A Journey Into the Past

by Matthew Rowden (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Poland

“Well mate, have you thought about going away for a bit or something and taking a break? Why not do something different and shake things up a bit?” my best friend had said to me when I asked him for suggestions for what I should do with my week off work. Now, a few days later, I had taken Matt’s advice, and was enjoying another lovely summer’s morning in Krakow’s old town. As I stopped for a drink at a bar in yet another gorgeous historic building, I noticed several references in the book I was reading to a place called Nowy Huta, which was now the easternmost part of Krakow and one of only two surviving planned socialist realist settlements left in the world. I went on to discover that it was built during the early years of communism in Poland as a new, utopian town for the new age and was intended as a deliberate statement of the superiority of socialism in stone. Now this was something I didn’t expect to find still in existence, and with Matt’s suggestion to uppermost in my mind, I decided to pay a visit to this erstwhile propaganda piece. I took the tram to Nowy Huta later that day. It struck me that the journey itself was also in some ways a trip through Poland’s recent history as I started my journey in the summer sun in the city centre amongst the stately old buildings built during Austro-Hungarian rule, passed a few newer and self-confident buildings from the 1920’s and 30’s only to have these fall away and be replaced with a mix of former communist buildings and anodyne modern constructions. I eventually arrived at the central square (officially renamed to ‘Ronald Reagan Square’ in a calculated gesture of contempt towards the old communist regime) and was awed by what I found. I was dwarfed by the huge, pompous communist era architecture on the main square, uniformly dark and grey, towering ominously above me beneath a now leaden sky which only added to the effect. With the vast steelworks visible in the distance pouring out smoke and an old mustard coloured Trabant parked up in the main square this strange snapshot of the past was complete. I walked further into this place where time had seemingly stood still, crossing boulevards that once echoed to the sound of party rallies and passing sombre, uniformly dull and featureless apartment buildings, overwhelmed by the loneliness and sterility of it all. The area was almost deserted, and I couldn’t decide if I was walking through some vast grim open-air museum or a cemetery, so oppressive were my surroundings. My eye was drawn by the only splash of colour amidst this monochrome field of grey, a flowerbed in the centre of yet another vast square. I discovered afterwards that once a huge statue of Lenin had stood there, presiding over this cold monument to the triumph of communism until the locals had rid themselves of it along with communism some thirty years or so ago. Next to this was the only building showing any signs of life. Intrigued, I approached it to discover that it was a restaurant and since it was lunchtime, I went in. I entered the restaurant and the faded wood panelling, threadbare net curtains and worn linoleum seemed to transport me back to the 1950’s There was even a small statue of Lenin on the central table, a tiny twin to the one that once stood outside. I later found out that the restaurant’s name translated into English as the profoundly ironic ‘stylish’ and actually hadn’t been refurbished at all since it opened in 1956. I examined the equally poorly translated menu, agonising between ordering the ‘beef guts’, ‘ruffian potatoe cakes’ or the ‘scrumbled eggs’. I decided to play it safe and have the tomato soup. My meal was the only unremarkable thing about the place. I returned to Krakow and the 21st century later that day. As Nowy Huta faded back into the mists of history, I couldn’t help but wonder at the fact that this monument to Stalinism still stood unchanged in the last place one would expect.