Following lunch on Sunday 25th September, which marked the official end of the 2016 Eastern Archdeaconry Synod, quite a number of the Synod members stayed on for an afternoon walking tour through the centre of Warsaw. It was good to have the opportunity to see something of the Polish capital before returning to Prague the following day.
The first building that caught my eye after the taxi dropped me off in the city centre, was the tower of the Palace of Culture and Science. This building is a classical example of Stalinist-Baroque architecture and bears a striking resemblance to Hotel International here in Prague, located just a few hundred metres from the Chaplaincy Flat. Both are based on the design of Moscow State University.
The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, built between 1952-55, was a ‘gift to the citizens of the city from the nations of the USSR’ 😉 During the communist era, it was seen as a symbol of Soviet domination and, as my Polish guidebook says, ‘still provokes extreme reactions, from admiration to demands for its demolition’.
Other examples of post-WW2 architecture are not so ostentatious such as this building which houses the Polish Ministry of Finance.
Our walk took us the length of Nowy Swiat, one of the historic thoroughfares of Warsaw, which later becomes Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Both streets are lined by a series of attractive buildings, but knowing how much is original, as against that which has been rebuilt since the destruction of World War Two, is difficult to tell.
Here, a balcony is being supported by four male figures, an architectural feature which can also be regularly observed in Prague, except that in Prague, the figures are more commonly female 🙂
The Royal Route ends in plac Zamkowy/Castle Square, which is actually more triangular than square 🙂 The original castle was built between 1598 – 1619. Sadly, this was utterly destroyed by the Nazis during World War Two and the current impressive building is a complete reconstruction undertaken between 1971 – 1988.
From the square, there is the view below, across the Vistula River, to a very recent addition to the Warsaw skyline – the National Football Stadium, completed in early 2012 in advance of Poland and Ukraine, hosting the European Football Championship.
Between Thursday 22nd – Monday 26th September, I attended my ninth and final meeting of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod which this year, was hosted by the Warsaw Chaplaincy. My first Eastern Archdeaconry Synod was in mid September 2008, held in Corfu, in the week before Sybille and I moved to Prague and before I commenced writing this blog. Subsequent Synod meetings were in Izmir in 2009, Vienna in 2010, Bucharest in 2011, Attica, Athens in 2012, Woking 🙂 in 2013, Prague in 2014 and Zagreb in 2015.
Our Synod meeting took place in Dobre Miejsce, a Roman Catholic Conference Centre located in delightful woodland on the north-western outskirts of Warsaw. It proved to be an excellent venue with comfortable single rooms, a well equipped conference meeting room and a large chapel for worship. The only downsides were the food, which was quite repetitive and very traditionally Polish, and a wifi network which frequently disconnected 🙁
In order to get to Warsaw, I chose to drive, accompanied by Churchwarden Gordon Truefitt, one of our two lay delegates to the Synod. Jack Noonan, the other lay delegate, was also going to travel with us but eventually chose to fly, (at his own expense), as he needed to leave Prague later on Thursday 22nd and return on Sunday evening, rather than on Monday 26th. It is an indication of the vast size of our Eastern Archdeaconry in that the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy is the nearest one to Warsaw, yet my journey was one of almost 700 kilometres.
During the Synod, we enjoyed three Bible studies led by Rev’d Neil Richardson, a Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar. He explored the ministry and writings of St. Paul and how they can be applied in the life of our Chaplaincies.
A good part of our time on Friday, was taken up addressing the issue of ‘Safeguarding’ and how we are to implement the instructions with regard to this subject, coming down to us from the Church of England centrally and the House of Bishops. We had two long sessions, led by the Diocesan Safeguarding Manager, Ian Carter, a former police officer. The training clergy and volunteer leaders are going to have to undertake, seems incredibly onerous. It is the quickest way to put off people volunteering to help in our Chaplaincies!
However, the need to do this was brought home to me in part of the address to Synod the following day, by our Diocesan Bishop, Rt Rev’d Dr Robert Innes. Here are two paragraphs from that address, which clearly highlight the problem.
