Real Talk Archives | Page 2 of 4

Sunset

After I graduated college, the world was open to me. I saw I was at a crossroads. I had a degree and could do anything I wanted. While I was gearing myself to move to California to pursue one of my dreams, I took a trip to England and Spain to see if another track was desirable. I went and looked at Oxford and Cambridge as places where I could pursue a Master’s in History. London and England were very different in 2006. It was still a place of prestige and grandeur that I remembered from my first hop across the pond in 1997.

My hotel was in a quite auspicious place, right down the street from where a passenger bus was destroyed by terrorist bombs exactly a year before. But, even with that spectre, England was still England, and London was still London; filled with the hope and promise of being a capital city full of arts, culture, and money. However, even then, I could tell that there was a coming sunset on the British Empire at home.

In my visit in 2019, a mere 13 years later, a lot had changed. The financial crisis of 2008 put into question London’s place in the financial world. Oligarchs from the East began buying not only real estate in the city but the very heart of British sport, football clubs. Through the ever-churning storms of war, many refugees found England to be their port; often encouraged by the government, much to the chagrin it its citizens. The problem was that a lot of these people were all too ready to get onto the government doles while not conforming to their new home’s mores. London had even elected their first Muslim mayor, a very big sign that the demographics of the city were rapidly changing. Some had even gone so far as to start calling it Londonistan.

There was a new DoubleSpeak that seemed to permeate the country. One could not come out and say directly what the problems were that needed to be fixed as too many were afraid it would offend those responsible; from the people actually doing them to the government that seemed to condone it. Grooming gangs, stabbings, extortion mafias, terrorism, and other heinous illegal activity were swept under the rug of euphemisms.

I had always looked to England with a manner of respect. After all, my homeland was a direct result of their colonization and my native language while far from the Queen’s is still English. Talking with a lot of young people that inhabited the island, there was a sense of hopelessness.

One of my acquaintances I made in South Korea was an Englishman that left his homeland because he was “black pilled.” He went on the explain the meaning. There was overbearing police state that allowed bureaucrats to jail people over Facebook postings, kill children in hospitals, excuse vicious acts of terrorism as cultural misunderstandings, tax its citizens incessantly, and sell them out to Brussels. While they fought so hard against fascism, they ironically became fascist themselves. Maybe these are the children of this new Lost Generation; the spiritual Battle for Brittain.

I look to England with great concern. A brilliant British political theorist said this: England is about five to ten years ahead of America. Keeping our starry eyes very open, we should heed these British tea leaves.

It Finds You

When you visit Dublin, you do not go looking for a bar.

It finds you.

When I arrived in Dublin, I did not arrive at a bus station. Rather, I was dropped off in the middle of O’Connell Street, one of the main arteries of the city. I figured out where my lodgings were and I headed there to drop off my bags. I made my way towards the nexus of the Bachelors Walk and the Ormond Quay on the bank of the River Liffey.

I am not ashamed to admit that I arrived in Dublin without a real plan of what to see or do. Frankly, that is how I had lived during this entire trip. I had an idea but no really set plans other than where I would stay, how long I would be there, and how to get between places. I would figure out what to do when I got to where I was going and let serendipity take me by the hand the rest of the way.

Passing numerous bars with different enticements, such as Joyce quotes or prose from the four Irish Nobel Laureates for literature, they inexplicably did not feel right. They were too touristy, too crowded, and just a stereotype of a quaint Irish pub. I arrived at my hostel and dropped off my bags.

I walked around a little more and perchance, I decided to cross the Ha’Penny Bridge that divided the Liffey. On the other side was a busy but not frenetic pub, so I figured this place was just as good as any. I looked up at the sign; the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn. I stopped in and bellied up to the bar. Although it was busy my barman Vincent poured me some Irish Whiskey attetively, as if I were the only person there. I gazed around the room and could see that I was in good company.

