absolutely no problem cooking bigos, a Polish stew, for instance.

Lest I be accused of saying "man, there's no food in this country!" I should point out that there's a great variety of stuff, just different priorities as to what kind of variety. In the supermarkets I've visited I have seen entire aisles of tea, separate from the entire aisle of coffee and other hot drinks. You want candy or chocolates? You can probably combine the "foreign novelty sweets" at several supermarkets in the States (except for that Ginormous Giant Eagle across from Bayer on I-376 in Robinson Township that looks like it was built in an aircraft hangar). In the average Polish supermarket, there is an entire other aisle of beer, both domestic and foreign, in cans and in bottles but oddly not in six-packs. The standard supermarket probably has at least 10 different kinds. There are 4 or 5 varieties of eggs at the Jubilat, which are sold in packages of 10, not 12. Also extremely popular over here are "poprawki", or packages of spices that are pre-set to just sprinkle on chicken or beef or turkey or whatever it is that you are making. Think of it as Laury's Seasoned Salt on steroids. There's an entire aisle of these packages at the Jubilat. You want macaroni or pasta? Well, here's five different brands of linguini and macaroni and rotini, but no wagon wheels. Finding potato flour is no problem, whereas that's a somewhat special item in the States. So, a lot of my time in Poland has been spent marveling at a very peculiar set of circumstances: supermarket clutter that is difficult to wade through, coupled with the perception that there really isn't any food in the store.

Another thing that we all take for granted on entering a supermarket is that we know at least roughly where everything is. Well, I've spent a fair amount of time blundering around grocery stores here, because the conventions are somewhat different and cutting through clutter often requires knowing the conventions. There are so many items in so many varieties that if you had to read literally every single label, it would take you quite a bit of time.

Take a simple purchase like baking powder. When you're looking for it, what is it you look for? A red can, about 5 inches tall, with "Rumford" in big white letters on it, next to the flour and down the aisle from the instant frosting and instant cake. Having found the flour at the Jubilat, I proceeded to look in the immediate area for about five minutes, as I was looking for a can. Surprise! Polish baking powder is sold in smaller amounts and in things that look like oversized yeast packets. These were in smallish boxes embedded within the numerous packets of instant pudding, gelatin, etc. I didn't manage to locate baking soda or vanilla extract. I did, however, manage to locate a whole vanilla bean. The theory, I guess, is that you can make your own darn extract.

There are other subtleties too. I bought "Poznańska" flour. That label tells me absolutely nothing. It literally means "Poznań-style." There was also "Wrocław-style" flour on offer. The difference between the two of them eludes me, other than that the former would come from Greater Poland and the latter from Silesia. The difference will probably not elude me for very long.

Polish History Part III: What does it all mean?

Polish history can and does fill volumes in libraries, and yet so much of it is not really taught in high schools or colleges around the United States. This is a shame, because Poland, like any nation, only makes sense in the context of its history. I have sensed the importance of history around here, from plaques on walls that honor either heroes of the past or those who were murdered by the Nazis or Soviets, to what is discussed on TV or in newspapers. There are several magazines dedicated to just history, and they are about as common and widespread as The National Geographic: Historia can be found on the same shelves as People in the mall, for instance. But what, exactly, is that importance? I'd like to consider the importance of history on the past, the present, and the future.

History can have an impact on the past, as the past is written in the present. A major question facing the Polish government and educational establishment is how to teach history. If you were to teach it as "totally awesome 1350-1795, totally sucked 1795-1919, was OK 1919-1939, major bummer 1939-1989, 1989-present?", that wouldn't be very nuanced or probably particularly accurate. Also difficult is that there is a strong generational divide. People my age are too young to remember Communism. Those my parent's age remember it vividly. And those my grandparent's age remember Nazis goosestepping past their house. And you thought it was bad enough when your grandfather talked about the Depression!

