We’ve been living here for just over a year now and are finding that Poland in this transitional era is like a time capsule of old-fashioned manners, where hats are doffed, bows are executed, heels are clicked and ladies hands are routinely kissed in greeting. Checking your hat and coat with an attendant at any restaurant is de rigueur and shopping is resolutely ‘at the counter’ as customers patiently form three lines, the first to request items and receive a ticket, the second to make their payment and the third to pick up the items with the receipt.
These customs are from a world my father thought had been lost forever and now they are just two hours flying time away- so we entertain him often. Equally fascinating for him having lived through and fought in the conflict are the rich abundance of World War Two memorabilia and sites. Some that we have visited are impossibly haunting and sad, like the former Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka, the memorial to the failed Warsaw Uprising, and the site of the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn forest. Others provoke awe, like the massive, reinforced steel and concrete bunkers of the ‘Wolfschanze’ (Wolf’s Lair). The location Hitler and the German high command’s main wartime headquarters for over three years, this is where Colonel von Stauffenberg made his heroic assassination attempt in the summer of 1944.
Then there is Peenemunde on the Baltic coast, the manufacturing and launch site for the terrifying V2 ‘flying bombs’ fired on Britain in the last months of the war. We had lunch a few miles from there at Hermann Goering’s former wartime summer residence, now a cliff top hotel and spent a rather creepy night in the Grand Hotel in Sopot, a Baltic seaside resort where Hitler kept a suite overlooking the beach. A tour of my office also provides a living lesson in Cold War history. The building is a former school for high-ranking Communist Party members’ children with its own nuclear shelter in the basement, which we have re-purposed as a video editing suite and staff cafeteria.
My father has also grown to love some of Poland’s old-fashioned staples, especially Żurek- a sour rye soup garnished with smoked sausage and hard-boiled eggs.
Żurek: Serves Four to Six
This is a lovely, warming autumn soup. Perfect as the nights draw in.
For the Kwas (sour rye):
2½ oz rye flour
1 pint of boiled water, cooled
1 clove garlic
Mix the flour with a little of the water to form a paste in a non-metal container. Let it settle for a few minutes then add the rest of the water with the garlic. Cover and leave to ferment for 4 to 5 days. Strain the liquid and discard the solids.
For the soup:
2 pints beef stock
3½ oz bacon, diced
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tbsp dried porcini mushrooms, washed and soaked in warm water until soft
¾ pint kwas
½ pint whipping cream
¼ tsp marjoram
½ garlic, minced
To serve:
Hard-boiled eggs
Smoked sausage
Cooked diced potatoes
To make the soup, heat the stock and then add in the bacon and onion and simmer for 10 minutes. Chop the mushrooms finely and preserving the liquid, add them to the stock. Add the kwas, whipping cream, marjoram and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes.
Pour the hot soup into a serving bowl over the hard-boiled eggs (cut in halves), smoked sausage and potatoes and serve.
We have kept quiet about one less than savoury aspect of our adopted homeland’s throwback ways. Our landlord, an innocent looking old devil, lives in the adjacent property like a feudal overlord. Not only has he been charging us and our American neighbour outrageous rents, he also has some young Poles living in wooden huts behind a dense thicket of trees and a mud wall at the rear of the property, whom he treats like so many indentured servants. Our two year old daughter was the first to make friends with them and one of the young couples regularly babysits for us.
It’s taken a few quarters of ridiculously large power bills for us to realise that he has also been charging us for their utilities and will no doubt take us a whole lot longer to get our money back.
There’s never a dull moment in the ‘Wild East’!
What a fascinating glimpse of the best and worst of Poland in the 1990s. And what a joy to read about Marco's father again - a highly intelligent and amusing man and a good friend.
Like my favourite Polish film,”Ida” I always think of Poland in black and white. I am sure it will be delicious but always think of Polish food in the same way. I’d love to be proved wrong.