In memory of the plane tragedy

Sunday evening, just as we were heading home along ul. Polna, the police appeared and closed the intersection for a crowd that was heading our way. As they reached the roundabout it was clear that several dignitaries, the local bishop, mayor and other prominent politicians were at the head of the group.

Nearly two months after the tragic plane crash where President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 95 others died, the three-cities area is still feeling the loss. Several people on the plane that crashed while attempting to land near Katyn, Russia were from the Gdańsk and Sopot area.

Jacek Karnowski, the mayor of Sopot, addressed the approximately 200 people in attendance and explained that the roundabout that we were gathered at was officially being named for Maciej Płażynski, the Speaker of Parliament, who died in the plane crash.

Karnowski told the group that there would be more commemorations later in the month when President Kaczyński and his wife would be honored in further ceremonies.

3 Siostry

Two blocks from the Baltic Sea, nestled among the narrow streets, lies a cozy little club run by three sisters, Beata Szlapka, Ola Gosk and Natalia Gosk.  This Sopot establishment opened almost exactly one year ago and is aptly named 3 Siostry, Three Sisters.  A comfortable respite from the tourist-filled streets the club offers excellent food, inexpensive drinks, and a fun, quirky atmosphere.

With shoes nailed to the ceiling and an eccentric collection of old chairs arranged around small tables, entering the club feels similar to entering your crazy aunt's living room, bizarre but very cozy.  Natalia commented that the original plan was to carpet the entire ceiling and even nail some furniture to the ceiling, but it quickly became too expensive and impractical. Most of the decorations were donations from friends and patrons, though a few purchases had to be made to achieve the complete feel the sisters wanted.

After Ola left a previous small club partnership, she and Beata teamed up to find property for a new venture.  They found a perfect location on a corner of Bolesława Chobrego and Grunwaldzka, however, it was a bit too large for the two of them to manage on their own. They turned to their youngest sister, Natalia (pictured below), who just graduated from the University of Gdansk and was trying to raise money to go to school to become a Russian translator.  The three sisters do everything for the club -- cooking, cleaning, serving -- by themselves or with a few friends.

They opened their doors on May 29, 2009, and, according to Natalia, have had a pretty successful first year. Simply doing a Google search for "3 Siostry" turns up quite a few review sites that are overflowing with praise. Even their Facebook page boasts over 300 fans, quite a large response for a small local club just starting up.

“These three sisters are really efficient and brave,” patron Krzysztof Filipkowski remarked. "To start a business is no joke.”

Szkola Fotografii: A Tour

Sopockie Szkola Fotografii-WFH is located in Sopot. The two year, four semester photography school boasts a fully equipped dark room, a computer lab, a large, modern studio, and a small but growing library. The school's two director's Jerzy Hejber and Tomasz Maryks employ and work with several others to provide what they call a "multi-stage system of education."

Their system has three stages, the first spanning semester one and two of the program. During this stage students gain the basic theoretical and practical foundations for a career in photography. In the second stage, during the third semester, students build off of what they learned in stage one and, blended with high-skill, specialized lectures, gain intensive practice. The final stage takes place during the fourth and last semester. Here students attend graduate seminars and are required to produce a fourth semester thesis project in order to graduate.

We worked extensively with the school and it's students during our time in Poland. While in Sopot, it also served as a workspace with high speed wireless for our group.

Our first visit of the school, which was later in the evening, found the facilities quiet. The school is located in the mid to upper level of an apartment complex right off one of Sopot's busy streets. You must first ring a buzzer to be let in the building and then ascend several stair cases. Straight ahead, once the door is opened, lies a small room followed by a long hallway. In the room is a large desk for the school's secratery, Natalia Fereniec. Behind it is a smaller second desk and a large format Epson inkjet printer, used for digital prints.

The first door on the right once you enter the hallway brings you into the studios. From the ceiling hang soft boxes and strobes, all which can be maneuvered from a mounted system of rollers. The large, neutral-painted room can also take advantage of natural light from the many windows that remained covered upon our visit. The room has the ability to be sectioned off by a large sliding door and converted into two separate studios. Each of these two rooms also contains two backdrops stands, thus, at maximum capacity, making four studio workspaces.

Continuing down the hallway, the first door on the left provides entrance into a small lounge. Inside is a place to hang your coat, a small sink, and plenty of supplies for making coffee or tea. The second door gives access to a fully workable darkroom. Above the door is a light that is illuminated when someone is working in order to prevent any accidents from happening. The darkroom contains three enlargers as well as a large machine used for developing photographic paper. The third door to the left is the bathroom and the fourth is the computer lab and library. The final door holds the two director's offices.

