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No pictures. Can't seem to find a USB port on this old compaq at the hotel...

I started my trip in Kujawiak/Pomarska (a region of Poland, in which Torun lies), come up from Malopolska (southern Poland, actually "little Poland") where I motorcycled the hills, through Wielkopolska (Big Poland) and now into Warmia & Masuria...am in Olsztyn tonight, about 40 miles south of the Russian border up near Kaliningrad. It seems a really nice city. Will explore its museums & castles tomorrow, & meet with a student from the Torun camp, Maciej Sendrowski, who I became friends with. Macie is a fountain of knowledge about Polish military history...

My German skills, or what little they are, have come in handy on this trip...more useful than english, I'd say. I used German to communicate with the owners of the Villa Nova down by Jelenia Gora. And since that's in the Sudetenland, back & forth between Poland, Czech & German, German was real useful there at museums, stores, etc.

It came in handy in a different way today. I bought a ticket for a 10:47 train from Gniesno to here in Olsztyn. Managed to find the right platform (Peron, in Polish) and waited. I always ask someone on the platform if this is the right place to get the train to wherever I want to go. Yep, to Olsztyn, they assured me. Right on time a train pulls up with Olsztyn written on it, so I get on...the ride is fine til the conductor looks at my ticket, frowns dramatically, sits down & starts to spill rapid Polish in my direction. I expained: "Nie rozumium po polsku..." "I don't understand Polish..." He looked like I'd just handed him the worst day of this month...But an older fellow nearby asked me if I spoke German. "Yah, Ein bischen," I explained...a little...so anyway I learn via German that I'm on the wrong train. But it goes to Olsztyn? I ask...Yes, but it's the wrong train. Seems as though this train headed for Olsztyn via Gniesno (where I got on) was an hour late, and arrived at Gniesno just ahead of the train my ticket was for. The conductor insisted I get off at the next stop -- which happened to be Torun, where I spent 3 weeks at english camp -- and get on the right train.

I did. When I got on, I realized my ticket was for a dirty old bumpy train and I'd mistakenly gotten onto a smooth, clean new train...Guess my fare wasn't enough to merit staying on...

We did, however, shortly after Gniesno, pass through the little village of Trzemesnov, which is where the Piotrowski side of the family is from. Ron & I were there a couple years ago; it's hard to follow up on Piotrowski family history because it's such a common name. I managed to snap a picture of the train station in Trzemesnov, and as we went through I couldn't help but imagine what is what like for Frank (& I think at the same time, his brother John) to head off to America, leaving the parents behind, pretty sure you'll never see them again. I doubt in the 1870s that they took a train, though it's possible. What courage that took. It was a moment of reflection for me...as my eyes passed across the landscape I thought: these are the same hills & valleys Frank once saw....

The German presence in Poland is everywhere, not just in the history, but with present German tourism. There's hardly been a hotel I've stayed in that wasn't flooded with them. At breakfast this morning, all I heard around the tables was German...As a young lady at the Olsztyn castle this morning explained to me, Poles are fed up with them...

Had a really good zurek (Polish fermented rye soup with egg & kielbasa), pierogis with chanterelle mushrooms scattered over them, and after the meal a hundred mls of hot Polish mead...Well, somebody's got to do it!

One more night in Olsztyn then to Bialystok for the last five days or so before going back to Warsaw for a day of touring on Wed. next, Thursday my flight.

I'm getting a bit worn out by the travel routine, and long to just relax in my own bed, on the deck, in the backyard in Menomonie around a campfire, and get out on the tennis court. But I also don't want to leave Poland. I've really come to enjoy it -- filthy toilets, bird crap all over the sidewalks, smelly streets, third-world rural villages, grey rundown buildings, having to pay anywhere from 50 cents to almost a dollar just to pee in the train station toilets, scurrying with all the other passengers to get on the train, hefting luggage through the narrow aisles to find a seat, and there never are enough, so some are left standing; and all. As Norman Davies says in his history, Poland is the Heart of Europe...and that's because of the people, with more heart than organization or sometimes common sense.

It's an interesting question if there is such a thing as a national character. Are the english different from the Irish or Scots or Germans or Thai or Brazilians? That's a testable hypothesis, and in my opinion, resoundingly yes. (I'm too embedded in it to be able to describe the American character....)

But Poles remind me of Scots. They have an attitude about them -- the men, at least, going about their day with their middle finger to the world. Now the Scots have it worse, and are itching for a fight. With the Poles, in my opinion, it's more intellectual than somatic. It comes I think in part from their realization, through their history, that the world is not fair...and so they have this edge to them, a creative, independent streak. It is what took them to the Church during the Communist times -- screw you, Mr. Soviet, if you don't what us to go to church, then that's what we'll do. But it's also what has taken them out of the Church now that Communism has gone; the young, at least, have turned that attitude towards the Church, who they see as the authority which has replaced Communism. But that creative spark shows itself all the time here.

Last night I sat and watched some performances in Olsztyn's town square -- various acts -- including a heavy metal band. They were pretty good, actually -- as I've said before, I am amazed at the level of musicianship I encounter here, regardless of whether I like the genre. The singer sang entirely in english...but I thought: this is kinda over the top, heavy metal from America. What's it about?

It's about exploring what you were not allowed to, for 40 years of communism. It's a kind of cultural adolescence (and I think that describes Poland today.) This iss naturally going to lead to excesses, as happens in adolescence. So there's this infatuation with pop culture from the U.S. A kind of natural selection will occur, I think, but my only fear is that the multinational pop culture driven with $$ will swamp out and drive extinct the native species of culture, the old Polish folk culture...this kind of extinction of course is happening all around the world, biologically.

At the museum in the Olsztyn castle I saw (and have a picture of) lines drawn on the wall by Copernicus to calculate the equinox, and visited the room he wrote the first part of his De Revolutionibus in. He lived & worked in the Olsztyn castle for several years, as a local administrator, and like Einsten while busy with his job (Einstein as patent official), followed his true calling in his spare time...

I also found some portraits of William II and William III of Nassau-Orange, in the portrait gallery of the museum. The synchronicity is that one of them (I forget which) was the monarch for whom the Oranges parade in Ireland, and because of their color, the monarch butterfly was named...and, there is a chain of stores called Orange here in Poland...and, I read via an exhibition last evening of a Polish sprite whose name I've forgotten who during the Jarulselski martial law years (early 1980s) invented happenings around Wroclaw & elsewhere in which they wore little hats like dwarves and were called Oranges; Orange as a kind of protest to Reds....

Take care....