I looked behind the bar as I was slowly nursing my rocked Whiskey. On the posts that supported the shelfs of liquor were patches. Looking closer, I could see names like Spokane, Dallas, Atlanta, but most notably New York City. These were patches of American police and firefighters. I knew my pub had found me.

I would continue coming back to the Ha’Penny Inn for the duration of my stay in Dublin. This included one very solemn night; the night of September 11th. I had been in a few different places when this date came up on the calendar. I was in my Freshman year of college when I heard the news of the day being filtered through 30 different voices as I walked back to my dorm just in time to see the second plane hit. I was in New York at Ground Zero while there were still excavating a little over a year later. I was in Los Angeles on the fifth year anniversary. I was back in New Orleans on the 10th. And here I was sitting in a bar in Ireland.

Maybe because it was my tour guide that read a heartfelt message to us on our way back from an outing, maybe because it was two large Whiskeys deep, or maybe I was just cataloging all the troubled and terrible happenings I had witnessed on my voyage thus far. But the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn understood my sentiments. I felt the twinge of inspiration as I sat underneath a collage picture of the Twin Towers that the bar featured on one of their walls. I re-read a post I had written on social media:

‘When people say 9/11 feels like a lifetime ago, for me, it has been. I was 18 when it happened. Now that I’m 36, I think about the lives of the victims they would never get to live: weddings that would never happen, children they would never meet, parents that would never say goodbye, spouses they would never hold again. So, when I say Never Forget, I mean to remember these lost souls, remember the evil that stole them from us, and to remember why and how this happened so it does not happen again.’

Perhaps Ireland has a special affinity for its foreign Irish children of which I am one. The Ha’Penny Inn felt like home for those few drinks; safe and warm on such a dark day. Looking over my shoulder, I raised a glass to the photos of the Twin Towers and then to Vincent.

Time Machines

“What is it to take a life?” Chips our tour guide postulated to the group in his thick Irish brogue. He did not seem like the type of man that would ponder this while was serving in prison. “To me, bullets and bombs are time machines.”

After taking us through the neighborhood in Belfast, Nothern Ireland where he grew up and subsequently defended with his life, amidst mural after mural dedicated to the bloody Cause, replete with balaclava-wearing soldiers and arms, he stopped us all in a small garden. He walked us in and showed us his brother’s grave, amongst the names of a dozen or so other volunteers. He wanted us to see where his brother’s story ended.

His brother joined the Irish Republican Army when Chips was just a boy. While the people in this neighborhood saw him and this group as freedom fighters, such as with most conflicts around the world, others saw them as terrorists. Chips did not get into the operations which his brother part took. It could have been anything from assassinations, bombings, kidnapping, transportation of contraband, or even financing. The IRA was versatile on this front. He also did not discuss why his brother left the organization. Even though his brother had been out of the IRA for a time, such as with conflicts that lasts for hundreds of years, people’s memories are long. Chips surmised that his brother was targeted for assassination by someone from the factory where he worked. Maybe it came up in conversation with someone he thought he could trust.

One day as he was coming home from work, two men stalked him to his front steps and placed a single bullet in his head. Although he did not say it, I imagine that given this particular brutality, it was a closed casket funeral. His family would not even get to see him to say goodbye.

Following a probable Irish wake, the bitter milk of grief and sorrow curdled to rage. Chips, already an impressionable boy, was thrust into manhood. He became a volunteer to the Irish Republican Army. Chips was unassuming. He was of average height and average build, with the features of an average Irishman from the neighborhood. But behind his glasses, he was primed for the Cause. He told us that he never directly killed anyone. But, his chosen task for Irish saoirse or freedom was to be a bomb courier. He had done dozens of missions, but one day his luck run out. He was caught by the British army, arrested, and imprisoned for over 10 years.

Having a lot of time to think, he traced all his and his family’s strife to one single bullet. The bullet that would make his brother never become an old man, would make his nieces grow up without a father, make his sister-in-law live without a husband, and would make him trade 10 good years of his life to the state he was fighting against.

