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Poland, Belated

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This is a post that was long overdue. For one, we visited in August of 2018, and I just never got around to organizing my photos and putting together a proper blog post. Second, it was my first visit in twelve years. I am 100% Polish, or as I like to say, a purebred Polak. Both my parents were immigrants, and, though I was born in America, I spent a fair bit of time in the old country as a kid, including one two-year stint in third and fourth grade. My wife joined me, and it was her first time seeing my second homeland. Once there, my niece also joined us. It was a chance for me to practice my Polish, and for her to practice her English.
We spent the first two days in my hometown, visiting relatives and wandering around. My family hails from Belchatow, a town whose recent claim to fame is that is home to the largest coal-burning power plant in the western hemisphere.
This wasn’t photo trip per se, but I had my camera with me and shot what I could. Here’s a few shots from around town.

This building was my grandparent’s home, and where I lived for two years. Our apartment was on the second floor, behind the trees in this shot. I was tickled to see that the ground floor is still a drugstore.
This is the church in town, dating back to the 17th century. It was the only church in town until a new one was built in the mid-80’s. Prior to that, services here were packed to overflowing. I once fainted here during mass, being squeezed by the throng to the point where I couldn’t breathe.
The council housing in Eastern Europe is notorious in the west, and often with good reason. However, bear in mind that much of it was built during the 30 years or so following WWII in countries that had been ravaged by the war and whose populations were booming. Today, much of the country still lives in buildings similar to this, but which have been cleaned up a bit since communist times. These buildings had a new coat of paint to break up the grey monotony.
The thing that might strike an American visitor is how sudden the transitions from urban to rural can be. Rather than fade into suburbia, many cities just… end.
I’m pretty alarmed by Poland’s recent slide away from democracy and into populist demagoguery, so I was extremely heartened to see that a lot of graffiti remains staunchly leftist. The piece here reads, “girls also don’t like skinheads.”
Every little town has a little palace where some local nobility used to live.

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