There can be only one!

The small market town of Uniejów once again became transformed into a medieval battleground for the third annual knights competition. Since starting in July 2005, the festival has become a large regional attraction. Held in the grounds of the 14th Century Uniejów castle, the latest incarnation is an extremely professional affair.

Awell as the fights, there is an array of arts and crafts stalls as well as the usual sausage sizzle bar. Uniejów is fast becoming a tourist attraction, that will only be improve by the opening of a geo-thermally heated aqua-park next year along with a treatment centre.

I will undoubtedly go to the fourth and i recommend that all of you do likewise if you are in the vicinity.

Łódż Arising

It is rare that the journalists at Poland Monthly venture much outside the safe environs of Warszawa, with industrial projects in Silesia and the like being perhaps the exception. However, I was pleased to see this months PM had an article about Łódź. What is more, it wasn’t purely economy or business related. It was on a grander scale; that is Culture and People!! I had heard through the Grape Vine about Atlas owner Andrzej Walczyk and film maker David Lynch’s ambitious project for Łódź. However, I had not read the details about it in an English language article (Polish still mainly being of the spoken/listening variety despite being her three years). The plans are defiantly ambitious and will revolutionize the center of Łódź. Not mentioned in the article is the rebuilding of Łódź Fabryczna (one of the two main stations in Łódź). The plan apparently is to build an underground station akin to Warszawa’s. In a city with 120+-year-old buildings and street foundations this will require a delicate hand. That said if completed, then it will immensely improve and somewhat dreary and dare I say it foreboding place.
What does this all mean for Łódź? Well, Łódź has a somewhat poor reputation. It is not up there in the top destinations in Poland. Krakow, the Tri-City, the capital and others outshine poor old Łódź. After seven years of coming to Poland as a tourist and visiting mainly the Tri-City and Warszawa, I moved to the Łódź region having never actually seen it (Strange but true!). After being here for three years I can honestly say I love the city and wouldn’t swap it for any other in Poland. Due to its poor reputation it doesn’t have the pretension and attitude of some of the others. That said, it has original architecture, dating back to the 19th Century. This is not the Regal grandeur of Krakow or the merchants haven of Gdansk, but the hard reality of an industrial epicentre. Combine this with a bountiful supply of universities colleges and academies and you have the makings for a cultural centre. Lynch has recognized something that has been hidden for a long time and I hope will finally be let out of the bag.

Ok, enough if the flag-waving, Let us just sit back and see what will happed. After the neglect of the post-industrial period, Łódź can only get better!!

Mixed up Priorities

We seem to be being led astray somewhat by the PiS government with regards to the important issues in Poland. Everyday we are inundated with stories concerning the ever present drives of the government to de-communise Poland with now plans to removal street sings. However, have we not got more important things to be concerned about. According to many, the average pay in Poland is around 2,500 Zł. I hear this all the time and bulk at the though of this. It is a figure banded around all over the place but seems to be far off the mark by what is see all around me. The World Salaries website corroborates these figures and yet this just makes thinks worse for me. It says for example that gross pay for teachers is 2,811 zł. Yea right! In what world are these people living? The site says it gets its info from the Polish government, yet are we to assume that this is correct data. I know that there is an inbuilt problem with the representation of statistical data labelled as "average". Most average figures are taken from mean averages and thus skew the figures to give an over-inflated value of the statistics represented. I am sure that if a mode average or a median average taken we would see that the reality is far from this. I have two jobs and struggle to bring home much over 3,000 net. I am don't forget a foreigner and in some respects getting paid an inflated salary (which is greatfully taken) there for I can not see how the average person (may be typical person), can accumulate 2,500 zł.

The point of what I'm saying? Well, aren't there more useful things the government could be doing rather than designing ways to remove historical relics. I accept that i did not live here through communism and so may be can not appreciate the pain caused by it. However, shouldn't we be moving forward and not continuously be going backwards?