‘In recent decades it has become apparent that the Church in Europe has not cared as it should have done for children and vulnerable people. As a direct result, in some countries, trust in the church has plummeted. In Belgium, (where Bishop Robert is based), a recent survey by our leading consumer magazine, showed that the RC church is one of the least trusted institutions in our country – trusted far less than the army, the social services, even politicians. I found that deeply shocking.
So our emphasis on safeguarding is about building a high trust culture. It means establishing systems and procedures that, as far as we can, give people confidence that those of our people who are in positions of trust are genuinely trustworthy.’
Late on Saturday afternoon, we had a session on growing new congregations. We heard about some exciting developments in Poland with new Polish-speaking and English-speaking congregations being established in Kraków and with plans for a new congregation in Gdansk. I was asked to speak about how the Brno congregation came into being, here in the Czech Republic.
As always, the time spent informally with colleagues over meals and evening drinks at the bar, were some of the most valuable parts of our Synod in Warsaw. Working as we all do in isolated situations, it is difficult to put into words the importance of this time spent together, once a year.
The Synod ended with a Sunday Eucharist at which Bishop Robert was the celebrant and preacher. For this service, we were joined by the Warsaw Chaplaincy congregation. Immediately afterwards, the Synod members posed for the photograph at the beginning of this post, though a couple of Chaplains are missing from the picture.
I should end this post by expressing my thanks to Rev’d David Brown, the Chaplain in Warsaw, and to his Churchwarden Patrick Acheson, who together did a marvellous job, organising the Synod. Having hosted the Synod in Prague in 2014, I know the amount of work and stress that is involved! Thanks are also due to Archdeacon Colin Williams, for whom it was his first experience of being in overall charge of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod, having officially come into post at last year’s Synod meeting in Zagreb.
The town of Görlitz is located in the far south-eastern corner of Germany and is about two-and-a-half hours drive directly north from Prague. Back on Tuesday 18th August 2015, Sybille and I drove to Görlitz, in order to spend the following week walking the first part of Der Ökumenische Pilgerweg. This is the first of three long-promised posts about that week mentioned in my summary post entitled ‘All those things in the second half of 2015 that got missed‘.
Having securely parked the ‘Carly’ in the gated backyard of the Peregrinus Herberge, we spent the rest of Tuesday 18th August, exploring Görlitz, before setting out walking along our pilgrimage route the following morning. On Monday 24th August, we returned to Görlitz by train, from Kamenz, which we had reached on foot the previous evening, and decided to further explore Görlitz, before driving back to Prague the next day. On Tuesday 18th it was grey and cloudy, whilst on Monday 24th it was fine and sunny with blue skies. Therefore it is fairly easy to tell on which day the photographs illustrating this post were taken 🙂
Görlitz fortunately suffered relatively little physical damage during the Second World War. Post 1945, whilst part of the communist state of East Germany, it was rather grey and colourless. Since German reunification, many buildings have been redecorated and restored. It is now a very attractive place to visit and is beginning to realise its tourist potential.
The most prominent landmark in Görlitz, is the Protestant Church dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, with its intricate twin spires. It stands overlooking the Neiße river which now forms the border between Germany and Poland. Under the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, following the end of the Second World War, the border of Poland was moved westwards to the Oder-Neiße line. As a result, what used to be the eastern half of German Görlitz, is now the Polish town of Zgorzelec.
We discovered a couple of interesting businesses in Görlitz. This shop sells everything imaginable in relation to Christmas but is open all year round.
On sunny Monday 24th August, Sybille and I enjoyed some liquid refreshment on a terrace overlooking the bridge and the Neiße river. The young ladies serving us spoke German and we ordered auf Deutsch. But afterwards Sybille told me that they were Polish as she could tell by their accent 🙂
Suitably refreshed, we walked over the bridge into Poland. Clearly there is less tax on cigarettes in Poland than in Germany, hence the advertisement in German for cigarettes, on the side of a Polish shop 😉
We then walked south through part of Zgorzelec, parallel to the Neiße, before crossing another bridge to return to Germany, Freistaat Sachsen and Görlitz. With both Poland and Germany being EU members and part of the Schengen agreement, there were no border controls at all.
