The Krakow Post

NO. 15 WWW.KRAKOWPOST.COM AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 WEEKLY

THIS WEEK

City fashioned after Wild West to be builtThe city would join a short list of Wild West-type towns in Europe – just like in the movies 3

Forced labor camps found near KrakowNational Employment Inspectors uncover a forced labor camp out-side of Krakow where Ukrainian nationals were forced to work 10

EU nationals to buy land freely by 2009As of May 1, 2009, foreign nationals will be able to freely purchase real estate in Poland without permits 6

Tourists from Sardinia pose outside one of the dormitories of Jagiellonian University. Krakow, with an abundance of universities, has thousands of dormitory rooms available. PHOTO/The Krakow Post

Grazyna ZawadaSTAFF JOURNALIST

Krakow universities rent their dormitory rooms during summer vacation – and make good money out of it.

Using dormitories as cheap hotels dur-ing summer has been a common practice in many European cities – for example, Prague.

Krakow, with an abundance of univer-sities, has thousands of dormitory rooms available. They range from hostel-like shared facilities to private rooms.

Those who want to spend as little as pos-sible, or get a taste of a student’s life, can choose a room with a bathroom that is down the hall or shared with another room.

These cheap rooms typically feature bunkbeds. The only television is in a com-mon television room.

Price of the cheapies is about 25 zloty a person.

The average price of a private room is 50 to 60 zloty.

The “ritziest” private rooms, which have a bathroom, a TV, a telephone and a refrig-erator, go for about 100 zloty.

The biggest purveyor of dormitory rooms in Krakow is the Mining and Metallurgy

University (AGH). It has thousands.Its 15-story dorms are visible from far

away. For that reason, it hangs banners on them advertising rooms. It also advertises on the Internet.

“We have a standard similar to a hostel,” said Andrzej Sabuda, substitute director of the AGH campus. “We advertise as the big-gest and cheapest lodging place in Krakow. We can host as many as 4,000 at one time.”

Most Krakow students are happy that their rooms are rented in summer because their universities use the money to keep stu-dents’ room rates steady and to improve the dormitories.

When the students return in the fall, the university does not rent rooms to outsiders, Sabuda said. “The students are most impor-tant,” he said.

Other universities also have some rooms to rent all year long. One is Jagiellonian University, Krakow’s most prestigious higher educational institution.

“We have all-year-round hostel-type rooms in our dormitories,” said Marta Muszanska of the university’s Bratniak as-sociation. “They are of much higher stan-dard than other lodgings of this type.

She said the university carries out its “advertising campaign all year long, so we

don’t have to fight for customers before the start of the summer season. Presently our business is very good. We don’t even need an Internet reservation service. We even plan to launch a frequent-customer card to entitle our guests to discounts.”

Both universities’ offerings appeal to a range of customers – of all ages and many nationalities.

“Of course everybody wants to have as many customers as possible, but we don’t fight,” said Muszanska. “Competition al-ways results in raising the standard, which is the most important thing.”

Despite the demand for dormitory lodg-ing, regular hotel and hostel owners aren’t panicking.

“Of course we take the competition into account,” said Szymon Tokarczuk, owner of the Kadetus hostel on ul. Zwierzyniecka. “But in fact, Krakow’s hostels standard is one of the highest in Europe, one we may be proud of.”

He also contended that “dormitories will never be able to create that homelike, pri-vate atmosphere that hostels do. And our service, the help we offer, is unavailable in dormitories.

His conclusion: “There are enough tourists in Krakow” for all those offering lodging.

AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post P O L A N D2

R E G I O N A L N E W S

Tight security for Estonian Gay Pride after 2006 trouble

Estonia will hold its fourth Gay Pride parade in the capital Tallinn amid stepped up security after the event last year was marred by violent far-right protesters.

Police have warned troublemakers to stay away from the route of the parade, which caps a week-long gay cultural fes-tival known as Tallinn Pride 2007, saying that the event will be videotaped by law enforcement officers.

The annual march was first held in Tal-linn in 2004, and the first two parades went without a hitch.

Last year, however, a group of around 20 young men who dubbed themselves Estonian patriots ambushed the 500-strong march armed with sticks and stones.

One parade participant, a Spanish citi-zen, sustained serious head injuries and about dozen others received medical treat-ment after the attack in the Old Town of Tallinn last August.

“Until last year, Estonia was a safe haven for gay rights’ marches,” Lisette Kampus, spokeswoman for Tallinn Pride, told AFP.

“No one seemed to be prepared that it would happen here, such a blatant attack on gay and lesbian people in the very heart of the Estonian capital,” she said.

Organizers again expect about 500 peo-ple to participate in this year’s parade.

Following last year’s violence, police had initially declined to give permission for the 2007 march to take place in central Tallinn, but then agreed to the march after organizers slightly modified the route.

The 2006 violence dented Estonia’s im-age as being more tolerant towards homo-sexuals than other post-Communist coun-tries. Problems have been frequently seen in its fellow Baltic state of Latvia, where there has been trouble on a much larger scale, or Poland, where a ban on marches sparked a rebuke from the European Court of Human Rights.

Estonian gay rights campaigners note that no local political leaders have taken part in previous events, unlike their coun-terparts in several of the EU’s member states in the West.

In addition, Estonian authorities have rejected proposals from the homosexual community to give legal status to same-sex partnerships.

Estonia’s lesbian and gay community has become more visible since the coun-try regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and became a member of the EU in 2004. (AFP)

Slovak boy shelters in Italian embassy, seeks father

An 11-year-old boy took refuge this week at the Embassy of Italy in Bratislava because he is unhappy with his Slovak mother and stepfather and wants to live with his Italian father, reports said late last week.

The boy, identified only as Marco, es-caped from Bratislava airport after returning home from a holiday in Tunisia.

He took a taxi and went straight to the Italian mission.

“I want to be with my father. I get along better with him. I don’t want to live with my stepfather, I don’t like him,” the boy is re-ported to have written in his diary.

A Slovak court has ruled that the boy should rejoin his mother, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

The Italian embassy, contacted by AFP, meanwhile refused comment. (AFP)

“Little Godzilla” croc still at large in Ukraine

A small crocodile called “Godzik,” or “Little Godzilla,” which escaped from its cage in southern Ukraine at the end of May, is still at large and apparently enjoying it-self, an official said late last week.

The 70-centimeter long Nile crocodile, which swam away during a publicity show on a beach on the Sea of Azov, is defying attempts to recapture it.

Dariel Adjiba, of the local office of the emergencies ministry, said the reptile had apparently made its home on an abandoned barge which ran aground in the shallow sea, where it could often be seen sunning itself.

Godzik had been with a traveling circus for approximately a year when it escaped at Maryupol on the northern shore of the inland sea. (AFP)

THE KRAKOW POST

Residents of Zgorzelec, a Polish city on the German bor-der, are traveling to the neigh-boring German city of Görlitz to donate blood and plasma.

A few months ago, a Haema blood donation center, one of 15 such facilities, opened in Görlitz.

Haema is a company that buys blood and plasma to resell to Austrian companies for med-ical uses. Half of the donors in Gorlitz are Poles from Zgo-rzelec and neighboring cities. At first glance, nothing seems alarming about the situation.

But transactions are not al-ways as noble as they seem, and some Polish politicians are critical of the German business and a resultant decline in blood donations on the Polish side of the border.

Haema pays people for the blood donations. For 500 mil-liliters of blood, the donor gets 20 euro. For 750 milliliters of plasma, 15 euro. Blood dona-tion by an individual is lim-ited to a few times a year, while plasma can be donated up to 36 times a year.

If a person provides plasma

twice a month, he can get anoth-er 5 euro. Haema also rewards a driver who brings other donors to the company (15 euro for each one). In Poland, no money is paid for blood. The donor

receives only a few chocolate bars, coffee, sometimes a meat can as a compensation for nutri-tion losses. Poland is not alone with this policy.

Since 1975, the World Health Organization has asked its member states to conduct only voluntary and non-remunerated blood donations.

Donated, no-pay blood is considered the safest. And not everybody can become a blood and plasma donor. Medical history is considered and doc-tors interview potential donors. The blood-for-money business in Germany has angered some

Polish politicians. Konrad Szymanski, an MEP

from the Law and Justice Party (PiS), has lodged a complaint against Haema to the European Commission.

But the EC maintains that the German enterprise doesn’t pay for blood donation but only compensates for time losses (a plasma donation takes about two hours) and for travel to Görlitz. Even if Germans can consider 15 or 20 euro as a compensa-tion, for some Polish citizens it has become an easy way to earn money. That is why they prefer to donate blood in Haema rather than in Poland.

The number of donators on the Polish side of Zgorzelec continues to decline. Of course there are many different motiva-tions behind donating.

But blood donors interviewed by the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza admit that beside the idea of helping other people, they think about earning money, too.

Some of them are saving money for holidays, some to buy a car, others to buy clothes, beer or other pleasures. Some of them have never donated blood in Poland.

German Haema earning on blood and plasma donation

Haema pays people for the blood donations. For 500

milliliters of blood, the donor gets 20 euro. For 750 mil-liliters of plasma, 15 euro.

Blood donation by an individual is limited to a few times a year.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The Vatican late last week issued an un-common explanatory note over a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the direc-tor of a Polish Catholic radio station accused of anti-Semitism.

The meeting Sunday with Radio Mary-ja’s controversial director Tadeusz Rydzyk, whom Benedict reprimanded last year, prompted Jewish associations to voice alarm and seek clarification.

“With regard to requests for clarification about the ‘kissing of the hand’ received from Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk ... this occur-rence implies no change in the well-known position of the Holy See on relations be-tween Catholics and Jews,” the terse com-munique said.

Rydzyk was part of a delegation of Pol-ish pilgrims when the two met at the pope’s summer residence in nearby Castelgandolfo at the end of the Sunday Angelus prayer.

Last year, Rydzyk fell foul of the Vati-can over what were considered anti-Semitic broadcasts. Rome ordered Poland’s bishops to set up a watchdog body for the radio, but it apparently has had little impact and the Church has faced criticism for failing to bring Rydzyk under control.

Radio Maryja’s daily newspaper, Nasz Dziennik, revealed the meeting between the pope and Rydzyk in an article illustrated by photographs last Tuesday.

A Vatican source confirmed the meeting, saying that while at Castelgandolfo, Bene-dict “receives many people who ask to see him,” adding: “Generally nothing is known (of these meetings) except when they them-selves report them.”

Nasz Dziennik said Benedict “thanked the station’s thousands of listeners for their prayers on his behalf and blessed Radio Maryja and its work,” while the Vatican’s note suggested that the encounter was lim-ited to Rydzyk kissing the pope’s hand.

The European Jewish Congress said it was “shocked (and) astonished by the fact that Pope Benedict XVI has granted with a pri-vate audience and his blessing a man and an institution that have tarnished the image of the Polish Church.”

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France said that its director, Richard Prasquier, was “deeply shocked” by the meeting, “during which the anti-Semitism of the Polish radio station Radio Maryja ... does not appear to have been discussed.”