“Bullets and bombs are time machines.” They change the future of everyone involved. But he continued that it is the choices that we make that define the rest. And it is for that reason when he was finally free, he laid his guns down.

“Good Night and Joy”

As we headed home from a tour of the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond, Stewart our tour guide could tell we were all sleepy from an early morning and a long day of trekking. He decided for the last half hour, he would let us doze after playing one of his favorite songs. He had to look around for it on YouTube and he then let it play.

It was called Goodnight and Joy. The song is a somber ballad of a man nestled in his house towards the end of the year presumably in the Scottish Highlands. There is a cold storm coming as the sun sets in the West and the darkness is falling. Yet, instead of being morose, the man wishes his companions a good night and for joy to be with them. He says that perhaps he will see them in the morning. This song is a metaphor for death and the hope of meeting loved ones in the hereafter. There could not have been a more perfect soundtrack for my Scottish adventure.

My maternal grandfather loved Scotland. He loved golf, the military tattoo, and even had his own plaid. He and my grandmother were scheduled to have one more final trip together to Scotland as she was slowly becoming ill. They left for Philadelphia International Airport on a Tuesday morning; Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. Needless to say, their travel plans were interrupted. By the time they could finally reschedule, my grandmother was too ill to travel. Taking care of his wife as she slowly succumbed to her illness, my grandfather moved them both from Pennsylvania to Louisiana and started the final chapters of their lives. Her chapter came to a close in July of 2009 and his finished on Easter morning in 2013. He had never visited the land he loved so much.

One of the most important lessons I learned from him is that it is never too late to fix relationships until it is. Due to some family strife, we had a falling out. When I decided to leave Los Angeles in October of 2010, I called him and asked if I could stay with him for a little while while I set up my new life in New Orleans. Without hesitation, he asked when I would show up. After driving almost 2000 miles, he met me at the front door of his house with a bottle of Jack Daniels. We sat on his back porch, hashed out our differences, talked, joked and drank until the wee hours of the morning. Our relationship was repaired, and I was able to see him quite often in the remaining years of his life.

I was with him the day before he died. A hospital bed was moved into his home. He was hooked up to oxygen and was drifting in and out of consciousness. Members of his church came and prayed around him as they knew his time was short. Family members and true friends came and said their goodbyes. The next morning before his body was taken to the funeral home, I held his cold hand and recounted my favorite memories of our times together. As he was being carted out, I finished the bottle of Jack Daniels we shared years before on his back porch after pouring a little out for him.

I booked my trip to Scotland specifically with him in mind as an homage to my grandfather and my heritage. I knew I needed to do something special. With the planning and execution of a well-coordinated bank heist, I was able to enlist my aunt, his daughter, in helping me. My Edinburgh hostel initially misplaced my parcel and after a few breathless hours, they were able to find it. I headed to the one place where I could get some privacy, the bathroom, and opened it. There was a plastic bag filled with ashes. My grandfather finally arrived in Scottland. I took his earthly remains and placed the bag in my newly empty gigantic malaria pill bottle, ready for transport.

In Edinburgh, I spread his ashes at the Edinburgh Castle, then hiked to Arthur’s Seat. I spread them in Loch Ness and Loch Lomand. I spread them in the forests and the riverbanks of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands. I spread them on Gordon Street in Glasgow and finally at the feet of John Knox high above the city.

Having climbed to the top of a small mountain, I was tired, hot, and dripping with perspiration. I took a seat, back pressed against the base of the statue of the father of Scottish Presbyterianism (my grandfather’s faith) and sat looking out from my perch with his ashes and Glasgow sprawled before me. I knew this would be a serene place for one’s final rest. It was a Necropolis, after all. I looked down to the small mound of ash at my feet that matched the color of the Scottish sky high above my head and smiled. I felt at peace and thought that, perhaps, we’ll meet again in the morning.