‘Did you enjoy your holiday in Poland?’, is a question we’ve been asked several times since our return to Prague just over six weeks ago, on Wednesday 21st October. My reply is always a very positive ‘Yes’, with the notable exception of the problem we had with the ‘Carly’ when the immobilizer malfunctioned. I hope that some of our enjoyment comes through in my previous eleven blog posts 🙂
A number of people questioned in advance of our visit, whether we were wise to travel around Poland in mid-October, thinking we would experience bad weather. However, in the whole of the fifteen days we were away, we were only affected by rain twice – in the late afternoon and evening when we drove from Frombork to Malbork, and the bulk of the day when we sought to explore Wroclaw on foot.
During the first few days of our trip, when we enjoyed blue skies and bright sunshine during the day, it was inevitably quite cold overnight, with a touch of frost on occasions. But it was never severe and temperatures soon rose, once the sun came up.
There were two major pluses arising from visiting Poland in October. One was the wonderful array of autumn colours we saw as we travelled, which became more pronounced each successive day. The other was the cost of our hire boat on the Masurian Lakes, which was half what it would have been, had we hired it in July or August. But also, because we hired in the late-season, we then had the lakes virtually to ourselves.
The Masurian Lakes more than lived up to my expectations. What really impressed me was the excellent balance that the authorities seem to have achieved, between protecting the wonderful unspoilt environment with its variety of wild animals and birds, and allowing visitors to enjoy and explore the area. I would love to visit again in summer, but it would inevitably be far busier with many more visitors.
Although we travelled from the south of Poland, to the far north, and back again, we were still limited in the number of places that we had time to stop in and explore. And even in the places where we did stop, I often felt that we only scratched the surface of what there was to see and discover.
Speaking of the places in which we did spend some time, my own preference was for Wroclaw rather than Kraców, despite the rain that impinged on our enjoyment of the former. As Wroclaw is no more than five hours drive from Prague, it is certainly somewhere to which I would like to return, hopefully in better weather.
The inevitable question that has been asked is why didn’t we visit the capital, Warsaw. There is a very simple answer – I have to go there next year in late September, as the Warsaw Anglican congregation are kindly hosting the 2016 Eastern Archdeaconry Synod. I hope to encourage Sybille to come with me and we might then add on a few more days of annual leave, and discover a little more of Poland.
‘Did anything come as a surprise?’, is something I’ve also been asked. Probably the biggest surprise was discovering how widely English is spoken, with the exception of when we most needed it to be, when the ‘Carly’ broke down 🙁 Also, when we offered either English or German, English was nearly always preferred, with the notable exception of the marina at Mikolajki.
The only other surprise, though as a geographer by first degree I should have known, was discovering in reality, how big Poland actually is. Except when travelling on motorways, of which there are currently relatively few, it did take a lot longer than I originally anticipated, to get from A to B.
Of all the eleven blog posts that I’ve written about Poland, the one that has attracted the greatest number of comments has been the first one, regarding contrasts between the Czech Republic and Poland. I’m most grateful to everyone who did comment and it has been very reassuring to receive several affirmations within those comments, concurring with what I wrote.
Firstly, my thanks to Cynthia, an American expat living and working in the Czech Republic and who writes an excellent blog herself 🙂 , saying that she had exactly the same response from Czech people as we had, questioning why on earth she would want to spend time visiting Poland.
Secondly, I appreciated the various explanations, by both expats and native Czechs, as to why Czech people rarely visit Poland. That Czechs prefer the warm Adriatic sea to the cool Baltic sea. That they think it will be the same as the Czech Republic, therefore why would they want to see more of the same? That they have experienced poor Polish food imported into the Czech Republic and presume therefore that all Polish food is poor. That agnostic Czechs feel threatened by the power and influence of the Polish Roman Catholic Church!