Radio Maryja “has for many years been spreading caricatural anti-Jewish messages and stereotypes,” the CRIF said in a state-ment. The meeting means the broadcaster “is unfortunately tolerated by the Catholic leadership and hierarchy, despite protests within Polish society itself,” the statement said, adding: “The action is totally incom-patible with the climate of comprehension and friendly relations built between the Catholic Church and Jews for many years.”

Based in the northern Polish city of To-run, Radio Maryja claims some 3 mln listen-ers from among Poland’s mainly Catholic population of 38.2 mln.

But it wields considerable political influ-ence in Poland and has campaigned openly for the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, even though it has begun sniping at Poland’s conservative leaders for allegedly going soft. The Radio Maryja media em-pire, which also includes a television sta-tion, mixes Catholic fundamentalist, Polish nationalist and anti-liberal ideologies.

In July, Rydzyk was caught up in a new dispute over comments slamming Presi-dent Lech Kaczynski for giving in to Jew-ish demands for compensation for property lost after the Holocaust in post-war Poland, and suggesting Jews wanted to strip Poland of billions of dollars. The Israeli ambassa-dor to Poland urged the government to con-demn Rydzyk’s remarks. Last year, Radio Maryja’s controversial director Tadeusz fell foul of the Vatican over

what were considered anti-Semitic broadcasts.

Vatican reassures Jews over pope’s meeting with outspoken RydzykThe meeting with Radio Maryja’s controversial director Tadeusz Rydzyk prompted Jewish associations to seek clarification

For some, donating blood is a way of making a living.

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow PostP O L A N D 3

Alicja NatkaniecSTAFF JOURNALIST

Zory officials are trying to find an inves-tor to build an American Wild West city as a tourist attraction.

They have already designated a location along Highway 81 about halfway between Katowice and the Vistula River. Now they need someone to – as cowboys would say – “cough up” the estimated 9 mln zloty needed to build the city.

The city, which would be one of a handful in Central Europe, would be right out of the West-erns, with all the roman-tic atmosphere and rough beauty.

It would boast a sa-loon, shops, a sheriff’s office, a jail and a bank. It would also have a working barbershop and photo studio.

You would be able to watch gunfights in the city. You would also be able to learn how to use a lasso and an Indian bow. And you would be able to don warpaint in an Indian teepee.

The city would have its own adminis-tration, water supply, phone network and of course a sheriff, who would make sure there was law and order.

Zory officials want the city to be open all year long. They said it would require up to 100 actors for its shows.

Why an Old West city instead of another kind of tourist attraction?

The American West still intrigues even grown-up men and women. Every child played cowboys and Indians. A Wild West city would let them go back to those times.

Zory officials point out that other cities have castles or aquaparks. Zory wanted a

different kind of attrac-tion.

Wild West cities else-where in Poland and in the Czech Republic have proved popular.

An Wild West city near Karpacz shows that such an investment, aside from being great fun, is also a profitable busi-ness. Thousands of tour-

ists have come to one near Karpacz to show their children what life was like in the Wild West, to let them see horses, rest in a big meadow or listen to country music.

But the biggest profits from the Karpacz attraction have come from corporate events and weddings.

The facility accommodates hundreds of people for a big event, such as a company gathering or wedding reception.

City fashioned after Wild West to be built in Zory

The city, which would be one of a handful in

Central Europe, would be right out of the Westerns,

with all the romantic atmosphere and rough beauty.

Polish officials are looking for investors to build a Wild West-type city in Poland to attract more tourists.

429-1470Opening Hours:Monday to Friday: 09:00-21:00Saturday: 09:00-15:00 Tel.: +48 12 429-1470recepcja@galeriausmiechu.pl

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Jean-Luc TestaultAGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Obstinate, nationalistic, and often paranoid, the Kaczynski twins, after sowing the seeds of chaos within their own party in Poland and throughout Europe, have called for early elections in October. Lech, the president, and Jaroslaw, the prime minis-ter, have alienated many of their European counter-parts, including some of their former allies on the right in Poland, with their puritanical approach to corruption and communism.

“They didn’t know how to show that they knew how to govern,” said Public Affairs Institute direc-tor Lena Kolarska-Bobinska.

“The government has fallen apart and it’s chaos, including within the ranks of their own party,” she added.

The twins run the ultra-conservative Catholic Law and Justice (PiS) party, which they founded in 2001.

In government, the two have progressively pushed aside anyone around them with any politi-cal weight, replacing politicians with yes-men.

Their latest victim was Janusz Kaczmarek, who was previously interior minister. Then, while vaca-tioning in Italy, he was informed that his services were no longer required. Police also searched his house.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski told report-ers that Kaczmarek was among a circle of indi-viduals suspected of involvement in a leak that had compromised a corruption investigation.

Kaczmarek, previously one of the twins’ closest collaborators, responded by saying: “We live in a totalitarian state.”

But for Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the strategist and the more powerful of the two brothers, suspicion comes as second nature.

He recently admitted that he didn’t have a bank account because he was afraid bad-intentioned peo-ple would see his bank balance and accuse him of

receiving kickbacks.Obsessed by their main priority, the de-com-

munisation of a Poland that only emerged from a dictatorship 18 years ago, the twins have neglected more important issues. Reforms that had been fast-tracked before Poland joined the EU are no longer moving forward with the same urgency. The health-care system is on the verge of collapse, with the country’s doctors and nurses both staging industrial action in recent months over their miserably low wages. The government has refused to budge.

The country’s privatization program has practi-cally ground to a halt and many observers fear that the lack of movement on economic reform will hamper growth for years to come.

The twins have made their presence felt within the EU, though perhaps not in a way that some of their European partners have appreciated.

They made it their business to block any talks between the EU and Russia on an economic agree-ment. And while Jaroslaw Kaczynski sent his brother to the EU summit in Germany last June, he left him no room for manoeuvre. EU officials ended up having to negotiate with him by telephone.

Nor has Poland’s EU membership inhibited the twins’ attacks on their neighbor and EU founding member Germany. In the wake of the fractious EU summit, during which Germany and Poland argued over voting rights within the bloc, Jaroslaw Kac-zynski compared modern-day Germany to the era that brought Adolf Hitler to power.

He even invoked the carnage wrought by the Na-zis in his country to support his claim to increase Poland’s voting rights within the EU, arguing that without the war Poland would be a more populous – and therefore powerful – country.

Paranoid power twins head towards elections

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

At least three people were killed and 26 injured last week when a Polish coach over-turned on a motorway in northern France, emergency services said. It was the second fatal accident in less than three weeks involv-ing a Polish coach. Six of the injured, who included teenagers, were described as serious. The Polish-registered coach, which had come from Belgium, overturned as it was taking a slip road to a service area.

The accident happened at 06:00 around about 10 kilometers (five miles) outside Dunkirk, where it had been heavily raining. On July 22 a coach carrying Polish pilgrims crashed in the French Alps, and fell into a rav-ing, killing 26 passengers and injuring 24.

Three killed in Polish coach crash in France

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Two convicts who escaped from a prison in the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad have been arrested in neighboring northern Poland, while another remained at large, Polish po-lice announced late last week.

The two men, identified only as Vladimir R., 27, and Oleg L., 26, were detained in Bartoszyce, a town some 20 kilometers from the border, police spokeswoman Izabela Niedz-wiedzka told AFP.

“The police are continuing to hunt for the third fugitive, and his arrest is just a matter of time,” she said.

The three convicts escaped from a prison at Bagrationovsk, which is only a few kilometers from Kalinin-grad’s border with Poland, and are believed to have crossed the frontier overnight.

Before they are extradited to Rus-sia, they are due to be tried in Poland for crimes allegedly committed dur-ing their brief spell of freedom, nota-bly a burglary in a bar in Bartoszyce.

Russian prison

fugitives snared in

Poland: police

President Lech Kaczynski (center).

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post P O L A N D

R E G I O N A L N E W S

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Turkish Cypriot jailed for killing Slovak waitress

A Turkish Cypriot man was jailed for life last week after a Cyprus court found him guilty of raping and strangling his Slo-vak former girlfriend and burying her body on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia.

The court, in the southern coastal town of Larnaca, described Panicos Netzadi, 32, as a “cold and calculated murderer” whose only motive was to exact revenge on 20-year-old Slovak waitress Janka Kovacova after she ended their relationship.

Kovacova broke off the affair after dis-covering that the man was married. She was last seen on August 17, 2006 being bundled into a white van outside a five-star hotel in the resort of Ayia Napa where she worked. Police later arrested Netzadi who led them to where he buried the girl.

At the time of Kovacova’s abduction, Netzadi was out on conditional bail await-ing trial in another rape case, police said.

Police said the man had confessed to her rape and murder but later retracted the confession.

The court was told that shortly before his arrest, Netzadi told a friend: “Where I put her, nobody will find her.” (AFP)

Jews join Progressive Jews community

Alicja NatkaniecSTAFF JOURNALIST

More and more Poles of Jewish descent are joining the Progressive Jews community in Poland, Dziennik newspaper reports. Get-ting much of the credit for the movement is the Beit Warszawa Jewish Cultural Asso-ciation in Warsaw. The association aims to revive the tradition of Progressive Judaism, which was active in Poland before World War II. To attract Poles to Progressive Ju-daism, the association organizes courses in Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as lectures on Jewish religion and culture.

About 200 Jews belong to Beit Warsza-wa, and each year this number increases. Active communities of Progressive Juda-ism exist not only in the larger Polish cit-ies, such as Krakow and Gdansk, but also in smaller communities like Bilgoraj and Zielona Gora.

Beit Warszawa was founded in 1999 by American Severyn Ashkenazy as a home for the Progressive Jews community in Warsaw. It has been the only spiritual and cultural center for Polish liberal-minded Jews. Their rabbi is Burt E. Schuman, a New Yorker with Polish roots. Members of Progressive

Judaism view Jewish laws as adaptable to the changing needs of cultures over time.

As a result, they look to the Bible for basic moral principles, but they do not believe in a literal reading of the Bible. So they ignore some rules important for Orthodox Jews, for example about kosher food or clothes, which they find outdated. Progressive Jews are also more socially liberal than many

Orthodox congregations. For example they have a more relaxed attitude towards homo-sexuality and other controversial issues.

According to their rules a Jewish identity can be passed down through either the moth-er or the father. The origins of Progressive Judaism go back to “Haskala,” the 18th-Century Jewish Enlightenment developed

among Jewish intelligentsia and bourgeoi-sie. Haskala‘s followers supported “cultural assimilation,” which included the use of lo-cal languages in religious offices, the secu-larization of education and a growing role for women in religious practice. One of the most famous Haskala supporters in Krakow was Jozef Oettinger, the first Jewish lecturer at the Jagiellonian University.

In the 19th Century, Progressive Jews were often the objects of attacks by Ortho-dox and Hasidic communities. Today the ideas of Progressive Jews continue to be rejected by Orthodoxy. Progressive Judaism is perceived by Orthodox Jews as a breach of Jewish law and ethics and is treated as a foreign religion. However, the number of Progressive Jews is growing throughout the world. In the U.S., 60 percent of Jews be-long to Progressive communities.

