Yes--- spent a month out there back in '94, not too long after the transition...
I was in Poznan, Warsaw, Krakow, & Zakopane, as well as visiting the infamous Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz/Birkenau.
Photo below: Zakopane at Night
Poland at that time was just recovering from the Neo-Liberal economic shock therapy that had been mandated on the Country by the International economic community.
Unemployment was at unprecedented levels as a direct result, as well as the collapse of many formerly state run enterprises that were deemed economically uncompetitive because of the costs involved in modernization and lack of willingness for foreign investors (Germany in particular to invest in those sectors most suffering).
Although hyperinflation had diminished a bit, the Zloty was still a crazy currency to navigate.
Despite the economic struggles at that time, my perspective of the Polish mindset was still generally optimistic about the future, and there was widespread curiosity and interest in the United States and college students studying English and Economics, at least with the families that I was staying with.
There was also a dramatic increase in expression of more extremist policies at that time, with many working-class districts of the larger cities awash with political graffiti from Anarchist, Neo-Fascist, and Pro-Monarchist slogans and symbols.....
Corruption in the public sector was also dramatically increasing.... I was riding a street-car in Poznan and had punched in my ten minute incremental fare tickets, and was pulled off the street-car downtown by three undercover transit cops, because one of my tickets was apparently punched into the top of my strip of ten tickets, since I had limited reading skills in Polish. I ended up having to pay a 125,000 Zloty bribe "without papers", with the alternative being booked in the downtown jail!
There were also a few ugly incidents of anti-semitism, like when I was in Krakow and we went towards an historic Synagogue, and an intoxicated homeless man on the street went into a litany of curses about how the "Jews" were the reason why Poland or his circumstances were so bad (Our Polish translator was too embarrassed to tell us exactly what he had said).
My college group was also strongly advised not to drink the tapwater, but instead stick to beer or bottled water, as a result of contaminants caused by decades of neglect on environmental pollution and water supplies.
There were other bizarre or surreal moments, like walking by the McDonalds in Poznan, and seeing a massive line of people wearing formal evening dining attire, combined with a small chamber music quartet performing!
The soccer (Football) matches were interesting- Poznan vs Warsaw..... Full lines of riot police with helmets down, riot shields up, essentially blocking in the respective soccer Hooligans from both teams to minimize and avoid personal injury to hardcore supporters of the other team.... I still have 3-4 photos of that match that show bottle rockets getting fired directly into the stadium!
Mass transportation was great, with streetcars being extremely fast and efficient to get around in, especially in a city like Warsaw which is fairly flat and on a typical Grid based Eastern European style system.
Food--- really good, especially since I was a Vegetarian at that time I loved to hit the workers cafes, likely a legacy from the previous era (?), where you basically had a buffet style line-up with large mounds of food, for an extremely affordable price, as someone on a very limited budget.
It was mushroom season in the Fall, and on our coach bus from Poznan to Krakow running down a single-lane highway each direction, I would see a ton of cars parked along the roads around the forested areas, people doing the ritual of picking their favorite varieties to take home and make some dank Mushroom based Soup.
Pulled over to a Roadside diner/ local store, there are Wild Boar heads on the wall, as well as other local wildlife, with extremely hospitable owners, although my 2nd Generation Russian-American friend did much of the translating, because of the linguistic overlaps with both Slavic languages.
Zakopane is still one of my favorite memories of Poland....
A beautiful small town of 25,000 in the far SE corner of the country....
I still have and wear the best Winter sweater I ever bought, from an older woman who was knitting her Zakopane sweaters, from her small booth on one of the two main street vendor drags in town.
This is also a region, where the Wolf population, almost exterminated at that time still existed in small packs that was able to expand from the Tartar Mountain range, in just a few short decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/02/wolf-maligned-predator-poland-carpathianshttp://www.polishwolf.org.pl/wolfI would strongly recommend anyone on the Forum that has never been to Poland, head out there to visit, and spend some time....
Will definitely plan a trip there myself, once my economic situation stabilizes, and it will be fascinating to see all of the similarities and differences between the country that I briefly experienced 20 years ago with the real Modern Poland, 27+ years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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