Example 1: http://www.expatarrivals.com/spain/zaragoza/moving-to-zaragoza
Example 2:
Up in the air: ‘Ashclouded’ in Gdansk
When Rachel Harris found herself stuck in Poland due to volcanic ash, she had a chance to discover more about the people and politics than she had planned.
“Don’t worry, I trust Ryanair not to land in fog,” I joked to a friend online when he said he hoped I didn’t have to fly soon. “Haven’t you heard the news?” he asked “there’s been a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland and the dust has brought all air travel to a halt in Europe.” I was in Poland so I thought he had been referring to the air crash which had killed the President, his wife and many of Poland’s political, military and intellectual elite a few days earlier. I was due to fly home the next day.
I’d been enjoying my freedom, having a space to think, a break from routine and my busy life at home. But now, instantly, I felt stuck, missing my family, realising what was important to me.
Gdansk was in shock, the streets were quiet, music was banned in public places as a week of mourning had been declared a day before my arrival. I was supposed to be there for a week, on an Erasmus scheme teaching English to Politics students in a private University. Luckily, classes were going ahead as normal. My lessons required the students to invent their own headlines based on events in the news that day.
“Premature death of Polish President”, “Tragedy in Smolensk – President of Poland is dead", they wrote.
My host Michal, a Professor of Law who had been on first-name terms with the President and others who were killed, spoke an antiquated but rich English, a textbook English which he’d learned maybe thirty years before, pre-iron curtain days. He had tried hard to travel to Britain as a young man, but found it impossible. You could travel to the West, he explained, but the costs were completely prohibitive. He’d offered his pen pal’s mum a piece of amber in exchange for paying his passage by ship to Britain but was politely refused; it wasn’t that he was being cheeky; that had been his only possible way of getting there.
Gdansk has been famous for its amber work for centuries, proudly awarding itself the title 'the amber capital of the world'. Stalls selling amber and silver jewellery line cobbled St. Mary’s street and the streets around the harbour. That week I was one of their only customers. Polish flags of all sizes hung at half-mast throughout the city. One of the main gates to the city, a huge building combining Gothic and Renaissance features, is now the Amber and Torture Museum. This strange combination is due to the fact that it had contained the city gallows and prison cells; it had been a place to torture soldiers who slept on duty and other wrongdoers in medieval times.
Although it was very heavily bombed in the Second World War, the Old Town has many medieval structures, rebuilt and restored in their original style. The enormous Bazylika Mariacka (St. Mary’s Basilica) is the largest brick sacral structure in Europe. An imposing medieval crane has become a symbol of Gdansk, just as the Neptune Fountain represents Gdansk’s seafaring legacy. The whole Old Town area is compact enough to stroll around in hours. It contains a wealth of museums all only costing 10 zloty (about £3) to get in.
Gdansk is perhaps most famous for its shipyards and the role played in the fall of Communism. It was here that Lech Walesa and his fellow workers formed Solidarity, the free trade union which spread across Poland and shook the iron grip of Poland’s communist regime. Next to the shipyard gates stands the imposing Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, three 42m high stainless steel crosses with anchors at the top, made by workers to remember victims of brutally-suppressed strikes in 1970. The gates and the monument were draped in Polish flags and a sea of red candles covered the area when I visited. Inside the nearby Solidarity Museum, with its multimedia ‘Roads to Freedom’ exhibition, I saw the plywood boards with the 21 handwritten demands of the 1980 strikers.
I’d seen all this when I received the news about the ash cloud. The next night I spent six hours on the Internet trying to find ways home – it was looking certain my flights would be cancelled and I would be stuck for another week.
They were cancelled. Having been warned against travelling south to Warsaw or Krakow, I joined many of the Polish population in watching the long, slow funeral of the President Lech Kaczynski and his wife. I watched it in comfort in my room in ‘Villa Anna’, a Bed and Breakfast with a very friendly, though non-English speaking owner, in a suburb of Gdansk. With wifi and a huge breakfast included in the reasonable price, I was in no mood to move.
I made a decision to get to know Gdansk better. I took the tram to the Old Town (easy and cheap), wandered the streets, taking photos and convincing myself that I was enjoying my freedom. With crisp but sunny April weather, I drank tea and ate cakes in the many teashops and tried to ignore that nagging feeling of not knowing when I’d get home to my family.
I re-visited the Monument at the Shipyard and pondered the sea of candles in small red candle-holders at the foot of the monument. And then I saw a coffin being driven out of the shipyard. It was the body of Anna Walentynowicz, the ‘mother’ of Solidarity; it was her firing that sparked the first strike wave. She had been a leading agitator in the movement, and, having survived the military crackdown that followed, she’d also been killed in the air crash - so the candles were for her! A few days later, I joined Michal at her funeral, offering red-and-white flowers alongside the other mourners. I left Poland with a sense of connection to the feelings of the people at this time; the extra week had given me an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the place.
1000 words
FACT BOX:
Villa Ana www.villa-anna.pogodzinach.net : Double room with breakfast and wifi - 180 zloty(about £30) a night
Main course with one drink in a restaurant: 30 zloty (£9)
Museum entrances: 10 zloty (£3)
Tram – single ticket: 3 zloty (£1)
Small silver and amber necklace or earrings: 30 zloty (£9)
Tea and cake in a teashop: 10-15 zloty (£3-4)
When Rachel Harris found herself stuck in Poland due to volcanic ash, she had a chance to discover more about the people and politics than she had planned.