In Poland, Progressive and Orthodox Jews face another problem – worship space.

The regained Jewish properties, such as synagogues or prayer houses, belong to the Orthodox community.

In the face of the growing needs of the Progressive community, which currently rents a house in Warsaw, this issue will have to be resolved soon.

Ukraine court overturns bloc’s exclusion from election

A Ukrainian court early this week ordered the electoral commission to reverse its deci-sion not to register candidates from a pro-Western opposition bloc for next month’s legislative polls. It said the commission must process the registrations of Yulia Ty-moshenko’s bloc, the Interfax news agency reported. Tymoshenko welcomed the rul-ing. “I think that the provocations against our bloc are already worn-out,” she told Interfax. The commission had refused to register the bloc for September 30 polls on the grounds that her list lacked information on where the candidates lived. Her support-ers had demonstrated against the decision, and Tymoshenko condemned it as “political persecution” by commission members loyal to the pro-Russian government.

Pro-Western President Viktor Yushchen-ko intervened to urge the commission to change its mind, saying the problem was an “invented” one.

Last month, Yushchenko set the date for parliamentary elections in an effort to end a months-long power struggle with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, his Moscow-backed rival.

Opinion polls that Tymoshenko’s bloc would come second behind the prime min-ister’s party in next month’s elections, with the president’s party in third place. (AFP)

Estonian growth slows, but remains robust: official data

Estonia’s breakneck economic growth rate dipped in the second quarter, but re-mained a robust 7.3 percent compared with the same period in 2006, the Baltic state’s statistics office said late last week.

“The economy continued growing fast but decelerated at constant prices primar-ily due to the slowdown in the value-added growth in manufacturing, wholesale and transport as well as in storage,” the nation-al statistics office said in a statement.

In the first quarter of this year, gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 9.8 percent compared with the same period of 2006. Over the whole of 2006, Estonia’s GDP had grown by 11.4 percent on an annual comparison, according to official statistics.

Like neighboring Latvia, which also broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 and joined the EU in 2004, Estonia has ex-perienced spiralling growth as its economy catches up with older members of the EU.

Both countries have also had problems keeping inflation under control, sparking warnings of overheating, which are par-ticularly acute in Latvia.

Estonia’s growth rate last year was the second fastest in the then 25-member EU, lagging just half a percentage point behind Latvia, where the 11.9-percent annual GDP growth seen last year was also fueled by strong domestic demand.

Latvia’s GDP grew by 10.7 percent in the first quarter of this year on an annual comparison, according to that country’s statistics office, and preliminary figures re-cently showed that second-quarter growth was 11.3 percent on a similar basis. (AFP)

About 200 Jews belong to Beit Warszawa, and each year this number increases. Active communities of Progressive Judaism exist not only in the larger Polish cities, but also in smaller communities like Bilgoraj and Zielona Gora.

THE KRAKOW POST

One of the highlights was a concert by the renowned jazz artist John Zorn’s Ma-sada quartet. The festivities, which opened on August 11, surprised fans, who thought of Zorn as an avant garde group. The group stuck to traditional jazz, although the pieces were laced with elements of Jewish musi-cal tradition.

Uri Caine appeared as a special guest at the concert to complement Zorn on saxo-phone, Dave Douglas on trumpet and the others.

It was a coup for the festival to get Zorn, who is world-renowned not only for his musicianship but also because he founded the New York record company Tzadik in 1995. The Washington Post said Tzadik “champions Jewish music, jazz and avant-experimentalism.”

The label, a major promoter of Jewish artists, has released more than 100 albums since its founding.

In the last 10 years it has recorded some of the world’s most innovative Jewish artists, many of whom performed at the Poznan Tzadik Festival.

“Tikkun” magazine recently said “Zorn has forged a hugely eclectic and uncompro-mising canon of music.”

Also appearing on opening night at the Poznan Tzadik Festival was the French quartet Zakarya, which combines Klezmer tradition with rock avant garde rather than jazz. The festival is about more than mu-sic. It evokes Jewish religion, culture and tradition, especially the social and moral context of being Jewish.

Events besides music included meetings with authors and poetry readings.

Agnieszka Sabor, a journalist at the newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, dis-cussed her new book, “Shtetl: Traces of Jewish Small Towns.”

A highlight of the last day of the festival was a poetry recitation of “A Holy Word, a Cursed Word.”

The concert venue – the former syna-gogue – helped create the nostalgic atmo-sphere that the festival organizers wanted.

The synagogue on ul. Wroniecka opened in 1907.

During World War II the Nazis removed the star of David from the dome. In 1940 they turned the building into a swimming pool for Wehrmacht soldiers. The pool is still in the temple to this day.

Poznan Tzadik Festival at

former synagogue a treat for lovers of Jewish music

THE KRAKOW POST

Getting a visa to the U.S. may depend on an applicant’s good or bad timing, Dziennik newspaper recently announced.

“I advise you to come on Friday,” “Be-fore the weekend the Americans are in a good mood,” “It is better to come when the weather is fine...and you should be nicely dressed.” These are some examples of advice given by workers at American diplomatic offices to Poles seeking visas for the U.S.

Although Poland is an ally of the U.S. in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Poland also is consider-ing hosting a part of a U.S. missile defense shield, the U.S. government does not grant Polish citizens free entrance to America. Re-cently, the U.S. dropped visa requirements for Estonians and Czechs. But Poland still does not meet the formal conditions for

eligibility in the visa-waiver program. Too many Poles breach American immigration regulations by staying in the U.S. after their visas expire.

“Poles are still not coming back from the U.S. on time, and we’re all paying for this,”

said Polish Prime Minis-ter Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The visa application pro-cess includes an interview with a consul in a U.S. consulate or embassy.

While these interviews may be critical to the visa rulings, guidelines for the consuls’ decisions are lacking. Polish politicians are trying to get visa rules

clarified. Last year about 26 percent of the Poles seeking U.S. visas were unsuccessful.

It is hoped that if the rules are clarified, within six to seven years the percentage of visa denials will drop to about 10 percent. And then, perhaps, if Poles do a better job of heeding visa expiration deadlines, the U.S. will drop the visa requirement entirely.

Getting U.S. visas gets tougher

“Poles are still not coming back from the U.S. on time,

and we’re all paying for this,” said Polish Prime Minister

Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The visa application process includes

an interview with a consul in a U.S. consulate or embassy.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

A whale has been spotted off the Polish coast after apparently losing its way, in a rare appearance of such a marine mammal in the Baltic Sea, an expert said early this week.

“If my observations prove right, it is a Minke whale which can reach up to 10 me-ters in length,” oceanographer Krzysztof Skora told AFP, who sighted the animal in the Gulf of Gdansk near the port city of the same name.

“But it’s 100 percent sure that it’s a whale and probably the same whale which was seen off Sweden a month ago.”

The whale, which would normally live in the North Sea or the Altantic, would have made its way into the Baltic through the nar-row outlet across the Straits of Oeresund between Sweden and Denmark.

“It risks dying of hunger because the Bal-tic lacks krill, the tiny crustaceans which are its traditional food,” said Skora.

“The Baltic Sea is not an ecosystem where Minke whales live. It is actually an ecosys-tem for porpoises, which are disappearing, but unfortunately no one is interested in them. There are plenty of Minke whales in Europe,” he added. Last year a Humpback whale also found its way into the Baltic and was spotted off Gdansk and the Gulf of Fin-land further north before being found dead in the Gulf of Riga, off Latvia.

Whale sighted off Poland: expert

U.S. visa application.

The Jewish Cultural Association was founded in 1999 by American Severyn Ashkenazy as a home for the Progressive Jews community in Warsaw. It has been the only spiritual and cultural center for Polish liberal-minded Jews.

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow PostP O L A N D 5

Alicja NatkaniecSTAFF JOURNALIST

Poland’s preparations for the Euro 2012 are behind schedule. Four months after Po-land and Ukraine were chosen to co-host the championships, the Polish Ministry of Sport and Tourism is sounding an alarm about meeting deadlines for contractual obligations.

And two weeks after taking office, Min-ister of Sport Elzbieta Jakubiak has an-nounced a new action plan. There are two issues of great urgency, she said. The first is stadium construction. The second is or-ganizing specialists to supervise the cham-pionships. Each issue demands legislative changes, because the existing rules are de-fective and disfunctional.

One bill would streamline stadium fi-

nancing and bypass bidding processes to speed up construction.

The second bill would create a company of 1,000 specialists to plan and supervise the preparations efficiently. Ministry of Sport officials hope to have such a compa-ny functioning in two months. So far, little has been accomplished. The national com-mittee appointed to supervise preparations for the championships first had to solve the personnel problems. The Polish application for the championships proposed six stadi-ums in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Gdansk, Chorzow and Wroclaw.

Construction of some is already behind schedule. The worst situation is in the capi-tal city. It is already apparent that the new Warsaw stadium, which is to host the grand opening of Euro 2012, will not be ready on time. And Sport Ministry officials don’t

know yet where it will be placed. Minis-ter Jakubiak intends to negotiate the 2010 deadline for stadium completion.

Spring 2011 seems to be more realistic and, hopefully, equally satisfactory for Eu-ropean football authorities. In Gdansk, the new Baltic Arena is under construction, but a one-year delay is expected. Only the offi-cials in Poznan and Wroclaw are confident and optimistic about the deadlines. From an economical point of view, Poland stands to be a big winner from Euro 2012.

The massive infrastructure build-up in Poland will generate thousands of jobs. But the construction sector and other in-dustry segments are already experiencing skills shortages. Poland also needs to make changes in employment legislation to open the labor market to immigration from Asia or post-Soviet countries.

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Poland’s preparations for Euro 2012 tournament are far behind schedule

The Polish application for the Euro 2012 championships proposed six stadiums in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Gdansk, Chorzow and Wroclaw. Construction is already behind schedule.

THE KRAKOW POST

A controversial priest’s remarks about Poland’s president and first lady – in which he allegedly called the president a “swindler” and his wife a “witch” – have produced protests and calls for punishment.

Father Tadeusz Rydzyk’s Catholic superiors have taken no action, but a civil prosecutor is con-sidering defamation charges.

As for Father Ry-dzyk, he said that he “didn’t intend to offend anyone” but he refused to apologize to the president and his wife. Rydzyk is a Polish Catholic priest of the Rome-based Redemptorist mis-sionary order and the owner of a me-dia empire that includes Radio Maryja station, the Trwam TV station, and the daily newspaper Nasz Dziennik. He is also the founder of the College of Media and Journalism in Torun. Father Rydzyk has gained notoriety in the past for his allegedly anti-Semitic, xenophobic and nationalistic opinions.

As a charismatic personality, he has become popular in extreme right-wing

circles. His media outlets have given strong support to the Law and Justice party (PiS) led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of President Lech Kacz-ynski.

