a friend of mine and his wife are vacationing in Poland right now. His wife, somehow, got locked in the restroom of a coffee shop in Poznan yesterday long enough to gather the locals. I didn't know where to put that and it certainly didn't deserve it's own thread.
That sounds extremely embarrassing at a minimum, certainly not life threatening, but still relevant since in all honesty we don't really have a thread about Poland, outside of Poland Domestic Politics in the Modern era, with a relatively recent historical perspective....
One of my favorite Grad School Poly-Sci classes some 15-20 Years back was something to the equivalent of "Views of the US as perceived from abroad", taught by a former Senior level USSR official (No names nor personally identifiable information to protect the innocents against the Modern Day "Troll Farm Factories" of St Pete)...
I can share some personal stories regarding Poznan and elsewhere in Poland in the early 1990s, where I went to places that few predominately upper-middle-class American college students would go at that time.
Warsaw vs Poznan soccer match that ended up in a virtual riot, with massive police presence in full gear after bottle rockets getting fired into the Soccer Pitch and Hooligans ran amok (Have a few photos in my memorabilia).
Getting shaken down by crooked streetcar transit cops in Poznan to pay an exorbitant amount of Polish $$$ during a period of hyper-inflation, in exchange for a simple mistake of not punching the correct part of my transit ticket.
A live chamber music concert at a McDonald restaurant in Poland, where everyone is dressed in ties and formal attire, to spend way to much money for American style fast food.
Walking around the streets of the largest Cities wearing Docs, black jeans, black hoodie, with short hair to fit into the City Blend without attracting attention in communities suffering the forced austerity measures imposed upon Poland as part of "Neo-Liberal" shock therapy adjustment, where poverty and social unrest was growing from all quarters.
My personal experiences in that brief period of history, exposed me to so much more Wisdom and Perspectives than I would have garnered in Grad Level University course.
I would love to have an opportunity to return to Poland in the near future, and perhaps with Kalwejt's permission we could expand the thread slightly to include personal anecdotes from Americans as part of a "Poland as Viewed from Abroad", where Kalwejt might be able to incorporate elements of "America as Viewed from Abroad", with a larger Polish contingent....
