Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Eva opened the door and looked at me in horror. She shared a two-room apart-
ment with her parents and brother. The pipes for the plumbing were exposed.
There was a dank and musty smell and holes in the floors and the walls offered
glimpses of equally squalid apartments. She almost shouted at me: 'You see how
we live? We have no space, no chance to move and express ourselves except when
we are together with friends. I just wanted you to write to me, to give me some
hope from the world outside.' I had a long, dark and scary walk back to Krakow
avoiding the police. Having carefully memorised the location of our hostel, I found
the rope still there and pulled myself back up to our room just before dawn. Ade
and Al thought my story hilarious.
Even though the overall social structure was depressing, behind that depression
was an incredible resolve that things would get better, that Poland would one day
be a free and independent country again. It didn't seem likely at the time, but it
has, of course, come to pass. 'Poland is a nation even when it is not a nation,'
Zawada explained to me. 'We have been overrun by the Huns and Swedes, parti-
tioned several times by the Germans and the Russians. The name of Poland has
vanished from the map for many decades at a time, but we are still a great nation.
In times past, we have saved Europe from the Turks and given Western culture
great poets, scientists and musicians. We are like the Tibetans - eventually our na-
tion and culture will have its own land and government again.'
[4]
For Polish climbers, having an opportunity to climb in the Himalaya offered tem-
porary relief from the drabness of communism and a chance to have a taste of free-
dom and to express their individualism. Although the climbing scene in Poland
was somewhat above politics, its leading lights had to play a dangerous game of
balancing their status as national heroes against open confrontation with their
government and the communist party machine. There were spies and informants
everywhere so it was not easy. But Poland was different from Russia. The govern-
ment and the party were not exactly the same thing. Some people in government
appeared to be Polish nationalists above all else and paid only lip service to com-
munist ideals.
The Polish attitude to climbing was in sharp contrast to the Soviet Russian ap-
proach. In Poland, the climbing tradition was much closer to that of Western
Europe. It had been developed as a leisure activity among the middle and upper
classes. Soviet communist propaganda depicted mountain climbing as a symbolic
struggle of heroic men and women of the proletariat pitted against the mountains.
They succeeded in overcoming all obstacles because of the strength of the state.
Could a mountain really be seen as a paradigm for the workers' struggle against
capitalism? It seemed so reading Soviet mountain literature. The Soviets, of