Sex, Drugs, and Money

Growing up in Pennsylvania, where there are still laws on the books where one cannot buy alcohol on Sunday, yet cutting my teeth in the original Sin City of the New World, I had no idea what to expect of Amsterdam. I had heard the stories and had seen the photos, but it really took seeing it with my own eyes to come to this truth; carnality can be banal.

I do not mean that pejoratively. I mean that in a city as beautiful and safe as Amsterdam, I thought there would be a bit of a dichotomy that I thought would be as palpable as the marijuana smoke that came from the “coffee” shops of a hushed retiscence to condone hedonism. There wasn’t. People knew what went on in the Red Light District and either enjoyed those delights or didn’t. And on either side of the divide, everyone was tolerant. Unlike Bourbon Street where the drunks spill over into almost every facet of New Orleans, Amsterdam was different. People could have fun but would be deeply shamed if they brought their party elsewhere.

The lesson I learned is that the Dutch are nothing if not pragmatic and like the truth in the rest of the world, that the government hates competition. The Dutch knew that if they did not fix a few of their problems, it would end up costing politicians their elections. When there was a heroin epidemic and the petty crime rate rose, they not only restricted the use of the drug but offered treatment for those that were addicted. There were not piles of state-sanctioned needles like there are in San Francisco with a seemingly skyrocketing crime rate. The Dutch then said that “natural” drugs like psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana, those that did not need to be processed, were alright for public consumption (and taxed accordingly,) but in certain designated places. The know human nature and allow people to pay for the privilidge of doing it legally and safely.

When it came to prostitution, the Dutch saw an opportunity to provide almost an air of respectability about it. While it was a pastime for this port town since its inception, with the Iron Curtain quickly receding, they decided to stem the major probability of Eastern organized crime taking control of the flesh trade by allowing the influx of working girls to join government-sanctioned brothels. These places finally become legal, licensed businesses with a cadre of indepedent contractors all taxed accordingly. The young women were provided safe working conditions, medical exams, and even daycare as they practiced the world’s oldest profession, while those in power could continue doing the second oldest. The governemnt then used the fullest extent of the law to go after those that tried muscling in on their new tax base. In essence, the government became the biggest pimp in the country.

While I did not use the services of the “coffee” shops, the “love” shows, nor the surgically enhanced young ladies beckoning to me from behind their protected, one-way glass doors, I could see in their eyes that this was just a job, like any other. They were all salespeople. Talking with some friends, some of the sex workers even found their jobs mundane, if not boring.

As someone that prizes personal freedom and responsibility, Amsterdam was a place that put my ideas into practice. One could enjoy themselves within the confines of certain rules with the consent of the other participating adults. I realized that it is when these forbidden desires are left for the shadows that those shadows end up creeping more and more into the light.

Hard Times

Hard times make strong men. Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. Weak men make hard times.

And this cycle could be found throughout history. But one of the things that I have noticed is that this aphorism can be slightly tweaked to hard times make strong art. If you look around at really any dark point in history, the interwar period gave us Dadaism, the guerras sucias in Latin America brought us magical realism, and the Great Depression gave us abstract expressionism.

In my opinion, there was no stronger art than Renaissance Florence. It was a time of immense strife. All one has to do is read a copy of The Prince by Machiavelli to know that in that new age of a proto-civil society, even unintended slight offense, could be met with the destruction of one’s family and the salting of their Earth. Such occurred where the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s seat of government, stands today.

But long after the daggers were sheathed, the art of Florence and the Renaissance remained. It went well beyond what was painted on a wall or chiseled in marble. The art spread from the ethereal (Da Vinci’s Notebooks of things that were possible but would not be,) buildings (the mixed styles of the Duomo,) and even to the world of business (the Medici dual ledger system.) Nowhere in the history of the world had so many geniuses of their crafts been found in one place. As their power increased, breaking the monopoly of the church, it was those that had mastered the business world that paid for all of it, whether it was that they truly loved art or truly loved themselves (and thus what they could buy,) it really did not matter; the art was made.