The school had only recently made the move into the building that we visited. Though we never saw the old facilities, the current location was described as a big improvement. The small school was more than adequate for our uses and became a home away from home, a quiet refuge from the busy streets or rainy days in Sopot.

A look down the school's main hallway (standing from the director's office).

Two American students photographing the school's studio space.

American students taking advantage of the schools high-speed wireless.

Pawel Wyszomirski, an instructor at SSF-WFH, leads American students through a critique of images from a lighting workshop earlier that morning.

Jerzy Hejber shows a project he is working on after giving American visitors a brief tour of the school's facilities.

The Dining Scene

Dining in Poland is itself an experience and offers travelers a different array of cuisine not often found in the U.S. The restaurants in Poland, often fairly quaint and many family-owned, range from traditional Polish to Indian and Thai food. The amount of choices in restaurants in Poland certainly isn't slim. Further, despite the choice in the style of cuisine, each restaurant seems to create it's own unique atmosphere adding to the charm of the establishment. Pirogi, one of the most well-known Polish dishes can be found at many restaurants throughout the country. The dish itself consist of dumplings with a potato and cheese filling and often toped with sautéed onions and/or bits of bacon. Another popular dish in Poland is known as "zapiakanka."

A traditional fast food item, it's simply a piece of bread with cooked onions and mushrooms, melted cheese, and a dill sauce or ketchup on top.

In addition to traditional Polish restaurants, numerous other establishments offer international cuisine. This restaurant in Kraków serves Georgian food, including these meat-filled dumplings. The atmosphere found in restaurants throughout Poland were each unique and provided variety that cannot be found in the U.S.

In the mountains of southern Poland, wild mushrooms are a common side dish. The way the Polish traditionally eat daily is to have a small breakfast, often containing cold-cuts, a larger multi-course lunch, and a smaller dinner. The multi-course lunch often begins with a soup followed by a serving of (occasionally) potatoes and dill (one of the most common herbs used in Polish cooking), and either pork, chicken, or fish. Mushrooms and pickles are often included in this main meal.

Street Performers

Street performers can be found lining the streets of many Polish cities. From guitar players, breakdancers, and human statues to clowns and vampires, performers tried to capitalize on the summer tourist population. Some performed near their homes while others traveled short distances by train to busier and more profitable cities.

What all seemed to have in common was a little creativity and a lot of patience. Some could be found performing throughout the entire day. One guitar player in Sopot was nearly famous to the locals who had seen him performing in the same general area for years. Another spoke English after 3 years in an English prison. He was a native Pole and performed in Sopot for supplemental income.

While some performers seemed to take their time "on stage" lightly, others took their work more seriously. One middle aged man playing accordion and dressed as a clown, would stop and gesture at the hat by his feet if tourists made an attempt to film or photograph his performance before paying.

Street performers, in all their many forms, provide a dynamic and often changing cultural landscape for tourists and locals alike. Whether in the busy streets of Krakow or a quiet alley in Sopot, performers play a lasting role in Polish cultural life.

The building in the background is called "The Crooked House" and is part of Sopot's eclectic atmosphere.

PBS DGA

PBS DGA is a marketing research agency based in Sopot, Poland. PBS stands for Pracownia Badan Społeczny or Social Research Laboratory in English, they do market research for both private and public companies in a variety of different fields. One of their newer research directions involves tracking trends on the internet. Agnieszka Burska (pictured) has been using innovative methods to track consumer habits and opinions for a while now. A few years ago she did a project where she gave consumers cameras to take pictures of their things and then analyzed the results. Currently her interest has been tracking the demographics of the two most popular social networking sites in Poland, Nasza Klasa, or Our Class in English, and Facebook.

Burska explained that Nasza Klasa is used more by older generations who are more concerned with showing their former friends and classmates their current lives, it tends to be more about local social networking. She said common pictures for this site are ones showing children, cars, houses, and vacations. In contrast, Facebook tends to be more popular with younger generations who are more focused on being trendy and using more of a global approach to social networking. Their profile pictures tend to be more artistic and stylized.

Nasza Klasa has been more popular with people in Poland with over 14 million users while Facebook only has 2 million. Recently however, Facebook has been gaining in popularity since becoming available in the Polish language. Nasza Klasa has been trying to implement new features, many of them similar to Facebook. However, many of the newer features of Nasza Klasa have been unpopular and seem to be driving members away, so the title of most popular social networking site may be up in the air.