There's also the question about what to do with those who were influential members of the Communist government, or those who collaborated with those awfully persuasive secret police. Do you pass something like the 14th Amendment, which in its less-read articles disenfranchises a bunch of ex-rebels? Do you prosecute Jaruzelski and people like him? Is that just "victor's justice?" As far as I can tell, there is no one answer. There are and have been ex-communists in the Polish government, and it doesn't seem like a big deal. However, whenever it comes out that somebody collaborated, that does tend to be a big deal. This problem will end up solving itself in 30 years when everybody dies or retires, but for now it is a going concern.

In the present, I've noticed that Poles are possessive of their history. Literally. Don't ask me to bring you antiques, because it is illegal to remove any item created before 1945 from this country. I might be able to manage a distributor cap from a Wartburg or Trabant, but that's probably the best I can do. This is probably attributable to the fact that Poland was not a country for over a century, and many items of cultural significance were either taken or lost as a result of the numerous wars that have criss-crossed the landscape. Most famous of these artifacts were the Grunwald Swords, the formal invitation to battle sent by the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order to the Polish king before the battle of Grunwald in 1410. The swords became a symbol of Poland-Lithuania (and of beating up the Germans), but were lost in 1853 and their fate is unknown. In general, the powers that partitioned Poland tended to try to eliminate Polish identity as thoroughly as possible, and that included Polish history. In more recent times, while the communists did not attempt to destroy Polish history, there was a definite party line and slant to the way that history was taught. I have a book of Polish history written in English in 1977, which says that, in essence, absolutely nothing good happened while the bourgeois pig-dogs ran Poland between 1919 and 1939. I also understand that under the Communists, there were certain topics that were not politically-correct to discuss, such as the Home Army during World War II. Now that Poles are free to talk about their history, and free to debate it, it seems like they can do little else. It would be as if there had been a long moratorium in the U.S. about discussing the Civil War that just got lifted.

Another example of historical possessiveness is the idea of a national literature. Ask an American who the national bard is, and you'll get all kinds of answers from Twain to Steinbeck to Faulkner to Frost. Here, there is a somewhat smaller number of figures: Mickiewicz has statues of himself everywhere you go, and there are the four Nobel laureates in literature that Poland has produced, who are definitive literary figures. Everybody who is educated over here, it seems, has read Pan Tadeusz or some Sienkiewicz, whereas in the States I don't know if everybody has read, say, Huckleberry Finn. I am also struck by the fact that what is considered literature, as far as I can tell, extends to fairy tales as well.

I am a big believer in the study of national themes. Whenever you look at history, certain things keep coming up again and again in different guises. In the States, the debates about state vs. federal power, exactly how much liberty the government should permit people (and whether that amount should be different for different groups of people), and the desire to blaze new frontiers define us as a country. The Russians have been all about acquiring warm-water ports. The British have long wondered what their proper role is in the world. In the case of Poland, the biggest national theme is not having a nation, and of struggling to keep Polish identity alive. And that theme just went out the window. 

Poland is now in an intense period of transition, because in a way it has seen the much-ballyhooed "end of history" that resulted from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland today is an independent republic with free elections, and its governmental system was robust enough to survive the death of the Polish president and a whole bunch of other important officials in the Smolensk plane crash two years ago. While there are still economic and political spats with Russia, and EU policy arguments with Germany, Poland is not really under any serious threat of military invasion and is not under foreign occupation. Heck, in the States we seem more worried about national security and terrorism than they do around here, though I did see airport police armed with submachine guns in Warsaw. Meanwhile, the economy is growing, and the zloty is a stable-enough currency despite some inflation.

Not only does the State have to redefine itself, so do a lot of non-governmental organizations, the most important of which is probably the Catholic Church. The Church has long been a counterweight to the State, and as I noted previously, it was so heavy a counterweight that the Communists were not able to destroy it. Now that politicians are actively trying to be on the good side of the Church, the relations between the Catholic Church and the State look to get very complicated very soon.

This combination of circumstances has never happened in Polish history before. As Poland gropes its way forward, it can't really look to its past. So what, exactly, can Poles look to? This is perhaps the greatest irony of all, that the greatest legacy of Polish history is to make the future so uncertain.   

