In Transit

It was time for my friend to leave Poland. After buying some mint-apple juice from a nearby convenience store she mentioned that she had to use the facilities. My friend returned three minutes before her train left. I was exasperated, but didn’t want to ruin our goodbyes by ranting. It’d been amazing to tour the major sites of Poland with a friend of many years. Yet, I was ready for a brake. For the past week, I’d been Travel agent, Translator and Tour guide in-one. This is travel. But, not the way I’d grown up understanding it.    

About a month ago I embarked on the most recent family trip.  I was looking forward to the three week experience. After January in Wroclaw it would be heaven. The trip was planed mostly by my parents. The money would be their problem. The biggest thing I had to worry about was what to order for lunch!

I’ve traveled on my own before too. The experience is enlightening. You really get a feel for how people treat foreigners. Alone with your own thoughts, you develop an understanding of a peoples’ history -- Their way of thinking and living.

But, it’s anything but relaxing. You’re free to do as you please. Yet, there’s no one to share the experience with. The burden is all yours. I remember days in Albania when I thought I’d be kidnapped. Making a Belgrade train reservation is only possible with helpful locals. Avoiding drunks in Lwow is practically impossible.

Avoiding the drunks in Wroclaw was impossible with my Asian-American friend. It was as if we had a sign on our backs that said ‘give us crap’ at every street corner and tramwaj stop.  We had fun laughing at in-jokes and trying to ascend centuries old battlements. Still, when she lost her cell phone I was the one who had to deal with the national railways’ unhelpful blue-collar workers.

My mother voiced a similar complaint in Tunisia. There, she was the itinerary planner and translator for the entire family. “When will I be on vacation?” she vented one day. I felt relived of all concerns. My father just seemed proud that he was responsible for getting us on the plane to the country in the first place.  

When we arrived in Sicily, my mother began to relax. My father shouldered the driving. I handled the navigation. Mom provided the itinerary.

I felt life’s weight returning in Malta. After visiting Rhodes, I’d expected the country to be the knights’ crowning achievement. Even during Carnival, it turned out to be a Disneyland for old British people. For most of the trip, no expectations had been placed on me. Now, I realized that the trip would end. Reality is inescapable.

We got lost on our way back from Amalfi. My father, known for being needlessly cautious about travel plans, complained strenuously. It was a mere inconvenience for me and my mother.   

 Back in Poland, I’d misread the train schedules. The express my friend and I were planning to take wasn’t running. Only one other train departed to Wroclaw that day.  After a quick dinner, I informed her that we needed to head to the platform: now.  It was strange how much I sounded like my father as I sternly told her why she could not use the lieu at this critical juncture.     

Travel comes in many forms. With family, you defend against onslaught of reality. With friends, you hide from it as best you can. With solo travel, you immerse yourself with no life lines. Each holds a new type of knowledge; its own type of stress.

  As Ayn Rand opined in the Fountainhead: travel “is not for going places, but for getting away from them.” It’s an attempted escape from reality. A futile flight from that which is. No matter where one goes.    

An Instructive Journey

 One of my classes this semester is about Russian politics. This includes the brake-up of the USSR.  The professor is Moldovan. Last week she questioned the wisdom of Gorbachev’s policies, which led to the sudden brake up of the Soviet Union.  She opined that his attempt to reform the political and economic systems of the country toward democratic capitalism, while retaining the basics of communism, was untenable. It caused economic and social hardship.  

After the collapse of the country, the right to vote was a small condolence to its people. With the exception of the Baltic States, they’d never fought for democratic freedom. They had no idea of its significance. “The Baltic States are the only ones that more or less function properly” my professor added.

Last weekend I returned to the former USSR.  I went to Lwow in western Ukraine to speak at a Rotary seminar. Before World War II it used to be a Polish city. But, the cultural differences were like a slap in the face.

 I tried to buy an opera ticket for a performance the following day. I asked if I could have a ticket to ‘Il Travatore’ and was simply told “no”. I inquired as to whether this was because it was sold out.  “Today there are no tickets”.  I finally specified the next day and got a ticket.

At the Rotary Seminar, I met a man of Ukrainian decent.  Raised in the U.S., he returned to his homeland. He reminded me that Poland was never in the Soviet Union.  Here people lived under the auspices of the KGB. You learned not to volunteer any information that wasn’t absolutely necessary.     

He also commented on the level of service in Ukrainian hotels, pointing to employees ironing tablecloths in the middle of the hotel’s restaurant. “And they have the nerve to call this a four star hotel?” he asked jokingly.

I came to the conference with hope that I would get invited to present in Poland. I got about five invitations. They were all from Ukrainians. The Poles seemed uninterested.  Ukraine and the rest of the former USSR must travel a difficult path to transition. Ukraine’s GDP has fallen by over 50% since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russian life expectancy is plummeting.  Yet, the enthusiasm is clearly there.

I left the seminar and headed for the opera house.  Along the way I saw older women in babuszki selling produce along the side of the road. Some claim that this part of the world has no entrepreneurial spirit. They are wrong.

The opera had some technical difficulties.  The chorus didn’t sing in unison, the orchestra overpowered the singers and some leads couldn’t control their vibrato. Despite its Hapsburg era opera house, Lwow is a relatively provincial Ukrainian city. Anyone with more talent could be hired away to Kiev or the E.U.

Russian public opinion polls show that many think the best times during the 20^th century were during the Brezhnev era. Employment and housing were guaranteed, and the price of goods was less than the cost of production. The problem was that it wasn’t sustainable.

Maybe the opera in Lwow might have been better during communist times. But that ticket would have been bought at the expense of the future.  

Gorbachev may have gone too far too fast, but the transition had to happen.  The USSR eventually had to face reality.

I look at the debt amassed by the U.S. and some European countries. The prevailing ‘tax and spend’ mentality. They must learn from history. They must make tough decisions.