The current uproar results from state-ments reportedly made at a lecture by Fa-ther Rydzyk at his journalism school. The lecture was given in the spring but a tape recording was only recently made public by “Wprost” magazine.

During the lecture, “Wprost” reported, Rydzyk called President Kaczynski a “swindler” and accused him of bowing to pressure from the Jewish lobby.

In relation to First Lady Maria Kaczyn-ski’s decision to sign an appeal opposing amendments to the Constitution regard-ing restricting abortion, Rydzyk called her “a witch” who “is talking about killing people, but she should start with herself.” Some 700 Polish intellectuals, including former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazow-iecki and former Auschwitz inmate and Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartosze-wski, signed an open letter condemning

Rydzyk’s statements. They said that Ry-dzyk’s comments “re-vealed his contempt” for Jews and fellow Christians.

“It hurts us that the contemptible and anti-Semitic re-marks come from a representative of our church,” the letter said.

Father Zdzislaw Klafka, leader of the Polish Redemptorists, declined to pun-ish Father Rydzyk for his statements. “He does not identify himself with the anti-Semitism that has been attributed to him,” Klafka said, and added that the priest was a victim of “serious provoca-tion and media manipulation.”

Klafka’s opinion was approved by Father Joseph Tobin of Rome, the worldwide head of the Redemptorist order. The prosecutor in Torun is check-ing the credibility of the tape recordings of the lecture and expects to decide this month whether a defamation charge is warranted.

Father Rydzyk will not be punished by his superiors

A controversial priest’s re-marks about the president and first lady – in which he called the president a

“swindler” and his wife a “witch” – have produced

calls for punishment.

Radio Maryja of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk.

Justyna KrzywickaSTAFF JOURNALIST

It appears PiS is going soft on its right-wing family-orientated policies. The “Wom-en in Business” (“Spełniona w Biznesie”) campaign is being launched this September by Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, the labor and social policy minister. The campaign aims to motivate the 52 percent of Polish women who are of employable age, but do not work outside the home. Even leftist femi-nists such as Kazimiera Szczuka are supporting the campaign.

According to Dzie-nnik newspaper, the campaign will involve billboards, TV advertise-ments and programs de-picting women who have been successful in open-ing their own businesses. A web site and an infoline have also been set up. The aim of both is to inform women about the steps involved in starting up a business. Advice in taxation, accounting, social security and business registration is given and explana-tions are provided online.

Dziennik reports many women in Poland are keen to commence their own ventures, but lack the know-how in getting things started. According to Kluzik-Rostkowksa,

women need to be shown how a business can be set up and managed. Stereotypes need to be quashed, with women finally be-ing motivated to leave the kitchen.

The problem may not be so easy to solve however. Poland has one of the lowest rates of small business ventures within the EU. The Statistical Office of the European Com-mission shows small enterprises account for 14.2 percent of jobs in Poland, compared to 31.9 percent in Greece. Polish self-em-

ployed women account for only 10.8 percent of that total (compared to the 22.1 percent of women in Greece).

The issue lies with the stringent formalities involved in starting up a business, regardless of whether you are male or female. Poland has one of the most complicated

and expensive business registration proce-dures in the EU. It takes up to 45 days to register a limited company, involving over five governmental institutions of registra-tion. In comparison registering a company in the UK can be done within less than two days. People in Poland are therefore quickly frustrated and easily overwhelmed with the procedure. The need for better regulation and lower levels of administrative burdens for businesses start-ups is obvious. The Pol-

ish government must make this its priority before women can initiate their own enter-prises. The “Women in Business” campaign will prove futile if regulations are not sim-plified, reported economic analyst Andrzej Sadowski from the Adam Smith Institute in Dziennik. Further, women living outside industrious city regions in small villages

should have the option of micro-credit ac-cess. The business credit sector for small enterprises is still in its infancy in Poland, with most banks refusing to lend money to self-employment ventures. Financial assis-tance in the form of bank loans are neces-sary if this potential business sector of the community is to flourish.

PiS motivating women to work

The need for better regula-tion and lower levels of

administrative burdens for businesses start-ups is obvi-ous. The Polish government must make this its priority before women can initiate

their own enterprises.

It appears PiS is going soft on its right-wing family-orientated policies. A recent party campaign aims to motivate the 52 percent of Polish women who are of employable age, but do not work outside the home

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post6

Justyna KrzywickaSTAFF JOURNALIST

As of May 1, 2009, foreign nationals will be able to freely purchase real estate in Poland without permits. Concerns have been raised that foreigners will “buy up” the most attractive areas of Poland.

One of the general principles of the EU is the free movement of capital. In accor-dance with the Treaty of Accession all EU citizens have the same rights as the nation-als of a given member state to purchase property within that state. Poland has a five year leeway period from its accession into the EU to impose property purchase restrictions for foreigners. By May 2009 such restrictions will be lifted. Foreign na-tionals will be able to purchase real estate including recreational land as their “second home.” Restrictions for the purchase of forests and agricultural land will be lifted in 2015. Predictions of increased German property investment are already being made, with the rise in real estate prices as proof in western Poland. According to comparable real estate prices, a meter squared of a building plot in Nysa’s lake region has risen from 35 zloty to 90 zloty in the last year alone. This however cannot be attributed to the increased level of foreign land buyers. Land prices have risen across all of Poland in the last year as a result of the current housing boom.

Debno, a small town on the western

border of Poland some 60 kilometers from Berlin, is surrounded by lakes and forests. The area has great swimming, hunting and other recreational possibilities.

Debno Council’s Registrar Arek Maze-pa told The Krakow Post, “There is some German investment in the area and we gladly welcome it.” If private recreational land was to be further sold into the hands of foreign investment, “it would only boost the local economy and develop the region further,” he added. “There are German pri-vate owners in the area who are planning on building hotels near the lakes or have already established recreational private fa-cilities such as ranches. We at the Council see it as a positive sign, rather than a con-troversy.”

Currently a non-Polish national must receive a permit from the Ministry of In-terior and Administration to purchase more than one piece of real estate in Poland. The process is time-consuming and difficult, restricting foreign investors.

Loopholes in the legislation mean that upon registering a limited company in Po-land, an investor may make multiple pur-chases through the company.

With the amendments coming into effect on the May 1, 2009 and Poland’s entry into the Schengen Agreement, the existing ob-stacles will be eradicated. Free movement into the country will be possible as pass-port border control in western Poland will be eliminated.

EU nationals to purchase land freely by 2009

Nysa, Poland. By May 2009, foreign nationals will be able to purchase real estate including recreational land as their “second home.” Restrictions for the purchase of forests and agricultural land will be lifted in 2015.

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THE KRAKOW POST

An iced tea containing cannabis extract is hitting stores in Poland. Iced tea with marijuana on a hot summer afternoon? Why not, actually. Espe-cially for 1.49 zloty.

This drink is being sold in stores in Lodz, Wroclaw and Poznan.

But it may not last long as the drink has caught the attention of the police. Selling prod-ucts containing drugs is illegal.

Sold under the label “C-Ice Swiss Cannabis Iced tea,” the chill-out drink comes in yellow cans decorated with cannabis leaves and the slogan “fantastic natural feeling.”

The word “cannabis” means marijuana. In fact this drink contains 5 per-cent hemp flower syrup and a tiny (0.0015 percent) quantity of THC, the active ingre-dient of marijuana.

Any percentage of an ingredient that could put the tea in a drug category report-edly has been removed to make the drink legal. According to the manufacturer, drink-ing the tea won’t lead to any dependency. However, the drink created concern among British anti-drug campaigners as soon as it appeared across the UK.

Drug experts say the slogan “fantastic natural feeling” may encourage normal-ization of cannabis as an image in young people’s minds. Produced by an Austrian company and using hemp grown in Swit-

zerland, the drink is avail-able on the Continent and in South Africa.

In Poland it quickly became a popular item. Recently, it was impos-sible to find a single can in shops.

It was available, how-ever, on Internet auc-tions, selling at twice the retail price, of course.

Tests of the drink in Poland confirmed that the tea contains tetrahy-drocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient of marijuana responsible for a euphoric feeling.

Although the THC is a tiny quantity (0.0015 percent), it technically is

enough to make the tea illegal in Poland. In fact, any product with a hemp extract is banned. So why was the tea permitted into the Polish market? The company distribut-ing Cannabis Tea in Poland says the prod-uct was tested in Austria and judged legal by the EU. With that decision, the company says, the tea doesn’t need further approval in Poland. So what’s the final tea verdict in Poland? The case will be further investi-gated by the public prosecutor.

Iced tea with cannabis?

This drink is being sold in stores in Lodz, Wroclaw

and Poznan. But it may not last long, because the drink has caught the attention of the police. Selling products containing drugs is illegal.

Sold under the label “C-Ice Swiss Cannabis Iced

tea,” the chill-out drink comes in yellow cans deco-rated with cannabis leaves and the slogan “fantastic

natural feeling.”

Tests of the drink in Poland confirmed that the tea contains tetrahydro-cannabinol (THC), the active ingredient of marijuana responsible for the euphoric feeling.

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow PostK R A K O W 7

Animal abuse in Zakopane

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Anna BiernatSTAFF JOURNALIST

Sheep getting their photos taken with tourists on Zakopane’s main Krupowski promenade are suffering from abuse, claims the Animal Care Society.

Residents have complained that the sheep, whose owners charge 5 zloty per pic-ture session, stay in the sun for hours and their hooves are bloody from running on cobblestones.

The complaints led to the Animal Care Society investigations. They found the sheep emaciated from lack of food and suffering

muscular atrophy from lack of exercise.Police are looking into possible animal-

abuse charges against the three brothers who own the sheep. The boys, 19, 16 and 5, are from nearby Murzasichle.

If found guilty of animal abuse, the oldest boy can get up to a year in jail.

Local officials are asking tourists not to have their photos taken with animals.

City Council spokeswoman Ewa Ma-tuszewska told Gazeta Wyborcza: “Appeal-ing to tourists is the only effective method of curbing this shady business. As long as there are people interested in that type of at-traction, there will always be someone will-ing to make a business out of it, not caring about the animals’ fate.”

said it isn’t just sheep suffering in Zakopane. Puppies that a high-lander is selling at a market in Gubalowka look listless, it said. Police are investigating that case, too.

Animal Care Society has intervened in similar cases in Zakopane. Police have end-ed up not filing any charges in those cases, however.

Residents have complained that the sheep, whose own-ers charge 5 zloty per pic-

ture session, stay in the sun for hours and their hooves

are bloody from running on cobblestones.

THE KRAKOW POST

Krakow’s Municipal Council is launching a film competition. Budding filmmakers will not be restricted as to the filming medium. Mobile phones, digital cameras and anima-tion are all acceptable forms of filming. The only restrictive element about the film com-petition is its running theme.

All entered films must somehow incorpo-rate Krakow into the filming process.

Krakow must appear either directly or in-directly as a setting of the action, as a back-drop to the storyline or as a major protago-nist of the film.

The film competition is open to all, in-cluding amateur film directors as well as to those with professional experience.