When I got on the train leaving Florence back in August of 2013, I knew that it would be a city where I wanted to spend a considerable amount of time in the future. I did not know when or how, but I decided that I would spend at least one month seeing everything I wanted and live the Florentine lifestyle. The idea was kicking around in my head and every few months, I would look to the copy of Birth of Venus I had hanging in my bathroom and wondered when I would make good on it. After the first trip, my life had been relatively easy. In those halcyon days, I had a business and a job, houses, and apartments, girls to love, food to eat, and everything was fine. Until it wasn’t.

I had no idea it would take a car accident, a breakup, a cancer scare, desertion, quitting a job from a company that was going down the tubes, and an ever metastasizing weakness of ennui to get me back to the city I loved six years later. But from those hard times, I would like to think that I became stronger. I had packed up everything I knew, said goodbye to my family, and started rounding out the hard edges of my life hoping to make it something more beautiful. Whether it was because it was an escape or the desire to have an adventure of a lifetime, it really did not matter; the art was made.

Kalevipoeg

Kalevipoeg’s Return, Sculptor Tauno Kangro

The hero of the Estonian epic poem Kalevipoeg wanted to travel to the ends of the Earth.
On his travels, he understood that the world is round and there is no place like home.

Go and look beyond the horizon.

Experience the world and gain wisdom from the knowledge that home is the place where you can always return to.

We are all wanderers with senses open and love for our home in our hearts.

Have a great journey and a safe return.

These were the words etched into the side of a dark marble statue located in the Tallinn airport. It was arresting not only for the fact that a giant marble statue was in the middle of a futuristic and thoughtful airport (they had a lending library,) but because it was as if it were describing my present circumstances. I realized then that most of the great epics, such as the Oddessy, the Alchemist, and of course the ancient Estonian epic poem Kalevipoeg, involved incredible journeys all with the hero returning home with great tales to tell. And I got that in spades in Tallinn.

My introduction to this tiny Baltic state was the 1992 seminal epic Encino Man. It was a Pauley Shore vehicle and introductory role of Brendan Fraiser and explored the modern world through the eyes of a recently reanimated caveman. While he was negotiating this new and marvelous world, unaware of the current social mores, Shore’s character explained that the reason he lunged towards a woman’s breasts, savagely ate household pets, and was mesmerized by fire on demand was due to the fact he was from Estonia. It only furthered my resolve to visit when I learned that the American Beauty herself, Mena Suvari (upon whom I had a massive crush in my late teens), was of Estonian descent.

Another anecdote was shared with me by my step-brother. He served as a United States Marine during the 1990s as a helicopter mechanic. He and his team were invited to Estonia to help train their armed forces on helicopter repair as they just found themselves newly independent. He came to a base that was very much in need of a paint job. Not due to the Soviet decrepitude that seems to haunt all of their buildings, but written on the wall in permanent marker was the sequence of American cities that would be destroyed when the inevitable nuclear conflict began. He understood that had he been there just a few years before, he would have been in mortal danger.

Walking the streets of Tallinn, I felt as though I was transported to not just another time, but a synthesis of the past, present, and future. Obviously, with its picturesque streets and ancient buildings, Tallinn was like a living historical fairytale. But the fairytale took a long and dark turn at the dawn of the 20th Century that almost lasted until its dusk. The future of Tallinn is not only a technology hub but their scope of time is larger than much younger nations. Estonia is already imagining its 500th year of independence, in the year 2418, as it is on its walk of fame already in bronze.

However, the most notable was the present; my story was being written on the streets of this beautiful city. Some strange, some hilariously odd, and others just so. It was these moments that I would cherish the rest of my life. I looked beyond the horizon. I was experiencing the world and gaining wisdom. But most importantly, through this statue’s Estonian eloquence, I would bring the entire world into my mind, my heart, and eventually my home.

