Saturday afternoon: 30 hours of sussing out the locals... (Approx 16 hours till conference kick off). As the conference hotel starts filling up with the busy humm of doctors, drug workers, drug user activists, researchers, psychiatrists etc I made for a quick and quiet exit - there'd be plenty of time for talk later, but right now we had a Cannabis Rally to attend to...Taxi! Warsaw Centrum!
But just before I dispense todays bloggspot, let me try and set the scene a little with some 'Observations on Poland', as captured through hazy London eyes...
Warsaw at nite...
We walked around for many hours last nite, and personally, I sensed a city that was young -though perhaps a little unsure - despite its vast age. It clearly valued very highly its education system (Polish university education is well known for its quality and it is certainly appreciated in this city). It was tied extremely tightly to its Polish cultural roots - music and Polish heritage seem completely intwined, inseperable - Frederick Chopin is no ghost here, he is clearly 'The Man Most Admired'. After the city's almost total flattening at the hands of the Germans in the war, Warsaw has attempted to rebuild itself, brick by painstaking brick, in the exact copy of its citys predesessor. It is succeeding admirably. In places such as 'The Old Town' a walk through the square and you can almost hear the comings and goings of centuries of nobility, as Chopin himself plays out through the shuttered windows overlooking this amazingly rebuilt section of Warsaw.
After speaking with some students, it was clear they also valued their education above most things (alongside music) and it was refreshing to see students being able to spread out and really OWN their city and their space. A student festival was in motion (celebrations before the exams come round) and Warsaws young people just overtook a whole section of the city, hotly discussing, drinking and dancing the night away. Their was a little smell of dope in the air, not much but more on that to come (see the Cannabis Rally next). They talked of drug use when questioned as something very hidden, there certainly was no streets or areas where drug users scored or hung out. It was kept quiet, drug users were stereotyped as in most places, and most of the population were totally ignorant to the term harm reduction. A chat with the cannabis rallz people the following day would tell us for every 20 users getting help with their addiction, 1000 were waiting right behind them. However, faces regularly looked blank when asked about the drug problem in Polish prisons, or how many people were in prison for drugs. With the government owning the vast majority of Polish TV, facts would get hard to come by here.
What was strange though, it seemed it was not the years of being besieged or conquored that had left a scar on Warsaw so much as the deep, deep wound (I would call it a trauma to the psyche of the nation) instilled in the city by the final, entire flattening of the city by Germany in the 2nd world war. It was actually palpable. A city so traumatised by the smashing up of everything it held dear and the detailed, meticulous care and attention that continues to go into rebuilding it piece by piece. A nationa desperation to restore its history but also this tragic understanding that when history such as this is lost - can it ever really be replaced? It is gone and gone forever...
With a plan to have Warsaw erased from the map of Europe altogether, 84% of its buildings were destroyed, and 650,000 people were killed in Warsaw alone and the Polish people were physically, and perhaps for a time spiritually, crushed. Warsaw could appear to be sufferring from post traumatic stress, perhaps helped by a strong belief in itself and its culture yet held back by a fear of the unknown, of a rebellion, of the tackling of modern issues in a 21st century way. The conservative catholism that currently has a neat stranglehold on the country just serves to maintain the trend of a city held so tightly by the constricts of its government, it will never collapse in a cloud again.
Next, an update on Polish sex and their awareness (or not) of HIV. We visit a gay bar and talk smoking and growing dope with the Free Hemp rally organisers....