The idea behind the competition is to promote Krakowian filmmakers as well as to expose Krakow on a silver screen.

The winning film will be shown across Poland in various independent cinemas. It will also be incorporated into Kra-kow’s promotional campaigns and used in

marketing projects and expos. Jurors, comprised of journalists, writers,

photographers, artists, as well as Council officials, will choose the winning entry according to its highest level of creativity. The film competition is not restricted to one film-ing medium, in order to show that the traditional method of filming is no longer the only method of filming. Internet sites such

as YouTube and Flixter have opened up the

size of the viewing audience and therefore the traditional filming method is no longer required. Instead digital photographic cam-eras, mobile phones and webcams have become filmmaking tools for filmmakers to reach that wider audience. The Krakow film competition wants to tap into this grow-ing phenomenon by allowing entries full creative filming possibility and unrestric-tive methods of having their footage taken. Details of the film competition will soon be made available on: www.krakow.pl.

Filmmakers will be able to download the entry forms and read about the rules of the competition.

Krakow launches film competitionSheep getting their photos taken with tourists on Zakopane’s main Krupowski promenade are suffering from abuse, claims the Animal Care Society.

The film competition is open to all, includ-

ing amateur film directors as well as

to those with profes-sional experience.

Krakow’s Municipal Council is launching a film competition. All entered films must somehow incorporate Krakow.

AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post8 K R A K O W

Shedding light on Rynek Glowny

Martyna OlszowskaSTAFF JOURNALIST

A mysterious – and tacky – structure has turned up on Rynek Glowny.

It’s a big shed made of roofing paper. Krakow residents are wondering what it

is. Because it’s attracting a lot of pigeons, some think it’s a roosting place.

Others think it’s a tool-storage shed left behind by the workers who repaved the sur-face of the square.

Japanese tourists happen by. One asks the guide if the shed is a tourist attraction. The guide assures him it isn’t.

Finally, someone comes up with an “X-Files” idea: Maybe it is a secret entry to un-derground Krakow.

The case was serious enough that Gazeta

Wyborcza, one of the biggest newspapers in Poland, decided to do its own investigation.

The newspaper first asked residents for their suppositions.

“It looks like a doghouse, but maybe after the renovation the workers forgot to take it and birds took ad-vantage of it,” said Stani-slaw Kania, walking in the square with his family.

”No,” his wife said. “There is going to be a monument to pigeons in Krakow, so maybe they are testing how it will look, although it’s strange they’re doing it here.”

Although the structure appears to the uninitiated as if it could be a

pigeon coop, people who know scoff at that idea.

There is no hole so birds can enter and no shelves inside for the pigeons to roost on, the experts say.

“But the place definitely is ideal for pi-geons,” said Krystia Bed-narz, a pigeon fancier. “It is made from material that they like and it is near people who feed them.”

Finally, Andrzej Za-borski of the City’s Pub-lic Works Department (Krakowski Zarząd Drog) solves the mystery for ev-eryone.

As usual, the explana-tion is more mundane than exotic.

“It is a ventilation hole,” Zaborski ex-plained. “It reduces humidity in the Mar-ket’s underground and in this way protects it against mold. We put it there at the recom-mendation of a heritage conservator.”

The city is going to open a museum un-derground to allow people to see historical artifacts that archaeologists excavated.

The shed is a cheap ventilation system – but Zaborski hastens to add that it’s only a temporary fix.

He said the shed will disappear when work on the underground museum com-mences, though nobody knows when that will happen.

“I can only promise that somebody will clean the area around the shed,” Zaborski said. That will be a challenge, given the number of pigeons on Rynek Glowny.

What has been cut off can be sewn back on: resident of Sucha Beskidzka severs penis

Tourists and locals alike are baffled by this shed on Rynek Glowny. What is it? Not a pigeon coop or a secret entrance to underground Krakow, but rather a simple ventilation hole.

A big shed has appeared on Rynek Glowny.

Krakow residents are wondering what it is. Be-cause it’s attracting a lot of pigeons, some think

it’s a roosting place.

During the reattachment operation, which took about seven hours, the surgeons

rejoined the severed arteries, veins and nerves. The key

factor contributing to the suc-cess of such kind of operations is time.

Mark Stevens

We are all familiar with the drunk-en British tourists – groups of young men – who flock to Krakow, drink to excess and then act like animals. Residents are appalled by them and headlines appear in Polish news-papers about their bestial behavior. However, there is also another, per-haps more surprising group of people suffering from the beer-fuelled antics of these weekend visitors: the English expatriates living in Krakow. Attacks by Polish men on expat residents are rising, widely believed to be caused by growing Polish resentment at the perceived “invasion” of their town by ignorant UK visitors. And anger from these UK expats is not directed so much at the Poles attacking them as at the British louts who provoke them and trigger such tensions in the first place.

“I can understand it from the Pol-ish point of view.” said Daniel Rob-erts from London, a web site editor and Krakow resident of two years’ standing. “They see this English scum come over here for the week-end, yelling, vomiting and molesting their girlfriends, and so they develop an entirely reasonable hatred of them. Unfortunately, they then take out this hatred on innocent expats. Three of my friends have been beaten up by Polish men in the past month, and I have heard countless other stories of people being threatened, punched, and even held at knifepoint.”

“The irony is that I hate these Eng-lish bastards even more than the Pol-ish do!” says Simon Thomas, an Eng-lish teacher at the Hologram school. “I’d happily arm the Krakow city po-lice and tell them to aim for the head when it comes to loud British tour-ists. However, with my limited grasp of Polish, it’s difficult to communi-cate this fact to someone such as the gorilla-like thug who punched me in the side of the head in Kazimierz last night whilst shouting ‘Speak Polish!’ ‘Go home!’ and some other words beginning with ‘p’ that I imagine you can’t print in a newspaper.”

Many expats suspect that such at-tacks occur because the visiting stag parties usually travel in groups of over ten people and as such would be more difficult to take on in a fight. English residents of Krakow, how-ever, can often be found in smaller groups – two or three perhaps – in bars and pubs away from the mar-ket square and police patrols, and in which ‘locals’ are more likely to gather, all of which makes them easi-er targets. Reports of organized vigi-lante groups, possibly linked with na-tionalist football hooligans who hunt in packs for Englishmen, have even started to surface.

“I can understand their anger, but I wish they’d take it out on the right targets. Please, be my guest, beat the hell out of the English vermin that comes over here on stag weekends and who show no respect to the town. But kindly leave me alone. I work here, I pay taxes in Poland, I don’t bother anyone and I don’t show my backside in bars,” said Andrew Norton, another English language teacher (like the major-ity of British residents in Krakow). Like many Englishmen living here, he seems to have far more hatred for the English visitors than does the average Polish Krakowian. “One of the reasons I left the UK was to es-cape from these people.”

Letter to the editor from an angry British expat

British expats victims of Polish

“revenge” attacks

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow Post 9K R A K O W

Michal WojtasSTAFF JOURNALIST

The fifth annual Pierogi Festival last weekend was surely a joyous moment for local pierogi fans.

At the festival on pl. Szczepanski, eight restaurants prepared more than 40 varia-tions of the Polish dumplings and served them in stalls on one of the Old Town squares.

Krakow residents and tourists lined up to taste as many as possible. And they’ve chosen their fa-vorites.

On Saturday, pierogi filled with apples and rose petals were voted the best. Only 310 of the thousands of the festival participants took part in the voting, and 51 of them favored the specialties of Krolest-wo Pierozka (Pierogi Kingdom) Restaurant. The Pierogi Kingdom re-peated last year’s success when the restaurant also won the audience’s hearts. And the trophy, a sculpture of Karzmierz the Great, the 14th-Century king of Poland, will remain at the restaurant for another year.

The pierogi lovers also appreciated dumplings with spinach from Polskie Smaki (Polish Tastes) Restaurant (second place) and traditional meat-filled pierogi of Smakosz (Gourmet) Restaurant (third place). On Sunday, another title for the

tastiest pierogi was given – this time by a jury led by Artur Zyrkowski from the promotion department of the Krakow City Council.

The sculpture of Saint Hyacinth, who according to an old tale brought a pierogi recipe to Krakow in the 12th Century, was claimed by rookies in the pierogi contest who had placed second in the public vot-

ing. The Polskie Sma-ki’s spinach dish was rated as near perfection, receiving a total of 48 points from the five ju-rors. Each of them could award a maximum of 10 points. The second-place pierogi with groats and roasted bacon from Bohema Restaurant got 44 points, while the au-dience winner, Pierogi Kingdom, scored 43.

The results have been also confirmed by the demand for the prize-winning specialities. Several meters-long lines led to the stalls of

the Krolestwo Pierozka and Polskie Sma-ki. Everyone who wanted to taste their pierogis had to wait more than 20 min-utes. According to organizers of the event, more than 50,000 dumplings were eaten during the weekend. This year’s edition of the pierogi festival was celebrated in conjunction with the 750th anniversary of the death of the Catholic Saint Hyacinth, a medieval Polish member of the Dominican

Order. Apart from the pierogi tasting, sev-eral concerts and tours of the Dominican monastery in Krakow were conducted.

What are pierogi? Pierogi are dumplings made of unleavened dough filled with ground meat, fruit, or other foods. The dumplings are boiled or sometimes fried. They are usually semi-circular and quite small and thus served in large numbers. A local version of pierogi is present in almost every eastern European cuisine. They are called “pyrohy”’ in the Ukraine, “koldu-nai” in Lithuania and “pirogi” in Russia. Ironically, the most popular stuffed dump-lings in Poland are called “pierogi ruskie” (Russian pierogi).

They are filled with cottage cheese and mashed potatoes and served with fried onions or bacon. Another popular Polish dish is pierogi filled with sauerkraut, cab-bage and mushrooms or ground meat, all of them usually spiced with lots of black pepper. “Uszka” (little ears) are small dumplings filled with mushrooms only. Served with a spicy soup made of beet roots (“barszcz”), the dish is served tra-ditionally on Christmas Eve. Pierogi may also be sweet when stuffed with fruits. The most typical come with blackberries and strawberries and are served poured with sweet cream. Pierogi fillings are limited only by the cook’s creativity, and it’s impossible to count the number of re-gional variations. But always the dough is a key to success – the same as with pizza. The word “pierogi” is the plural form of “pierog.” However, the singular form is not used often because the dish usually consists of at least six or eight pieces.

More than 50,000 dumplings take part in fifth annual Pierogi Festival in course of two days

What are pierogi? Pierogi are dumplings made of unleavened

dough filled with ground meat, fruit, or other foods. The

dumplings are boiled or sometimes fried.

They are usually semi-circular and quite small and thus served

in large numbers.

