Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
citizens to buy from the dollar shops, especially if foreign-based Poles were send-
ing money to their families back home.
Dollars were also hoarded in hopes of an eventual escape to the West, or a holi-
day if a permit was granted. Poland at the time was the most liberal of all the
Soviet states, a small window on the West. The brief view I had of the black market
was just the tip of a much larger and more elaborate method of laundering money.
Moneychangers would approach Westerners in rail stations and market squares in
nearly every Polish city. The black market rate in 1976 was around a hundred zloty
to the dollar, ten times the official rate. Sterling was less sought after but would
still bring two hundred zloty or more to the pound, when a pound was worth a
little below three dollars.
The Burgesses and I made money on this trip by exchanging hard currency for
zloty, buying digital watches and top quality vodka and then flogging them when
we got home. Yet there were moments where we had to be wary and several where
I intervened to stop the twins from getting into trouble. Sat in a café in Warsaw on
a snowy day, I noticed the telltale signs as they began eyeing the waitresses and the
distance to the door. They were contemplating doing a runner.
'Hey guys,' I said, attempting gently to introduce some reason. 'I just worked out
what this three-course meal cost us in real terms - about 20 pence each!' They
looked at me. They were bemused, but clearly still thinking the challenge was
there. 'And the other thing I've worked out is that there are not too many British
twins with long blonde hair wearing identical bright red down jackets in Warsaw
at the moment.'
They guffawed. Point taken. We paid up and left, still wondering how best to
spend our pockets full of zloty. The choice seemed to be limited to digital watches,
cheap trainers and track suits, beautifully produced art topics in Polish, sticky
sweet chocolates and crystal glasses.
Official Polish expeditions could set off for South Asia with truckloads of goods
that could not be found on the shelves of the stores in Warsaw. The Poles had a
well organised import and export business, run through Polish consulates. Big ex-
peditions had with them the equivalent of limitless diplomatic bags, the barrels
emptied during expeditions, which were filled with goods for senior Communist
Party members and others in the Polish elite circles.
When we got back to Warsaw, at the end of one trip, I happened to be at the flat
of a Polish climber when some barrels that had just arrived back were being emp-
tied on the living room floor. The contents included carpets, uncut industrial dia-
monds and other gems, silk hangings, temple relics and from one barrel emerged a
