Suspicions and Aspirations

Suspicions and Aspirations:

When I tell people here that I’m doing an internship at WWF Poland – an ‘international environmental organisation’ (I explain), I generally get an interesting and enjoyable response. Predominantly, it is met with suspicion: a sceptical look, a hesitant semi-disbelief, an incomprehensive smile and, once, I even scored a crack about being a communist. When they find out that it is an unpaid internship, scepticism unfailingly turns to complete loss and dismay. It’s my favourite, though not very socially adept, party trick at the moment, to watch people anxiously trying to thumb their way through their mental indexes in order to file me somewhere into their idea of an orderly social ranking – failed student? (enviro)Mentalist? Socialist?! I don’t seem to quite ‘fit’ into any of the drawers of the Polish social filing cabinet that I’m told is very important to the way people interact here. My co-workers at WWF mostly concur with this reaction – their friends, they say, either lack any sense of understanding for what they do or are indifferent – it’s a job that pays the bills. Perhaps this is all because the so-called ‘third sector’, NGOs, volunteering, all these elements of a more ‘advanced’ democracy are still so new and in the developmental stages, whilst any ideas with a remotely ‘social’-ist, community-oriented approach, are most definitely something to be afraid of and run away from very fast in the opposite direction. Is it patronising of me to say that from a historical perspective I can understand this?

Young Poles are ambitious, bold, motivated, confident, hard-working – that’s why so many of them can be found over on our shores trying to make it for themselves. Opportunities are pretty slim here, though that is changing. Is it any wonder, then, that these same young Poles set their sights on living the Corporate Dream? Talking to well-educated young Poles, their aspirations are overwhelmingly set on working for multinationals: Mackenzie, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, these are the Big Three. Corporations offer a stable, fast-paced, well-paid, high-flying, international working environment – opportunities in this booming market for foreign investment are flourishing. Working 14-hour days is worth it. Manifestations of super-success are of course the flashy car, the expensive designer clothes – the usual; but also the exclusive gym membership, the impressive anthology of business cards in your bulging wallet, the company car/laptop/watch/ball. Working in the non-governmental sector, the only things you are guaranteed of are a lesser salary and, I can say from my own experience, lesser prestige. It is not a very well-respected occupation. To put it bluntly, Poles aspire to the consumer lifestyle. Growing up on tales of empty shops, meat coupons, ever-lasting bread queues, and the material Nothingness of the past, why would young Poles not dream the dream we sold, and are selling, to them? (Ooops, am I being patronising again…?)

At the moment there are few or no alternatives being offered. Perhaps this culture will change as new ideas and experiences come back with Poles returning home and as the country responds to new trends and pressures? Now, though, I’m not surprised, neither am I especially critical, of the fact, that young Poles wanting Success, for themselves and for their country, are looking to the skyscrapers that surround them. The physical dominance of foreign big brand names on the Warsaw skyline (which I talked about in my last post….) makes imagining alternative models of success, and of the future, a tough task for the anomalous.


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After I wrote this, I was given an article in my Polish language class directly relevant to my ramblings! A recent sociological study conducted by CBOS across the entire country - the largest sociological study of its kind done in Poland - supported my observations. Discussing the results in a Polish national newspaper, Prof. Czapinski explains that Poles are the 'biggest Euro-enthusiasts' on the continent owing to the sense that joining the EU gave them the feeling that if they want something badly enough, they can get it. Self-confidence, life satisfaction, sense of independence, belief in one's own abilities and potentials all increased decisively amongst Poles after Poland entered the EU in 2004. However, what Prof. Czapinski sees as Poland's downfall, is the apparent inability and lack of desire to work together amongst Poles - a lack of a strong sense of citizenship, community identity and participation, and sense of mutual interest is, he argues, preventing the country from progressing faster, even as individuals are moving rapidly ahead. Prof. Czanpinski goes on to say that it's in the family and at schools where young Poles learn that 'it's every wo/man for himself', where working with others, seeing others as collaborators rather than competitors, is not encouraged, rather discouraged. He gives the example of motorway building - a politically-charged topic in this country - saying that, instead of realising that working together would get the job done faster, competition and conflict over who will get the contract, whose interest will be served etc, frequently ending up in court-battles lasting years, means that Poland still only has the one motorway... To sum it up, he states, that as a result, if things don't change, 'Individual Poles will get richer and develop a lot faster than Poland itself.'

We have to remember though that it's only been 20 years since Poland emerged from behind the iron curtain - is it surprising that after years of repression, pervasive fear, mistrust, individual self-protection, suspicion, and state-reliance, instilled into the people here, that remnants of this mind-set still remain? Perhaps first needs to come a certain level of individual wealth and satisfaction, then the rest will follow as people grow tired of only having one motorway....