Searching for an Apartment

So much to write about! The long gap in posts was caused largely by my search for a residence, as well as my first few days of work at the Polytechnika, a few get-togethers and so forth. Last week was apartment-hunting in earnest, and I got a very good sense of at least some of the housing stock around here, as well as some of the neighborhoods in Krakow. I have to say, this is one seriously beautiful city, now that I have had more than a cursory look at it.

The housing stock I saw was variable, from brand-new-can-still-smell-the-paint to old but well-maintained to just old. One of my early trips took me to Bronowice, which is to the west of downtown. There, I looked at an apartment in the "Eastern Apartment Bloc" style. As a side-note, I don't think that we'll see "Eastern Bloc Revival" as an architectural style anytime soon. Though the buildings were kind of large and grim, there was a nice green-space in the middle of them. Although it was a set of blocs I did get a sense that people knew each other in the community, as I saw people conversing with each other and gossiping. I think that this is what the designers of a lot of the housing projects in the United States were trying for: cheap, stacked housing with a pleasant space in the middle. However, where those designers had failed in the U.S. it appears that the architects over here succeeded. I also really liked the potential landlords, an older couple, but the apartment itself smelled strongly of cat.

The most entertaining landlord I met was a lady leasing an apartment about 2 or 3 blocks east of the Planty, a circular park where the old city wall used to be. It was also convenient to the main train station and therefore also to the Polytechnika, which is a few blocks further north from the trains. Given the location of the place, I was quite enthusiastic about checking it out. And then I actually went there. The landlady showed up with her boyfriend, who was putting on/buttoning up his collared shirt as he walked up to the building (and no, he was not wearing an undershirt). We went up to the fourth floor and looked into the apartment. First, the kitchen was hilariously small. It was probably possible to turn around in there, but not easily. Imagine a room that is maybe 6 feet by 6, and has in it a four-burner stove, refrigerator, sink, and small table. Second, the bathroom was remarkable in that it had NO SINK. However, the kitchen had a sink with TWO faucets, one of which was functional but the landlady said it was better not to use. The bathroom had a toilet with the tank and the bowl connected by shop-vac line, as I had seen in Macedonia.

                The landlady then went on to demonstrate the cabinets. The first door she opened fell off. She and her friend then proceeded to argue about the best way to fix this particular problem, and a few other things besides. Boyfriend at this point also nonchalantly opens the window, sits in the sill and lights a cigarette as we continue to look through the apartment. I noticed that some of the other cabinets were held closed by a series of rubber bands. The refrigerator and washing machine were both old, which prompted “As you can see, the washer is old, um, hey Ed [not his real name], how old would you say this thing is?” “Oh, wow, uh, I dunno, I’d say pretty old. Might have seen something like it in a museum.” There was a fair amount of chatter between those two that I just kind of stood and listened to, trying hard not to burst out laughing. Which only made the situation even funnier.

                Those probably would have made for some entertaining landlords, but I was in this for housing not entertainment. I continued my search and probably looked at about 8 places in varying degrees of niceness. There was one very nice place for not very much a month that was unfortunately quite a ways from downtown. I probably would have had to take a bus to work every day, and there was only one bus that went out that far. Another place was right around the corner from the Polytechnika, but it looked like it came out of a Charles Dickens novel. Another one near downtown was an apartment in alright repair at the end of a very creepy staircase with a bannister that probably hadn’t been dusted since the Jaruzelski Administration. I settled on a sprawling apartment on Kościuszki Street, almost a rock’s throw from Wawel Castle and very convenient to the Jubilat, one of Krakow’s main department stores. It is right on a tram line, and about 2 miles from work. I’m still doing a thorough walkthrough of the apartment, but so far everything seems to be alright with the usual minor irritations to be found in an apartment.

                One funny thing about this apartment was that the guy who showed us around was not the landlord but rather somebody’s brother-in-law. Prof. Kowal was suspicious, as apparently there’s a kind of fraud that occurs here in Poland where somebody will lease an apartment, claim to be the landlord of it, make copies of the keys, lease the apartment to 4 different parties, and then disappear as those 4 parties show up on the same day with boxes of stuff, demanding to know what the other three are doing in “their” apartment. So, we told this guy that we would only deal with him further if he produced a notarized statement that he had power of attorney, otherwise we would only deal directly with the landlord. And when the landlady showed up, we took a very thorough look at her ID as well as the title to the apartment.