Wioletta ZiembaSTAFF JOURNALIST

Malopolska regions with the highest percentages of emigrants are those with the highest unemployment rates – Gorlice, Limanowa, Nowy Sacz, Oswiecim, Olkusz, Tarnow, Chrzanow, Nowy Targ and Wado-wice. Some community members are also leaving permanently, including those from Zabno, Andrychow, Libiaz, Tarnow and Olkusz. Jaroslaw Medynski, representative of the Town Hall Office in Olkusz, admits that while the situation on the job market is not easy in Olkusz, there are also many new people coming into the town and buying property in the area, especially from Kra-kow. According to statistics, eight percent of Malopolska inhabitants work abroad, 70 percent of them having left after Poland’s accession to the EU. Some analysts say, however, that statistics may be imprecise as some people leave without giving no-tice. Various sources estimate that at most 200,000 people left the country to find tem-porary work abroad.

Last year only 32,000 emigrants from Malopolska reported their departure to the official administration offices, making it dif-ficult for local employment offices to deter-mine accurate emigration figures, warning that current information should be used with care. Administration offices often learn that somebody went abroad by individual cases, while conducting standard administrative procedures or during army recruitment. The Malopolska emigration also modifies Polish unemployment statistics showing 145,000 people as unemployed in early January 2007, versus 119,000 by the end of June.

“There is a large group of people without permanent jobs who don’t come to register because they do not need to,” says Tomasz Magdziarz, director of the Regional Em-ployment Office in Limanowa. “They can choose between a well-paid job abroad and a permanent full-time job in Poland.”

Emigrants choose various destinations; the U.S. is still popular with many Tarnow

Malopolska struggles to find workers for its rapidly developing market as locals leave Poland for West

and Podhale families, Germany is often chosen for seasonal work, and young peo-ple from bigger cities prefer Britain and Ire-land. According to Agnieszka Kosmidek, a EURES employment agency advisor at Krakow’s Employment Office, individuals who emigrate become increasingly inde-pendent and no longer appear to need help or advice, as they would before.

Malopolska currently has 3.27 mln in-habitants. Overall, last year’s migration balance was positive as the region gained 1,292 permanent residents and over 14,000 temporary residents – primarily in Krakow and its nearby regions such as Wieliczka and Myslenice.

However, other large Malopolska cities experienced a negative direction, with the number of inhabitants having decreased in places like Tarnow and Nowy Sacz, though this may partially be a result of “internal migration.”

A chef dishing pierogi to customers.

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Local airports are expanding to handle the influx of foreigners and foreign investment.

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post10 K R A K O W

Justyna KrzywickaSTAFF JOURNALIST

Last week National Employment In-spectors and police uncovered a forced labor camp operating just outside of Kra-kow. Gazeta Krakowska reported that 13 Ukrainian nationals were forced to work on an ag-ricultural farm alongside Polish workers.

The illegal Ukrainian workers were employed to plant shrubs and trees, while having their pass-ports removed by the property owner. The eight men and five women lived in unacceptable conditions and worked over 12-hour work days. Wages were paid only upon workers’ departure, while the Ukrainians worked anywhere from a few weeks to a few months at the labor camp.

According to Gazeta Krakowska, the il-legal workers must leave Poland and will have their entry visas temporarily suspend-ed. The agricultural property owner will be facing charges for illegal employment of foreigners. Poland is not the only country dealing with forced labor camp problems

and human trafficking. In July 2006, Polish and Italian police uncovered a forced labor camp operating in Italy’s southern region of Puglia; more than 113 Poles were rescued. An international criminal ring comprised of Poles, Ukrainians, Italians and Algeri-ans orchestrated work camps with squalid

conditions and meager wages. During their two-year-long operation, more than 1,000 Poles were es-timated to have been lured into such camps.

Unlike the free labor movement between some EU countries, Poland lim-its its entry of Ukrainian workers, allowing them to work legally in Poland three months with a valid visa. A work permit is not required for that period. After three months, the Ukrainian worker is obli-gated to return to Ukraine before re-entering Poland for work. According to

the National Bureau of Statistics, 1.3 mln illegal foreigners were working in Poland. Only 10,000 work permits were granted. Entry visas granted to Ukrainian nationals numbered at nearly 1.5 mln. The black mar-ket for Ukrainian illegal workers is big, as manual labor is especially needed.

Forced labor camps found near Krakow

The illegal Ukrainian work-ers were employed to plant shrubs and trees, while hav-ing their passports removed by the property owner. The eight men and five women

lived in unacceptable condi-tions and worked over 12-

hour work days. Wages were paid only upon workers’

departure, while the Ukraini-ans worked anywhere from

a few weeks to a few months at the labor camp.

The roots of forced labor in Poland: Unlike the free labor movement between some EU countries, Poland limits its entry of Ukrai-nian workers, allowing them to work legally in Poland three months with a valid visa.

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Mayor Jacek Majchrowski smiles during the maiden voyage of Krakow’s new retro, electric tram. It’s a cafe and transport vehicle in one. The tram travels five times per day leaving from Kazimierz at 09:00. More information and tickets are available at Tourist Information Offices (Biurach Informacji Turystycznej).

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow PostK A T O W I C E 11

Joanna ZabierekSTAFF JOURNALIST

An exhibition of contemporary Finnish art will go on display August 24 in the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice. The exhibit will continue for about two months, until October 14. This is the first exhibit in Poland of the most recent Finnish art. En-titled “Certain Finland,” it was prepared two years ago by the Belgian Museum “Atelier 304” in Brussels – an independent cultural center famous for promoting artists on the outskirts of Europe. The Finnish exhibition will be composed mostly of sculptures of 12 well-known artists: Jussi Heikkilä, Timo Heino, Pekka Jylhä, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Kaija Kiuru, Kaisu Koivisto, Elina Lind,

Eero Markuksela, Reima Nurmikko, Jaakko Pernu, Anni Rapinoja and Anu Tuominen. The subtitle of the exhibition – “Animal,

Vegetable and Social Aspects in Contempo-rary Finnish Art” – illustrates the variety and nature of the display. Finnish art has a strong environmental heritage and foundation. Na-ture and natural materials have always been important. In almost all the works on display,

the artists take note of ecological disturbanc-es, as well as the fragile balance between cul-ture and nature. The artists also ask questions about the relationship between humanity and nature. They present various contempo-rary world problems, such as globalization, urbanization, pollution, genetic manipula-tions, tensions between civilizations, human rights, feminism, the place of man in the universe...and many more. After Katowice, “Certain Finland” will be on display at the Polish Sculpture Center in Oronsk, the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Wroclaw and finally the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in four languages (Polish, Finnish, English and French) and contains artist biographies as well as reproductions of their art.

Finnish exhibition opens at BWA contemporary art gallery

This is the first exhibit in Po-land of the most recent Finnish art. Entitled “Certain Finland,” it was prepared two years ago by the Belgian Museum “Ate-

lier 304” in Brussels.

THE KRAKOW POST

A rope park is the newest attraction for thrill-seekers at the Chorzow Amusement Park. The “Palenisko” rope park is open-ing just two months after a roller coaster made its debut at the park 80 kilometers from Krakow in southern Poland. The rope routes welcomed their first visitors on Mon-day, August 13, but the official opening is planned for today, August 16.

If interest is strong enough, an altitude obstacle path will be open the entire year, the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported. The Chorzow Amusement Park is one of the most popular in Poland, with an estimated 1.5 mln visitors each summer. The amuse-ment park is one of many attractions in the Silesian Central Park. Others are: Silesian Stadium, the biggest sports stadium in Po-land; Elka, the longest European cable line railway; the Silesian Planetary and Astro-nomical Observatory; the Upper Silesian Ethnographic Park; International Katowice Fairs; the Zoological Garden and other sports complexes.

The rope park is situated between the Silesian Stadium and the Zoological Gar-den and cost an estimated 450,000 zloty (120,000 euro). The rope park includes 26

wood poles, each 14 meters high, linked by steel ropes with 43 obstacles installed on them.

The park has three different skill levels and professional guides. The various de-grees of difficulties give people a chance to measure their agility and fitness in a new and unexpected way.

The lowest degree of difficulty allows even small children to cross the route at a 3-meter height.

The second route is for adults, with the platforms 6 meters high. No special abilities are needed for this line, but it demands and promotes agility, concentration and determi-nation.

The third route is the extreme one. Some obstacles hang 12 meters above the earth. “This is only for people who have very strong hands and arms,” said Wojciech Sie-prawski, chief of Trance-Blues Co., the park builder. “It finishes with over 90 meters of Tyroliennes (cable pulleys).”

Before attempting the rope walks, park staff members give safety advice. Walk-ers are attached to the steel ropes and are observed by experienced climbers ready to give assistance if needed. Ticket prices range from 15 to 30 zloty, depending on the route difficulties.

Silesian Rope Park opens August 16

Danuta FilipowiczSTAFF JOURNALIST

Last week Hungarian low cost airline Wizz Air announced the launch of a Katowice-Lon-don Gatwick flight on January 31, 2008. Gat-wick will be the third direct flight destination in London – following Luton and Stansted – from Katowice International Airport. The new route will operate daily in the afternoon.

Wizz Air is increasing its number of routes to 25 with the new connection from Katowice, further reinforcing its status as Silesia’s leading airline. The airline offers the most flights and flying routes from Katowice.

The airline is also introducing a fee for all checked-in luggage that will apply to all passen-gers with reservations for flights after October 27. Passengers checking in luggage must pay 3 euro per bag at the time of purchase or 6 euro if paying later (via call center or at the airport). The new check-in policy will neither affect the

carryon maximum weight limit of one 10 kilo-gram item nor the extra check-in 8 euro fee for each kilogram exceeding the 20 kilogram maxi-

mum weight allowance.“We are pursuing our philosophy of charging

the passengers according to their needs and we are using this change to keep our airfares down. Passengers who will only travel with carryon luggage will benefit with even lower fares. At the same time, less checked-in baggage will

further increase the operational efficiency of the airline that will help us to maintain and further improve our on-time performance,” said Head of Corporate Communication and Public Af-fairs Natasha Kazmer.

Wizz Air airline was conceived in June 2003. The first flight took off on May 19, 2004 from Katowice.

Today the airline has six operating bases in Katowice, Warsaw and Gdansk (Poland), Buda-pest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Bucharest (Romania), offering flights to almost 50 destina-tions. Wizz Air opens its seventh base in Poznan in January 2008.

Katowice airport is getting busy, as “Luf-thansa,” the German flag carrier and sixth largest airline in the world, is also boosting fre-quency of flights from Katowice to Dusseldorf (Germany).

Beginning September 1 the airline will in-crease its flights from 5 to 6 per week, after add-ing a Saturday flight.

Wizz Air launches new flight from Gatwick to Katowice

Wizz Air is increasing its number of routes to 25 with

the new connection from Katowice, further reinforcing its status as Silesia’s leading airline. The airline offers the most flights and flying routes

from Katowice.

THE KRAKOW POST

The defunct Guido coal is open to tourists again after seven months of making it safe, equipping it with informational tools such as multimedia displays and adding amenities such as an underground restaurant. One rea-son visitors want to come is that it is the only place in Europe where they descend into a mine. Other European mining museums of-fer only mock-ups of mines.