Exploring Sopot

In the morning, while waiting for all the members of the group to congregate, I wandered along the beach, people-watching and enjoying the smell and sound of the Baltic Sea.  Apparently, this area is well known for it's amber, and after a really large storm pieces of this golden treasure will wash up with the surf.  Dennis pointed out that locals knew that last nights storm was not large enough for the amber to surface, but that didn't stop the tourist from looking.  Most of the people I passed had their eyes trained on the sand.

Our afternoon was filled with culture.  We attended a half-hour poetry reading in a small theatre by the sea.  Many cultural events, like theatre and concerts are supported by the government.  We were hoping to catch a philharmonic concert that Dennis thought he had seen an advertisement for, however, it turned out that the concert is on Sunday.

Day 2: Exploration

After a long night and waking up at 5am, thanks to getting adjusted to the time difference, we woke up to spend the day exploring our surroundings. The day started off by eating a traditional Polish breakfast complete with cold-cuts, sausages, yogurt, and various other foods that were completely new to me. As a group, we proceeded out our hotel, Hotel Wanda which happens to be a block away from the Baltic Sea, to explore the shoreline.  

This part of Poland is known for it's amber, which can be found on the beach. However, as Dennis Chamberlin, the coordinator of the trip explained to me, the findings of amber on the beach aren't very common except after a storm. However, you can still find tourists searching the shore for the gem. After the shore, the group continued to just sight-see Sopot. We walked down the main street where numerous shops and historic buildings and a few churches can be seen and most of the tourists flock towards. This part of town can get fairly busy, especially during the tourist season where the Polish, Germans, and Scandinavians flock to the coast. Numerous other stops were also in order including a bakery and later a Thai restaurant for dinner. The food wasn't that bad, for being Thai food in Poland! We then hurried to a theatrical performance that was given in English, simply a series of monologues. Exploration continued for a bit, while there was confusion regarding a jazz piano performance that occured the following evening. We took turns climbing up the lighthouse to get some of the best views of the town! Afterwards, we went to see the photography school that we will be working at for the next couple of weeks. We got a personal tour by Jerzy, the director of the school. Here, most of us were highly impressed by the resources that are provided which exceed a lot of what the ISU's College of Design has to offer. We ended the day by visiting a grocery store to buy some bread, sausage, and other necessities to make dinner and we ate as a group in one of the rooms and chatted until late at night.

The Adventure Begins

Though storms in the Midwest delayed our initial departure by a couple hours, the rest of our trip went quite smoothly. Waiting in Des Moines allowed us to break out our cameras and start experimenting.  Pantalis went all out, crouching in the middle of the hallways and snapping quite a few photos before we left Iowa.

The Munich airport was abuzz with Duty Free Shops and cafes.  In typical European fashion, though it was only noon in Germany, many patrons were enjoying tall glasses of draft beer.  On the whole, the airport felt very modern.

Upon reaching the Gdansk airport, exhausted from lack of sleep, we were greeted by two of Dennis's old friends from Poland.  I got a ride home with Krzysztof, a lively old neighbor from Dennis's years in Poland. He laughingly pointed out that we could find his car by trying to find the oldest car in the lot.  The ride to the hotel featured a wide host of scenery, including modern shopping walls,  Communist-dated residences, and dense, vast forests.  During the ride Krzys provided familiar complaints of traffic and new construction.

That evening we got a taste of the night life in the Spatif bar.  The photography school that we are working with was hosting an exhibition for graduating students.  Though a little overwhelming at first, the atmosphere provided a fun introduction to young Polish life.  Adorning the walls were large black and white cutouts of Polish actors, musicians, and Spatif frequenters.  Only the next day did Dennis point out that Krzysztof is actually featured in one of these cutouts -- you can see his white pants at the top of the photo above.

Day 1: International Travel and Spatif

My journey to Poland began in Charlottesville, Virginia on Thursday, May 13 2010. I left the local airport there at roughly 2:30 pm, after saying good-bye to my parents and headed to Washington-Dulles Airport. From there, I flew overnight to Copenhagen, Denmark and finally after over 12 hours of traveling, wound up in Poland. After a long and weary flight to Gdansk, Poland, our group of 6 ISU students eventually made our way to an opening that was held at the local club "Spatif" for the Sopot Photography School (szkolafotografii.pl). This event was to celebrate the graduating class of 2010 at the school and was overall a laid back and social gathering. Various works by students were displayed while cigarette smoke hung in the air and the photography students shared beer with each other. Despite the welcoming nature of the locals, we found some difficulties at first adjusting to the new surroundings. 

The language barrier was definitely intimidating to us and it all seemed fairly overbearing. However, after a little time of adjusting to the environment, we made some new Polish friends who seemed more than eager to talk to us and get to know us foreigners better.