                I’d like to give props to Prof. Kowal and Pani Kowal for all their help in this apartment search. Prof. Kowal came with me to sign the lease, and he caught two potentially-tricky problems and solved them. The first had to do with the language of the lease and the way the property was described. This place has a kitchen, an antechamber, and two rooms along with toilet and bath. The lease as initially written referred to a “garderoba,” which Prof. K pointed out could very well refer to the antechamber. After some wrangling, we were able to get language inserted that explicitly referred to my exclusive use of the entire apartment of two rooms etc, as described in the title.

                The second thing that Prof. Kowal was really helpful with was utilities. Apparently, the way utilities are paid for in Poland make no sense at all. Say that the previous tenant was a jerkoff and didn’t pay their gas bill. It is up to you, the incoming tenant, to in some way track down the previous tenant and get him to agree as to where his responsibility for gas ends and where yours begins. And you have to show up in person at the gas company together in order to do this. If you don’t want to do this, either you have to pay the gas company to have the meter read, you have to pay whatever was not paid by the previous tenant, or the gas company shuts off your gas (screw you!) I understand the electric company operates similarly. Oh yes. And because I’m a foreigner this gets even more complicated: the gas company is worried that I might pick up stakes suddenly, leave the country, and leave them holding the bag for all those unpaid bills. So, they make it hard for a foreigner to even set up an account with them.

                The solution we came up with is that the gas company will send the landlady a bill, that bill will be forwarded to me, I will pay the bill and return the receipt to the landlady. All this almost makes me miss People’s Gas and Duquesne Light.

                Speaking of gas: it’s expensive over here. Just how expensive I’m going to find out shortly I’m sure, but I was told it was five times the price of that in the States. I’ve noticed that even in the semi-sleazy apartments I looked at, the windows were new and probably for exactly this reason. Most all of Poland’s gas comes from Russia, as does most of Europe’s gas in general. This gives Gazprom significant monopoly power over pricing and most everything else that goes on gas-wise. The EU has not presented a united front on this….because the Russians ran a pipeline under the Baltic to Germany that bypasses Poland. It used to be that the Germans did not want gas to get too expensive in Poland because the Poles always had the option of turning off Germany’s gas. Now the Germans cut their own deal with the Russians. So, not only do the Russians have monopoly power, they are able to price-discriminate as the market for gas is fragmented.

In general, there is not much of a global market for natural gas because unlike oil it is difficult to transport natural gas overseas. Thus, the energy boom that hit the U.S. has had little effect on natural gas prices over here. There was talk of doing hydraulic fracturing and unconventional gas recovery in Poland, as there was a newly-discovered gas shale in eastern Poland. However, the estimate of the amount of gas in that field keeps being revised downward. Finally, perhaps the most alarming thing about gas in this country is that it does not have t-butyl mercaptan added to it. Natural gas by itself does not smell. That “I smell gas” smell in the states comes from the mercaptan (and in fact there was a small gas-leak scare at Pitt that happened when one of the lab groups was using t-butyl mercaptan in a synthesis , and somebody in the hallway smelled it). Now, the gas in my apartment that comes out of the stove does have a particular smell, it just isn’t one that I’m used to. I’m just astonished that that additive is not present.

Heating in Krakow is generally provided in one of about four ways. First is gas, like I mentioned. Second, there is a citywide steam-heating system, rather like that of New York or Pittsburgh, except that it is used to heat private residences as well as just houses. Third, there is electric heat, which I understand is expensive. What makes electric heat more expensive is that, at least in some areas, there are different rates for different times of day, in other words there is a peak price and an off-peak price. To keep heating costs down, it makes sense to heat the apartment at night. But that doesn’t seem to make much logical sense now, does it? There are still some buildings around here that are heated with coal. I didn’t see any on my tours, but I definitely saw advertisements for places with coal heat.

So, now I have a place! Sometime soon I’m going to start having to talk nerdy to you, and talk about what I’m actually doing over here with my allotment of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.