International Study Seminar – Day 7
Saturday, March 15, 2014
– written by Ryan Murphy, Andrew Bowman, & Tadgh Davis – Presiding Fellows
After spending a couple of days in Berlin, Saturday marked our first full day in Warsaw, Poland. Following a brief overview on the weekend’s activities, the group departed our hotel for our walking tour of Warsaw.
Prior to stepping into Warsaw’s Old Town Square, we see photos of what it looked like before reconstruction.
Our tour started at Sigismund’s Column, which honors a former king of Poland. He moved the capital from Krakow to Warsaw, and was interestingly of Swedish birth. It’s easy to overlook how interconnected the monarchies of Europe were and how that affected world history. Our guide walked the group through the Old Town section which, though completely destroyed in WWII, was rebuilt as before. The heritage and sense of nationalism of Polish citizens is very high–they started collecting donations to rebuild part of Old Town even before they were freed from Soviet rule.
We then went to a Catholic Church. Over 55% of baptized adults attend church regularly, the highest in Europe. The Catholic Church historically has been associated with strong national pride–during the Cold War, it was a unifying association that citizens latched onto. And further back it separated them from their neighbors culturally (Prussia was Protestant and Russia was Orthodox).
Brittany walks around Warsaw’s “wishing bell” three times – in hopes that her wish will come true!
Poland was the first European nation to adopt their own constitution, but this relatively new development was foreshadowed centuries before when Poland elected their kings. After a dynasty ended with no children heirs to the throne, the gentry decided to elect kings. It worked because 8-10% of the population were noblemen, versus 1-3% in other European countries. Not nearly as open as our version of democracy, but still an interesting form of government (not without corruption buying votes–sounds familiar even today).
The group was a bit anxious to get to our late lunch after the conclusion of our tour, as we had to battle some cold and windy weather throughout the morning. We had a great lunch at Lokal Bistro, which is in Old Town Warsaw. At the restaurant, we met a young British singer, Katy Carr, who sang us a few verses from her Polish album Paszport.
During the afternoon, we spent some more time visiting a few other sites in Warsaw with our tour guides. We really enjoyed the day spent with our guides and learning more about the rich Polish heritage.
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