Visitors make heart-pumping descents in a mine cage to both the 19th-Century min-ing level of 170 meters underground and the 20th-Century level at 320 meters below the surface. So far the only exhibition area is the one at the 170-meter level that showcases 19th-Century mining. Plans are to open one

at the 320-meter level to showcase 20th-Century mining.

In the 19th-Century exhibition area you will see the stables where the coal-cart-pull-ing horses rested, as well as mining imple-ments, pumps and compressors.

The artifacts are in a brick-lined chamber. It is so large that it takes 1.5 hours for visi-tors to go through it. When they’re finished, they can stop in an underground restaurant.

The route to the surface takes visitors through a warren of passages to a mine cage, which they hop into for a fast ride back to the surface. The mine was closed to tourists in December 1999 because of insufficient ventilation and lack of an adequate evacu-ation route. At the time, the mine lacked funding to drill them. Now the groove has

been dug out and rebuilt. The mine owner, Gliwicka Spolka We-

glowa (the Gliwice Coal Company), lobbied hard for government money to reopen the museum. Warsaw allocated 10 mln zloty, much of which was used to drill a better ven-tilation system and carve out a better evacu-ation route. The corridors at the 170-meter level were the first to be opened to sight-seeing. There, visitors can see how miners worked in the 19th Century.

Exhibits include drainage pumps made by the Swiss company Sulzer and a 1914 com-pressor made at Zabrze’s Donnersmarckhüt-te mill. Other attractions besides the mining equipment and stables include devices to ferret out the location of coal seams and a unique trolley for transporting coal.

Most of the museum’s underground chambers have an interactive character. One multimedia exhibition shows fossils found at different levels below the surface in vari-ous parts of Poland.

Visitors also hear the recorded sounds of miners at work, horses neighing and other noises. The 20th-Century exhibition area, which will open next year, will acquaint vis-itors with more modern mining technology. It will include machinery and even a wall of coal that miners had actually worked.

Besides being a place that presents the history of coal mining, Guido is also going to be a cultural center.

Plans are to build an art gallery at the 320-meter level. A restaurant serving Sile-sian dishes will adjoin it.

Guido becomes Silesian tourist attraction

Last week Hungarian low cost airline Wizz Air announced the launch of a Katowice-London Gatwick flight on January 31, 2008.

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AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post12

Karolina NowakSTAFF JOURNALIST

People have used charcoal throughout the ages. Science, technology and art owe their development to this material, having ranged in use from the earliest cave-painting art, to contemporary art, fuel, military gas masks and the development of alimentary canal medicine. Modern cast-iron wood carbon-izing is extensively practiced where wood is available in large quantities. The largest number of Poland’s “wypalarnie,” wood burning factories, is in southeast Poland’s Bieszczady Mountains.

“Here in Bieszczady we have enough wood,” says Mieczyslaw Tymczak from one

of the factories. He and his coworkers are called “weglarze” (“coal-workers”). “I’ve been working for more than 20 years in this field, just as my father did.”

Everyday he takes wood from a pile to the furnaces. Each piece of wood weights a few kilo-grams, requiring signifi-cant body-strength to lift the pieces hundreds of times. It’s not easy to fill up 10 containers with a capacity of a few cubic meters.

“Every type of leafy wood can be used,” Tymczak says. “Oak, Alder, Birch tree – we

put it inside until the furnace is full.” Each furnace has four small chimneys for

the smoke to get out and an opening through which the wood is inserted. To burn such large quantities of fuel, oil is spread over it to make it ignite faster. The temperature of car-bonization is important; according to specialists, wood becomes brown at 220 degrees Celsius, a

deep brown-black after some time at 280 de-grees Celsius, and an easily powdered mass at 310 degrees Celsius. Charcoal made at 300 degrees Celsius is brown, soft and fria-

ble, and readily inflames at 380 degrees Cel-sius; made at higher temperatures it is hard and brittle, and does not fire until heated to about 700 or even 800 degrees Celsius.

The process has to be observed so that the wood doesn’t burn too quickly. A frag-ment of Arthur Ransome’s book, “Swal-lows & Amazons,” from 1930 describes this: “We want ours to burn good and slow,” said Young Billy. “If he burns fast he leaves nowt but ash. The slower the fire the better the charcoal.”

“To make one kilogram of charcoal you need around five kilograms of wood,” says Tymczak. The process takes about 24 hours but has to be watched carefully. “The two of us sleep here.” Indeed the workers have two poor shelters on the glade surrounded by forests.

It takes a lot of courage to sacrifice so much for work. “It’s a 24-hour job because the fire is no joke,” Tymczak says. “You have to be born to do this job.”

When the smoke changes from white to blue, the burning is finished. The charcoal’s extreme temperature makes it impossible to take out immediately. “We pour as much as 100 liters of water on it, using only buckets, and we wait hours so that it’s cold enough,” Tymczak explains. Later, the trucks take the charcoal to the sorting plant where it’s packed and sent to other regions in Poland, foundries or Germany.

In the past, massive production of char-coal has been a major cause of deforestation, especially in Central Europe. In some parts of Scandinavia, charcoal was thought to be the by-product of wood tar production that had led to rapid deforestation. All Finnish forests are estimated to be younger than 300 years old. The end of tar production in the 19th century also allowed for rapid forest re-growth.

Nowadays, ecologists are concerned about the environment because primitive methods of coal burning contaminate air, water and soil, and emit substances harmful to humans and the environment.

The burning process emits high amounts of a particular wooden gas that contains car-bon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ethane and hydrogen.

The pitch can also get into waters and the ground. Many Polish ecological orga-nizations have created a list of precautions aimed at impeding pollution of groundwa-ter, surface waters and the environment in general.

Wood burning furnaces are usually situ-ated far from villages so that the emission of gasses would not harm nearby residents.

The charcoal from Bieszczady is used in Poland and sent abroad, as well. “It’s a pity our environment suffers. We send the char-coal to Germany where it’s used but we burn it on our ground,” worries Tymczak.

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The modern process of carbonizing wood in cast iron retorts is extensively practiced where wood is available in larger amounts. The highest number of “wypalarnie,” where wood is burned, is situated in Bieszczady Mountains, in the southeast Poland.

Everyday he takes wood from a pile to the furnaces. Each

piece of wood weights a few kilograms, requiring significant body-strength to lift the pieces hundreds of times. It’s not easy to fill up 10 containers with a

capacity of a few cubic meters.

A L T E R N A T I V E C O N S U M E R

AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow PostA L T E R N A T I V E C O N S U M E R 13

Lviv: The undiscovered city

Anna BiernatSTAFF JOURNALIST

Tourists who want to see the gems of Central and Eastern Europe include Prague, Budapest and Krakow in their itineraries.

Few go to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which glitters as much as any city in the region. Lviv, only a few hours’ drive from Krakow, has often been compared with it. Both cities have unquestionable charm and beauty, and both share similar histories.

But, unlike Krakow, the tourist industry has yet to spoil Lviv, a city of about 800,000. You see tourists from all over – especially Poles in the summer – but not the throngs of visitors elsewhere.

Wandering along the beautiful cobble-stone streets or riding an old tram, you can get bewitched by the relaxed atmosphere.

Complex history and present diversity

Lviv is only 80 kilometers from the Pol-ish border town of Medyka.

Danylo Halytskiy, one of the most power-ful princes in east-central Europe, founded it as a fort in the 18th Century. He named it after his son Lev, which meant Leo, a lion.

A lion is still the symbol of the city. You see stone lions everywhere.

Lviv was part of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire for two centuries and of Poland for 500 years. It was also a melting pot of ethnic and religious groups. Greeks, Italians, Serbs, Armenians, Hungarians, Russians and Jews were among those who settled there, con-tributing to today’s variety of traditions and architecture.

After the Russians, Austro-Hungarians and Prussians partitioned Poland at the end of the 18th Century, Lviv, then known as Lemberg, became the capital of the Austrian kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

Although the Austrians changed the of-ficial language of the city to German and put most of the city’s administrative posts in Austrian hands, Lviv remained an important center of Ukrainian and Polish culture.

As in Krakow, Austrian rule was liberal. Most of the time, residents of Lviv could de-velop both culture and science freely.

With the collapse of the Habsburg empire at the end of World War I, the Ukrainian population proclaimed Lviv the capital of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic.

The Poles, who constituted a majority in the city, took up arms to ensure that Lviv and the surrounding region were Polish. They soon took control of most of the city.

The Ukrainians then attacked the Polish irregular forces defending Lviv, including a group of boys known as the Eaglets.

Heavy fighting did not end until July 1919.

In 1920 the Ukrainians signed an agreement recognizing Polish control of Lviv.

Both Polish and Ukrainian victims of the fighting are buried at the picturesque Lychakivskiy Cemetery. Conflict between Polish and Ukrainian officials about the in-scription on a plaque commemorating the fighters, and about other cemetery issues, have erupted many times over the years. In 2005 the sides finally reached agreement on the inscription. It simply says: “Polish and Ukrainian soldiers killed in the years 1918-1919 are buried here.”

An uneasy dialogue

Conflict about the Lviv Eaglets Cemetery still strains relations between the city’s Pol-ish and Ukrainian residents.

“We are a minority now,” said Zbigniew Jarmiolko, vice chairman of the Society of Polish Culture in Lviv, an organization that the Polish government finances. “Currently there are only between 12,000 and 20,000 Poles in Lviv.”

Jarmiolko added: “Local authorities in Lviv – in fact, in all Ukraine – simply ignore Poles. There is no cooperation between us and the City Council.”

When the occupation of Poland ended after World War I, Lviv became part of an independent Polish state. That led to a surge in Polish immigrants, further reducing the minority Ukrainian population.

Roman Catholics, the majority of them Poles, accounted for 64 percent of the popu-lation in the 1920s. Ukrainian Orthodox fol-lowers were in second place.

After World War II, all of what is now Ukraine, including Lviv, became part of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians expelled most of the Polish population to Poland.

The population transfers altered the tra-ditional ethnic and religious composition of the city. The Ukrainians converted most of the Catholic churches into Orthodox.

The Soviets pursued a policy of Russifi-cation in Ukraine – forcing Russian culture and institutions on the Ukrainians.

Although communism was atheistic, the Soviets grudgingly allowed some religious activity. But they wanted it Russified. So they ordered the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church abolished. Its parishes were trans-ferred to the Ukrainian division of the Rus-sian Orthodox Church.

After the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953, the policy of Russification in Ukraine was relaxed. Lviv again became a major hub of Ukrainian culture.

Three gorgeous cathedrals – Roman Cath-olic, Greek Catholic and Armenian – are among the city’s biggest tourist attractions today. Their beauty masks a tension among the branches of Catholicism, however.

The Roman Catholic bishop of Lviv, Marian Buczek, noted that “Lviv has for ages been a city of multicultural dialogue but now relations between Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics aren’t a model.”

Although the Roman Catholics built the Seminary Church, he pointed out, an agree-ment between the Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics led to both Latin and Greek masses being held there.

