On the usefulness of knowing how to say yes.

The picture above is of an intersection in the city of Lodz, about 135 km west/southwest of Warsaw. It's generally unremarkable, but I keep it for the life lesson I learned there. On my way to Piotrkowska Street -- the longest pedestrian / commercial thoroughfare in Europe and home to some really good restaurants -- I was crossing here (coming towards the camera) alongside an elderly woman who looked to be in her 80s. We stopped in the center of the street because to the left of this camera we saw a white panel van and fast moving bmw sedan heading towards the crosswalk. The three college students (I suspect they were college students only because of their uniform looks of angst and ennui and their uniform black turtlenecks) who started running across the street did not, nearly causing an accident as the panel van slammed on its brakes and the beamer missed hitting the students only by inches.

The woman next to me was truly peeved, at least in part because one of the students had pushed by her to run out in the street. Shouting and waving her fist angrily at the students, she turned to me yelling and pointing at them. I caught the word "idiota" and that's about it. Drawing on my extraordinary language skills, I repeated the mantras "nie rozumiem populsku, nie mowie populsku" (which I'm pretty sure mean I don't understand Polish, I don't speak Polish). Didn't work. She was still yelling at them, looking at me, yelling at me, etc. Inspiration hit.

"Tak," I said. This slowed the flow of invective. I said it again. "Tak. Tak." The cursing stopped and she smiled. I'm sure she knew that I had absolutely no idea what she was saying, but she happily walked alongside of me the rest of the way to Piotrkowska now that at least someone was agreeing with her.

The book that started it all for me.

Polish history fascinates me. When I was 18, I picked up a copy of James Michner's historical fiction "Poland" -- Amazon.com link: James Michner, "Poland" (1984) -- and was permanently hooked. The book itself traces two families of Poles -- one nobility, one peasantry -- through a thousand years of Polish history up through the earliest days of Solidarity. If you're looking for a good book to read before getting there, this is it.

The one thing that comes out during any survey of Polish history is that the Poles as a nation are absolutely indomitable. Geographically, Poland for the most part is a relatively flat and fertile river plain situated between Germany, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. A small chunk of Russia sits at the northeaster corner of the country, with the rest of the great bear lurking just beyond Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Historically and militarily, this has proved a dangerous place to put a country since the other great powers of Europe have often sought to use Poland as a buffer state, a satellite state, or a road to get at each other. For much of its history, Poland has dealt with this problem simply by being stronger than its neighbors.

At other times, it has been controlled, partitioned, and destroyed in turn by the Russians, Prussians, Austrians, Germans, and the Soviets. As a general historical proposition, once a nation state or a people have been overrun like this even once, they don't get back up again. Poland, in contrast, despite being erased from map for 123 years after the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians decided they needed a buffer zone (1795-1918), and then turned into a German-occupied and Soviet-occupied nation from 1939 through 1990, got back up and rebuilt itself as a vibrant economic, political, and cultural entity that remains very distinctively and proudly Polish.

I'll blog more about this phenomenon from a Rule of Law perspective later, but in the meantime thinking about what it took to retain the Polish identity for eight generations of Russian, Soviet, and Prussian attempts to destroy the entire language and culture sometimes puts a lump in my throat.

Weekend Trips During the Study Abroad Program

We are in the process of finalizing the side excursions for the program, and I'll send a full description with costs to the program participants as soon as we have that information. But so you can get a better idea of what we have planned, here's the final schedule for the four program weekends:

Weekend 1: Arrival in Bialystok and settling in -- You should plan to arrive in Warsaw on Saturday June 11 or, at the latest, Sunday morning June 12. It's about 3 hours or so from Warsaw to Bialystok, so build in time to get to your housing and settle in. I will already be there (I'll be teaching a short class at another university and traveling to Krakow and an extraordinarily cool resort near Bialystok in the weeks before the program), and I will buy a cell phone and provide the program participants with my number after I get there.

Weekend 2: June 18-19 -- Krakow. Krakow could be described as the cultural heart of Poland. Palaces, museums, one of the largest central market squares in Europe, cathedrals, music, art, and really amazing food. I'll post some pics from my last trip there later in the blog, but this city is unforgettable. Time permitting, we are working on scheduling a side trip to Auschwitz, which is located a short drive outside of Krakow.


Weekend 3: June 25-26 -- Warsaw. The political capital of Poland, Warsaw is also the country's largest city and a major commercial center. Amazingly vibrant and cosmopolitan, the cultural, historic, artistic, and culinary opportunities are boundless. 


Weekend 4: July 2-3 - Druskienniki Resort & Water Park. The final weekend trip is intended to be more laid back. We will travel through the Podlaskie region of northeastern Poland to a popular resort located across the border in Lithuania. 


I'll post more information about the trips, itinerary, and costs as they become available.

Speaking Polish

One of the great things about Poland is that while it retains a deep and distinctive Polish culture, English is a relatively common second language. (Everyone associated with the Study Abroad Program speaks English fluently). That said, I rarely like to travel anywhere without having a basic set of useful and emergency phrases in the native language.

This is not to say that I'm any good at this effort. Oftentimes, my attempts to engage my hosts, more-or-less friendly public officials, waitstaff at restaurants, and particularly customer care specialists at various European and Chinese train stations merely engenders pity on the part of my listener. Many years ago in Spain, for example, my wife -- who is fluent in Spanish and has no accent -- asked for directions for the train to Segovia. The platform official rattled off directions in extremely fast Spanish and became frustrated when my wife asked him to repeat the directions a second time. At that point, my linguistic skills asserted themselves, and I asked him in an absolutely bland midwestern American accent, "donde esta el tren a segovia?" He looked at me and replied in perfect English that I needed to head over to platform 2 and the train would be along in 15 minutes.

So on to speaking Polish: "tak" means yes; "nie" means no.

How useful is this? It depends. If you understand Polish well enough to know what you're affirming or negating, then you already knew what tak and nie meant. If you're still working on your pronunciation of "nie rozumiem Populsku" (I don't understand Polish), my strong recommendation is that you avoid these two incredibly dangerous words at all costs.

If you're really interested in getting started, I've posted a link to a Useful Polish Phrases website. Importantly, the website not only provides phrases and interpretations, but also flashplayer links so you can actually hear each phrase spoken.

Welcome!!

Hi! And welcome to the MSU College of Law Poland Study Abroad Program Blog. The point of my stepping into the surreal wonderland of blogging and, eventually, facebooking is to provide some background, commentary, insights, and updates regarding the Law College's new program in association with the Law Faculty at the University of Białystok. I am truly excited about this opportunity!