Solidarność

The year after I graduated from high school, my best friend Rae and I packed one small bag each (our hair took up more cubic inches than our luggage) and undertook a Grand Tour. Our adventuring included Britain and Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, a brief train trip through some small part of Germany, and a taste of Italy. By the time we finished Florence, we were Europed out. We had a brief but productive conversation that went something like this:


"I'm ready to go home now."
"Me too."


We promptly bailed on the rest of Italy and Greece. Callow youth that we were, we had no regrets. We had stories. Enough stories that we felt our time had been well spent and that we really had no great need for any more. What we really needed were some different clothes and American TV.

Our stories began in London. London was remarkable in many ways, chief among them being that we never felt so alien anywhere else. The sexism, classism, and racism was so vile and so open, we found ourselves keeping company almost exclusively with émigrés. Most precious of whom were two Polish brothers, Maciej and Michał. We called them Magic and Misha. Magic was a musician living in London whose odd hours left him free to squire us around during the afternoons and evenings. Misha was spending the summer studying something we were rather vague about except that it was international. He stayed up with us drinking cheap wine and describing life under the Soviets. The brothers' father was a prominent lawyer. He had represented Karol Wojtyła, the Archbishop of Krakow before his promotion, and was the attorney for a trade union that had started up in the shipyards of Gdansk. Neither avocation endeared him much to the regime. Both brothers fed us a steady diet of music each felt was crucial to our becoming full Citizens of the World. (Continental, in other words.) For Magic this meant a healthy dose of the Ink Spots and Linton Kwesi Johnson, for Misha this meant a heady dose of Cocteau Twins and the Polish dissident band Republika. 

The rest of our journey was wonderful and the bulk of our best stories actually took place after we left London. We woke up in Galway unable to ascertain until we left our B&B whether it was 6 PM the day we'd lain down for a nap, or 6 AM the day after. We may have destroyed a marriage by pointing out that it was beyond ridiculous for our hostess' husband and grown son to contribute nothing to the housework when she worked full time outside the home. We stayed in a seedy hôtel in the Latin Quarter which I made seem positively gruesome after I cut my ankle shaving and bled all over the bathroom. We then spent the entire night of Bastille Day blinking at Rae's cousin as he warned me of the dangers of Paris' evil humors which were certain to enter through my wound and poison me. We asked the same couple three times, in three different languages, on three different trains if there were two open seats in their compartment to which they replied:


"We don't speak French." "We don't speak German." and "We don't speak Italian."


We shared a compartment with a beautiful Yugoslavian boy with whom we could share no conversation despite our having nine languages among the three of us. Until, that is, he said "Bip?" and pulled out a six-pack of beer which we discovered to be a truly universal idiom. This facilitated an exchange in sign language whereby we established that both Tito and JFK were dead. We saw masterpieces and witnessed mysteries. We were never quite the same.


But it was Magic and Misha who left the deepest impression. I cannot begin to imagine who I would be today had I not met these sons of the lawyer to the future Pope John Paul II and to Solidarność. I have been thinking of them a great deal lately. A peaceful revolution in Egypt, the anti-union lies about Wisconsin, a conversation with a Saudi friend about reconciliation, have all pushed my fond gratitude to the surface of my psyche. Luckily, we have reconnected and I can finally tell them how much they mean to me. 


I have a play date coming up to meet a friend at the luxe-louche Russia House in Dupont. They have an excellent Happy Hour with discounted drinks and small plates that they do not advertise that is one of the best in DC. Most importantly, however, they carry my favorite vodka, Ultimat. It's a Polish wheat, rye, and potato blend that is as strong, warm, and lovely as Magic and Misha. I will lift a toast to them and to anyone struggling for dignity and justice anywhere in this world. Za tych co nie mogą!