“However, to our surprise, the Greek Catholics built an iconostas next to the main altar, which prevented us from saying mass at the main altar.” An iconostas is a partition on which icons are placed. It separates the main altar from the rest of the church. The iconostas is only used by Greek Catholics. Roman Catholics use the main altar. After the Greek Catholics built the iconostas in the church, Roman Catholics could no lon-ger say their masses from the main altar.

Double identity

Andrzej Cirog is a carpenter for the Ro-man Catholic parishes of Lviv. He is Polish but has a Ukrainian wife and is proud of his dual identity.

“My two daughters were brought up to respect both religious traditions, Roman and Greek Catholicism,” he said.

Cirog has for years been head of the eth-nic-Polish Boy Scouts in Ukraine.

Another of his volunteer activities has been donating blood. He has done so almost 50 times. Only once has he come across xe-nophobic feelings related to the donations. It happened not in Lviv, but in Poland.

“Some time ago, when I was in Przemysl, I heard on the radio that blood was needed for victims of an accident,” he said. “I went to a hospital and wanted to donate blood. They asked me where I was from. When I replied Lviv, they said they didn’t need my

Ukrainian blood.”He noted sadness that before 1918 Poles

and Ukrainians were like brothers. The con-flict over Lviv changed that.

Has he ever considered moving to Poland? “No,” he said. “I feel happy here in Ukraine, and I am proud of my Ukrainian citizenship as well as of my Polish nationality.”

Wandering around the myth-city

Many Poles consider Lviv a kind of mythical city, a bridge between the Western and Eastern civilizations, the Latin world and the Orthodox.

Polish tourists find traces of Polish, Ar-menian and Jewish culture throughout the city. Some wish wistfully that Lviv was still Polish.

Today’s Lviv is not only a Ukrainian city, however, but also the heart of the Ukrainian independence movement and Ukrainian cul-ture. Thousands of Lviv residents traveled to Kiev to lead the Orange Revolution that prevented the pro-RussianViktor Yanukov-ich from stealing the presidential elecition of 2004. Although many Polish tourists spend only a weekend in Lviv, the city is worth a four- or five-day stay. It takes that long to explore the city’s unique atmosphere and its treasures from the past.

Some of its architectural, historical and cultural wonders date to the 13th Century. Lviv boasts more than 30 museums of his-tory, ethnography, art – and even arms.

The city has also always been an impor-tant educational center, led by its famous Ivan Franko University and its Lvivska Po-litekhnika (Lviv Polytechnic University).

In 1998 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization added the historical center of Lviv to its list of World Cultural and Heritage sites.

The historical city center of Lviv is bigger than Krakow’s Old Town.

From the city’s highest vantage point, Wysoki Zamek Hill, you can see a vast area of the Old Town with many church towers. Around it are a lot of lovely Western Euro-pean-style buildings, many built by the Aus-trians. It isn’t until you get beyond those that you find the ugly, typical Soviet blocks of apartments.

The city’s key attractions include a Re-naissance-style Market Square with a big 19th-Century Town Hall in the middle, a 14th-Century Armenian Cathedral, a 500-year-old Roman Catholic Cathedral, Boim’s Chapel, St. George Cathedral, an Opera House that rivals the one in Vienna and the 19th-Century Stryj Park.

It’s easy to get to Lviv from Krakow. One way is a night bus. The drawback is long lines getting through Ukrainian Immigration at the border at Medyka.

Another way is to take a train to Przemysl and then a 20-minute minibus ride to Me-dyka. The fastest way to get to Ukraine is to cross the border on foot in Medyka at the border post with all the Ukrainian and Pol-ish cigarette and alcohol smugglers. This is also an interesting attraction to see. On the Ukrainian side you simply catch a minibus to Lviv. The whole trip shouldn’t take more than six hours.

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Cemetery of Eaglets at the Lychakivskiy Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine.

AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007The Krakow Post14 A R T S & I D E A S

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Przemek Psikuta STAFF JOURNALIST

Cedric Tiberghien: New talent and interpretation in Harmonia Mundi recording of Chopin: 4 Ballades; Brahms: Ballades op.10

Chopin and Brahms’ Ballades, written during the peak of Romanticism, are ex-ceptionally demanding compositions. They pose a great deal of technical and interpre-tive challenges for pianists despite the ex-tensive room for personal interpretation in the rhapsodic forms. Cedric Tiberghien is among the most promising young pianists emerging from France in recent years.

He released his fourth solo album after three recitals of Bach (“Partitas”), Debussy (“Estampes,” “Images”) and Beethoven

(“Variations”) with the well-known French label “Harmonia Mundi.”

The 2005 recording of three of Bach’s

“Partitas” reveals Tiberghien as an intrigu-ing new talent.

The young pianist exhibits great sensitiv-ity in his playing and an ability to skillfully combine poetry with energetic playing.

The arrangement of the pieces is highly

original. The album begins with Chopin’s Ballades op.23 and 38, follows the Brahms cycle of Four Ballades, op.10 and ends with Chopin’s Ballades op. 47 and 52, two of the most complex and sophisticated pieces in piano repertoire.

Tiberghien commences the pieces vigor-ously displaying technical virtuosity from the first bars.

His playing is clear and precise and the performance of Brahms is charming even without the gloomy and mysterious atmo-sphere that Benedetti Michelangeli con-jures up in his unrivaled 1981 recording.

Unassuming, open, frank and contempo-rary, Tiberghien’s interpretations of Chopin (particularly Ballade No.3, op.47) are very different from the highly personal and indi-vidualistic creations of Arrau, Magaloff or Rubinstein.

New album released by gifted young pianist Cedric Tiberghien

Work of renowned Ukrainian artist Mikhail Kolesnik for sale at Gallery W&L

Unassuming, open, frank and contemporary, Tiberghien’s

interpretations of Chopin are very different from the highly personal and individualistic creations of Arrau, Magaloff

or Rubinstein.

Michal WojtasSTAFF JOURNALIST

Last April “Triosk,” a famous band from the Australian independent music scene, played in Krakow club RE. Their coming opened the door to this Saturday’s RE “Function Ensemble” show through a friendly connection with the Australian group. But the band “Function Ensemble” has no ties to any specific country.

Matt Nicholson, an Australian musi-cian, composer and sound engineer started the band 12 years ago in his homeland but has since collaborated with artists from ev-ery continent. Currently “Function” band members are Nicholson, Clare Tuckley, Pascal Babare, Felicity Mangan, Ian Wad-ley and Patrick Liddell. The musicians use various instruments to create slow sound landscapes – something between ambient, folk and jazz.

“Function” has previously released two albums: “The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds of Ordinary, Measured Light” (2003) and “The Secret Miracle Fountain” (2006). The latter took three years to record in more than 10 countries. The recording came about with the collaboration of over 30 musicians.

Nicholson says their third LP is ready and will be released at the end of 2007 by Chi-cago label Locust.

“Function” will be playing in Gdansk, Warszawa, Poznan and Krakow.

The RE club (ul. sw. Krzyza 4) gig begins Saturday, August 18, at 20:30.

Australian “Function Ensemble” visits four Polish cities: Gdansk, Warsaw, Poznan, Krakow

“Function” will be playing in Gdansk, Warszawa, Poznan and Krakow. Danuta Filipowicz

STAFF JOURNALIST

Joe Cocker, the English rock and blues singer popular since the 1960s performed last Monday, August 13 at Wawel Stadium in Krakow. Crocker is famous for his gritty voice and covers of popular songs. The program included several of his greatest hits like “Sum-mer in the city,” “You are so beautiful,” “Unchain my heart” and “With a little help from my friends,” as well as a selection from the latest album “Hymn for my Soul.” The concert was part of a European tour promoting the artist’s newest album.

Krakow was the second city on the list of five performances in Poland this year, the first performance being in Poznan on June 24. The day after the Krakow concert, Cocker left for Gdyn-ia (northern Poland) for his next show. Katowice expects the singer on November 5 and Warsaw on De-cember 10.

Despite his age, Cocker was in excep-tional vocal and physical form. How-ever some critics say his voice has been “touched” by time. Even if his classic hoarseness is the same as always, Cock-er is beginning to waver in the higher ranges. However, thanks to the ladies in the chorus and rhythmic section this slight flaw was perfectly veiled.

The 63-year-old artist, still in tip-top shape, gave the impression that his whole body was singing and his hands playing an invisible guitar or conduct-ing the orchestra.

His stage behavior has been parodied many times as something quite separate from his voice; it’s also another reason to love Joe Cocker. “This thing about me being spastic is something I can’t get away from,” Cocker is quoted on an Internet web site. “When I saw a video

of [a parody] off a TV program, with John Belushi doing me being spastic and pouring beer, I became hysteri-cal,” he added. “But moving my hand around is subconscious with me. A lot of the time I’m more or less conduct-ing the band, just keeping a feel. I don’t know why I do it. It’s just one of those things.”

The concert was organized in one of Krakow’s stadiums expecting a big

audience, but because of the expensive tick-ets (the cheapest be-ing 110 zloty – 30 euro) and the shoddy weather – with heavy rain just an hour before the concert began – the stadium was less than half-full.

The stage was too far from the audience, and only the VIP section was seated closer at 10 to 40 meters from the edge. The organizers’ lack of consideration for the audience was apparent as not even large screens were pre-pared to make up for the poor visibility.

Joe Cocker slowly “moved” the audience while playing a great concert, as always. He started with “Feelin’

alright,” then “Chain of fools” and fin-ished the show with “When the night comes” and his characteristic jump. After “Just pass it on” and “Summer in the city,” both Polish and English fans sang along. “You are so beautiful” left the audience hypnotized.

But Cocker sang without reduced tariff. “Up where we belong,” “I keep forgettin’,” “Hitchcock Railway,” “I put a spell on you” and “Hymn 4 my soul” were all sung with his signature hoarse-ness. He played every song that made him famous, including the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from my Friends,” which he sang at the Woodstock festival. It was a genuine “Best of Joe Cocker” concert that charmed the audience, giv-ing them the kind of music that brings tears of joy.

Joe Cocker rocks Krakow

Despite his age, Cocker was in

exceptional vocal and physical form.

However some critics say his voice has been

“touched” by time. Even if his classic

hoarseness is the same as always, Cocker is beginning to waver in the higher ranges. However, thanks to

the ladies in the chorus and rhythmic section this slight flaw was

perfectly veiled. Mikhail Kolesnik’s burning desire to create helped him to find a rare and truthful harmony of color. His remark-able knowledge of the ancient world together with his love for Russian art and immense sympathy for Western European painting allowed him to form a unique perception of color – an em-pire of colors that is vivid in his work. Kolesnik’s one-of-a-kind perception of color opened new paths for the artist, helping him to overcome the limits fac-ing artists of less esteem and ingenuity. Kolesnikov created numerous paintings worthy of praise for their depth and range of color. For the artist, life and art were a single process of continuous learning, and a prism through which he worked to understand nature. Ukrainian artist Mikhail Kolesnik.

LUK

Age

ncy

AUGUST 16-AUGUST 22, 2007 The Krakow Post 15

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