“Don’t worry, I trust Ryanair not to land in fog,” I joked to a friend online when he said he hoped I didn’t have to fly soon. “Haven’t you heard the news?” he asked “there’s been a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland and the dust has brought all air travel to a halt in Europe.” I was in Poland so I thought he had been referring to the air crash which had killed the President, his wife and many of Poland’s political, military and intellectual elite a few days earlier. I was due to fly home the next day.
I’d been enjoying my freedom, having a space to think, a break from routine and my busy life at home. But now, instantly, I felt stuck, missing my family, realising what was important to me.
Gdansk was in shock, the streets were quiet, music was banned in public places as a week of mourning had been declared a day before my arrival. I was supposed to be there for a week, on an Erasmus scheme teaching English to Politics students in a private University. Luckily, classes were going ahead as normal. My lessons required the students to invent their own headlines based on events in the news that day.
“Premature death of Polish President”, “Tragedy in Smolensk – President of Poland is dead", they wrote.
My host Michal, a Professor of Law who had been on first-name terms with the President and others who were killed, spoke an antiquated but rich English, a textbook English which he’d learned maybe thirty years before, pre-iron curtain days. He had tried hard to travel to Britain as a young man, but found it impossible. You could travel to the West, he explained, but the costs were completely prohibitive. He’d offered his pen pal’s mum a piece of amber in exchange for paying his passage by ship to Britain but was politely refused; it wasn’t that he was being cheeky; that had been his only possible way of getting there.
Gdansk has been famous for its amber work for centuries, proudly awarding itself the title 'the amber capital of the world'. Stalls selling amber and silver jewellery line cobbled St. Mary’s street and the streets around the harbour. That week I was one of their only customers. Polish flags of all sizes hung at half-mast throughout the city. One of the main gates to the city, a huge building combining Gothic and Renaissance features, is now the Amber and Torture Museum. This strange combination is due to the fact that it had contained the city gallows and prison cells; it had been a place to torture soldiers who slept on duty and other wrongdoers in medieval times.
Although it was very heavily bombed in the Second World War, the Old Town has many medieval structures, rebuilt and restored in their original style. The enormous Bazylika Mariacka (St. Mary’s Basilica) is the largest brick sacral structure in Europe. An imposing medieval crane has become a symbol of Gdansk, just as the Neptune Fountain represents Gdansk’s seafaring legacy. The whole Old Town area is compact enough to stroll around in hours. It contains a wealth of museums all only costing 10 zloty (about £3) to get in.
Gdansk is perhaps most famous for its shipyards and the role played in the fall of Communism. It was here that Lech Walesa and his fellow workers formed Solidarity, the free trade union which spread across Poland and shook the iron grip of Poland’s communist regime. Next to the shipyard gates stands the imposing Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, three 42m high stainless steel crosses with anchors at the top, made by workers to remember victims of brutally-suppressed strikes in 1970. The gates and the monument were draped in Polish flags and a sea of red candles covered the area when I visited. Inside the nearby Solidarity Museum, with its multimedia ‘Roads to Freedom’ exhibition, I saw the plywood boards with the 21 handwritten demands of the 1980 strikers.
I’d seen all this when I received the news about the ash cloud. The next night I spent six hours on the Internet trying to find ways home – it was looking certain my flights would be cancelled and I would be stuck for another week.
They were cancelled. Having been warned against travelling south to Warsaw or Krakow, I joined many of the Polish population in watching the long, slow funeral of the President Lech Kaczynski and his wife. I watched it in comfort in my room in ‘Villa Anna’, a Bed and Breakfast with a very friendly, though non-English speaking owner, in a suburb of Gdansk. With wifi and a huge breakfast included in the reasonable price, I was in no mood to move.
I made a decision to get to know Gdansk better. I took the tram to the Old Town (easy and cheap), wandered the streets, taking photos and convincing myself that I was enjoying my freedom. With crisp but sunny April weather, I drank tea and ate cakes in the many teashops and tried to ignore that nagging feeling of not knowing when I’d get home to my family.
I re-visited the Monument at the Shipyard and pondered the sea of candles in small red candle-holders at the foot of the monument. And then I saw a coffin being driven out of the shipyard. It was the body of Anna Walentynowicz, the ‘mother’ of Solidarity; it was her firing that sparked the first strike wave. She had been a leading agitator in the movement, and, having survived the military crackdown that followed, she’d also been killed in the air crash - so the candles were for her! A few days later, I joined Michal at her funeral, offering red-and-white flowers alongside the other mourners. I left Poland with a sense of connection to the feelings of the people at this time; the extra week had given me an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the place.
1000 words
FACT BOX:
Villa Ana www.villa-anna.pogodzinach.net : Double room with breakfast and wifi - 180 zloty(about £30) a night
Main course with one drink in a restaurant: 30 zloty (£9)
Museum entrances: 10 zloty (£3)
Tram – single ticket: 3 zloty (£1)
Small silver and amber necklace or earrings: 30 zloty (£9)
Tea and cake in a teashop: 10-15 zloty (£3-4)