Real Talk

Your Land Is My Land

EatPrayGreg.com Corner House Execution Room

My maternal grandfather’s family originated in Alsace-Lorraine, which was traded back and forth depending on the war between Germany and France. With that, we were not sure if his family were French settlers in German lands or German settlers in French territory. Walking through the picturesque streets of Riga, with its beautiful Art Nouveau scene, one of the things that really caused me to think was the ease with which countries, especially European ones, can be annexed, conquered, or invaded. Some did it willingly like Austria did when it was annexed to Nazi Germany, but most do not. However, the biggest truth is the greater, overwhelming force pushes sovereignty aside. And here was a perfect example.

Latvia, like the other countries of the Baltics, spent the last decades of the 19th and almost the entirety of the 20th in a tug-of-war among great world powers. As the power structure of Russia disintegrated during the Russian Revolution of 1917 while the Great War raged on, Latvia was able to throw off the yolk of the Russian Empire in 1918. The Tsarist reign saw a tiny town rapidly swell to a rich city due to its proximity to the Baltic for shipping imperial goods. It was able to maintain its independence for a mere 20 years. At that time, a treaty was signed with the Soviets that had just taken control of Russia. The treaty promised that the Soviet Union would respect the newly independent nation. And for those 20 years, the promise was kept.

That was until Stalin had his designs on the region. Through the nefarious and short-sighted Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin knew Hitler would not do anything if he moved into the Baltic area, just as Hitler knew Stalin would not do anything when they invaded their neighbors. The ruse was furthered by making the Latvians sign a mutual defense treaty with the Soviets, saying that either side would come to the aid of the other if any hostilities occurred. It was then that Stalin and his agents moved in for “protection.”

The Soviets controlled Latvia until Hitler broke his own treaty and invaded the Soviet Union. They swept through the Baltics with overwhelming force and brutality; enforcing their racial doctrines on everyone. Jews were to be deported or shot, as were those that hid or helped them.

The Nazis held on to Latvia until the tide of the war turned and the Soviets came back, this time to stay. While there were pockets of resistance, many were discovered and executed. Soon after the war, the Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of native Latvians to Siberia and allowed Russians to move in, changing the demographics from 75% native Latvians to 52%, with the largest minority comprising of ethnic Russians. This has left an indelible mark on this beautiful country.

For roughly 50 years Latvia was a Soviet state governed by their laws with their grievous enforcement. Walking into a room where countless enemies of this unvoted state were actually executed was an indescribable experience. The wall was like an infernal abacus; for every hole that was added, the life of a father, a son, a daughter, or a mother was subtracted from this world. I imagined what it would be like. Would it be frightening walking into that soundproof room knowing my family would never see me again? Would they suffer the same fate due to something I said during a violent interrogation? Still, when the hammer clicked on the pistol behind my head, would it be a relief because the torture of this life would be over?

These questions still haunt me.

Real Talk

ACAB

During our initial conversation over beers, J was talking about how she was really into football (soccer) as, apparently, most Europeans are. She continued that she had two young boys, so of course, they would make little friends from their school. As she was dropping one of them off at their new friend’s family’s apartment, she noticed a banner on the wall for an opposing team to her football club. But this was not just any opposing team; it was the one founded by the STASI, or the East German Communist Secret Police. Being an East Berlin girl with her parents still having Communism fresh in their minds, she told her son that he could not play with that boy anymore.

Later, as we were walking through the streets of Vilnius, as she added her football club stickers to various signs and posts, there was some graffiti that I did not understand and never saw before. It was the letters ACAB and in another iteration 1312, matching the orders of the letters alphabetically. She explained to me that it stood for All Cops Are Bastards. This kind of drew me back as I have several members of my extended family in law enforcement. I realized that I needed a bit more perspective.

You would think that me, being a white American male, I would be free from any interaction with the police. You would be wrong. I have run from the police, I have been frisked by the police, I have been pulled over by the police, I have been asked to get out of my vehicle by the police, and even have surrendered firearms to the police. Always, and without question, I knew that in these scenarios, they were the authority. Courtesy would be met with courtesy, usually.

But this was America.