My original observations were written and posted after only being in Poland for five days. But what we observed in the following days, only further confirmed what I originally wrote. I mentioned the high level of adherence and practice by Polish Roman Catholics, in contrast to to the Czech Republic. Both Sybille and I were amazed at the number of masses being celebrated at almost any urban Roman Catholic Church. The photograph on the left was one Sybille spotted in Wroclaw.
I also wrote that virtually the only area where I had observed any similarities between Poles and Czechs, was in their fashion sense. As in the Czech Republic, throughout our travels, we continued to see many men having long hair and tying it back in a pony tail. And it certainly seemed almost de rigueur, in virtually every bar-restaurant we patronised, for young female waitresses to wear short stretchy black miniskirts or mini-dresses 🙂
I finished that post by saying that since passing through the border area just north of Ostrava, we hadn’t seen a single Czech registered car! That continued to be true until three days before the end of our trip, when we were passed by a Czech registered car, just north of Wroclaw. But we didn’t see another until a few kilometres before the Polish-Czech border near the ski resort of Harrachov, on our drive back to Prague.
One major attraction that I omitted from my post about Wroclaw, were the dwarfs that can be found throughout the city. Apparently, there are now over three hundred of them! Our favourite of the ones we spotted, was the dwarf using the ATM, at the beginning of this post. Below is another.
We spent the final two nights of our October Polish adventure, staying in the city of Wroclaw, and used the intervening day to discover some of the delights it has to offer. Until 1945, Wroclaw was part of Germany and known as Breslau. In the last few months of the Second World War, it suffered serious destruction, with the Nazi forces seeking to defend the city, only surrendering to the Soviet Red Army on 6th May 1945, just two days before the official end of the war.
As Sybille had organised advance booking of our accommodation for the two previous nights, she declared it was my turn to both find and pay, for somewhere for us to stay in Wroclaw. So, whilst enjoying a mid-morning coffee, sitting in the central market square of Poznan, I got online and reserved us a room for two nights at the B&B Hotel Wroclaw Centrum. It was little more expensive and upmarket compared to where we had stayed in Malbork and Poznan, but I decided we deserved it for the last nights of our holiday. The hotel was located within easy walking distance of the historic city centre, had secure off-street parking for the ‘Carly’, and all the reviews said that its wifi was excellent 🙂 The reviews were correct!
Determined to avoid a repeat of the problems we’d had, trying to drive to our hostel in Poznan the previous afternoon, I’d found the street on which the B&B Hotel is located, using the city centre plan in our Polish guidebook, and worked out a route of how to get there. All went perfectly to plan, except that we found ourselves driving along on the opposite side of the street to the hotel, with a set of tramlines in-between, which it was impossible to drive across 🙁 Fortunately, we kept our sense of direction and managed to eventually find a legitimate way to drive back up the other side of the street and reach the hotel and its car park.
After checking into the hotel and getting our belongings from the car to our room, we set out to walk into the historic city centre and main market square, just as it was getting dark. The floodlit Gothic Town Hall looked magnificent, as you can see in the photograph at the top of this post. The square has numerous bars and restaurants. We eventually chose to eat at a Greek restaurant and shared an amazing seafood platter.
The weather next morning was cloudy and grey. By mid-morning, it started to rain and got progressively heavier as the day went on. This was great shame as there was much to see. The rain and lack of light, also made taking photographs more difficult. Those that follow, were taken before the rain really set in.
Near the Church of St Elizabeth, (which was unfortunately closed due to major restoration work taking place), we found this memorial to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran Pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident, who was born in Wroclaw in 1906.
Whilst walking to the Cathedral, we spotted a statue of St. James. Within the Cathedral was a sign indicating it as being a point on the Via Regia, leading to Zgorzelic/Görlitz and the der Ökumenische Pilgerwegwhich Sybille had walked earlier in 2015.