The 'city without a centre'

The renowned Polish journalist, Seweryn Blumsztajn, recalls his first visit to Warsaw as a 5-year old in the spring of 1951: ‘We arrived with my parents at the Central Station. We piled into a horse-drawn carriage (there were no taxis in those days) and drove through a sea of ruins and barracks. My parents asked me how did I like the city? I replied that in the pictures at elementary school it had seemed more beautiful.’ 50 years later, and driving by the Palace of Culture in the centre of the city, a jumble of box-shops, car parks and other vacant concrete spaces, he is reminded once more of his first impression of Warsaw – an impression of ‘chaos and ugliness’. How can it be, he asks, that at the very heart of the capital city, there is a giant hole? A vast nothingness? ‘A centre with no centre’.

When I step out into the crude urban maze of Warsaw city centre, I can’t help but have similar feelings. Structured around a huge roundabout where buses, trams, taxis, cars, and vans wrangle their way through the honking, heaving traffic to their respective destinations, I am struck by the sense that the centre of Warsaw is a space of permanent migration – a space everyone is moving through, past, via, away from, even under – the underground pedestrian highway constantly ticking with the clock-wise movement of hurried feet on their way to somewhere. The ‘centre’ isn’t a place people seem to want to be, belying the very significance of a ‘centre’ – rather it’s a transitory throughway to other, better places. It is the heart of the city only in that it pumps life away from itself in irregular, patient spasms (like the one-line Metro serving the entire metropolis). It reminds me of the mechanism of a giant magnet but on the negative end, repelling iron filings with a force that cannot be resisted. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to leave the centre. At night, it is left stranded, empty, abandoned almost. Shut down after a hard days’ work. This city sleeps.

The other factor I can’t shake that creates this feeling of a ‘centre with no centre’ is the globalised façade of the EveryWhere. It seems ironic that in the place where stands the ‘Palace of Culture and Science’, there is a gaping lack of culture, and a gaping lack of a logistical science to the composition. There are cinemas, museums, theatres, yes, but this could be Anywhere. Looking up on the crossroads of the main arteries of Al. Jerozlimskie and Ul. Marszalkowska, all around grey Soviet-style blocks and glass-fronted monoliths compete for the sky. Giant billboards, some of the largest in Europe, and certainly the most numerous of any European capital, plaster the upholstery, often blocking out the light for the unlucky inhabitants behind. Neon lights flash their splashy texts. The corporate logo screams, gasping for air atop the skyscrapers. Sony, Olympus, Bosch, Novotel, Samsung, LG, Indesit, Konica, Era, Peugeot, Nokia, JVC – I’ve just taken you on a 360° panoramic trip around the city skyline, standing in just one spot. Glassy, multi-storeyed shopping centres occupy centre-stage, wowing consumers with extravagant contemporary architecture that distracts the eye, momentarily, from the scruffy scaffolds that surround. The city centre is ‘brandalised’; a vast vortex of consumed space, where ‘place’ – that point we know, we love, we identify with – has seemingly not been recovered here since 1945. This is a centre of buildings, concrete, adverts and logos – not of people. If this is just an inevitable part of 21st Century urban reality, nowhere is it more visible than here – a city entirely remodelled over the past 20 years. Hungry for capitol, has Poland sacrificed its capital?

In a beautifully academic moment, I sometimes think of Warsaw Centre as a symbol of Poland’s as yet unclear identity, direction, self-image, as well as its apparent love affair with the West. An unknown unclear destiny awaits both Poland and the centre of Warsaw… Does the emerging identity being forged right in the heart of the nation’s capital reflect the kind of future Poland wants? If so, what kind of future is this? What kind of identity? In a recent promotional video to try and gain the title of ‘European Capital of Culture’ for 2016, Warsaw cashes in on this idea of uncertainty, but by presenting itself as a capital that is constantly changing, adapting, growing - a capital ‘reborn by culture’. Warsaw is still being reborn, it is true. What finally happens at its centre is yet to be seen – and yet to be decided. Poland’s future manifests itself here: Cosmopolitan? Or banally modern? Artistic? Or brash? Green? Or devastatingly unsustainable? Diverse? Or monolithically consumer-oriented? Progressive? Or reactionary? Reborn by careless corporate cash? Or ‘reborn by culture’? Warsaw centre – you decide!

To venture outside of the centre is to discover the pulse and true cultural gems of the city. Warsaw has to be discovered – this is true. Speaking to many of my Polish acquaintances, it seems Warsaw is a city that takes time to uncover. A city that reveals itself slowly, discretely, shyly. You have to put in some effort! I’m learning this – slowly, but surely, a love affair is starting…