Even to this day, in other countries, police show up in the middle of the night, knock on a door, ask for your father, mother, sister, brother, or simply ask for you to come with them, please. Goodbyes are said, and like that, the person would disappear into the night. In some cases returning thoroughly abused, but in too many more, not return at all. This happens in even in supposedly non-authoritarian countries.

In these places and times, the police are acting as the fingers of the black hands on the levers of power; tightening their grips to consolidate and centralize it, using the greatest of human motivators; fear. Today, from Havana to Bejing, Hanoi to Santiago, and even Lima, unexpected knocks on the door from the police are met with absolute and abject terror. And rightfully so.

Given what I saw in the basement of the KGB headquarters in Vilnius, it is completely justified. Having read what ordinary men that were Nazi police units did in Poland during their occupation, where 500 men either directly or indirectly ended the lives of 85,000 people, made me realize what a unique position America is in. Unlike any other country, we are different. We have amendments and Miranda Rights. We have Civil Liberties. We have advocates, legal charities, and the right to a speedy and public trial. Most importantly, we have decentralized police. The vast majority of them have taken the job out of an idea of service to their communities. Most want to be cops, but some want to play cops. There are bad ones out there and they do bad things; just like there are bad doctors, bad bankers, and bad teachers. But a majority are not. For every George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Rodney King or Justine Damond (who I bet you have to look up,) we have millions of police interactions in this country that are calm and orderly.

In the end, when the youth chant All Cops Are Bastards, when cities move to Defund the Police, when we take the civility out of our civil system, what are we left with? A void. Tyrants, like the Universe, hate vacuums. What comes after should terrify everyone and echos in history.

Through The Fire

Inspired by the many people I met in my youth from this exotic country, I had been to Poland before. My first trip there, I found myself in the idyllic town of Krakow. It was filed with narrow streets and friendly people that still had a certain Middle Age charm. This was surprising because it was only a short train ride away from the town of Oświęcim, more infamously known to the world under its invader name, Aushwitz.

Warsaw was different. While it was the home of great artists and scientists in the early 20th Century, the Warsaw I witnessed was gritty, yet beautiful, old yet new, healed but with visible scars. All over the city, one that was razed to the ground, there are newer buildings, but many, many Soviet-era ones that were hastily built after the war. The still standing, brutally designed Palace of Culture and Science is in the center of the city, as if it were a plank lodged in the eye of everyone that beheld it by Stalin himself. This was a reminder of who held real power.

However, there were still whispers of revolt all around the city. Like patriotic easter eggs, the small letters of PW decorated almost every flat surface; on sidewalks, on buildings, in stained glass. It is in homage to the Polska Walczaca, or Fighting Poland, the name given to the partians that battled the Nazis within the city walls and were later snuffed out by the communists.

They were a scrappy force, yet one that was able to fight for 63 days, unaided by any ally. Just imagine you, your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and even your children fighting the most advanced and battle hardened army in the world with second hand surplus munitions in a smouldering moonscape that was once your hometown. Getting caught meant you would not only die, but would probably be forced to watch the execution of your friends and family before finally receiving a bullet yourself.

Imagine knowing that a great army, equally if not more so battle harded than the current one killing your family, could easily have assisted you, if only by supplying you some better weapons. Instead, they were just waiting across a river, watching as your home and your people got destroyed. Only to move in when the other army retreated and take over as new invaders, rounding up everyone that fought so hard to liberate their homeland and charging them as enemies of the new state. Imagine that new state lasting for nearly a lifetime; a lifetime of opression, repression, equality of outcome, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

Now consider that state almost disappearing over night. Imagine new freedoms, new goods, new opportunities. But with those freedoms, new problems going with with them. Think about being given a job your whole life and then suddenly you need to create something called a resume, or needing to find a doctor instead of just having one assigned to you. Imagine the type of dread that suddenly being thrust into a world of personal responsibility would cause, especially for older people who lived and worked and gamed a system for a majority of their lives. Thirty years on, the reverberations of this era are still being felt.

This was the Warsaw I saw, admired, and respected.