It is a strange feeling for an Englishman, born in the 1970’s who, has grown up knowing nothing but freedom, remembering as a child the fall of the iron curtain, not really understanding what it meant but sensing that it was something momentous. In fact If it had not been for my Grandfather, who was a very committed Russophile, my only real knowledge as a child of eastern European culture would have come from propaganda fuelled 1980’s American cinema.
Now 20 odd years later in another strange twist of my life I find myself sipping an espresso in a beautiful square at the end of my first weekend in my new home, the Polish city of Wroclaw. I am feeling a sense of freedom sat looking out onto the square that has, escaped me for so long in England. Sitting here now looking out over the buildings that surround the huge square I feel that the iron curtain has been replaced by a multi coloured tapestry that unfolds in front of me changing minute by minute to produce a new scene for me to enjoy.
In England I often felt as if was sleep walking through whole swathes of my life, as if it was unfolding in front of me but as if I was viewing it from behind a glass window and no matter how hard I banged, it was as if no one could hear me. Here life seems so much more in evidence, almost like I can feel it and myself breathing touch it even, rather than just viewing it from afar. I still feel like an outsider but as if that glass window that has separated me from the world has fallen away and all I need to do is stand up and take four or five steps forward and I myself would become part of this tapestry.
So how did I come to be here?
Five days ago we stepped out of what was my Grandfathers studio and my home for the last year and a half, the rain soaking us and our last few belongings as we forced them into the ever diminishing space in the boot, my life neatly squeezed into the back of an Opel Zafira.
Looking back at the house and the ghosts of who my Grandfather was, the night still heavy and wet, laden with tension, I wondered if I would ever escape my past or in fact if I even wanted to, was I ready to leave? I know longer knew.
It took 2 hours for that unspoken tension that had been hanging in the air to subside between us, helped by the dawn as the day first tentatively then, as if to show us the true majesty it was capable of, burst into life. As we pulled up to the ferry terminal even Ramsgate took on its own symbolic magic for us, a gateway to the continent and the unknown.
The first surprise of are trip was to be found on the freight ferry to ostende, as we slowly lurched away from our tethering and left Ramsgate behind us, we discovered that we could rent a cabin for the crossing, the next 3 hours would be spent lying on a bunk bed, the engines groaning and the sea lolling underneath us, at that moment I felt like there was no greater feeling than to sleep at sea, it was like I imagined a brief return to the womb, as I lay there semi-conscious, I visibly felt England, my recent travails and those ever present ghosts, start to slip from my neck, passing my shoulders, as if somehow the sea itself had untethered them, whispering a silent prayer I let them be cast away and down, right down to the locker where Davey Jones dwells, I was tired of carrying them in my own locker, he could take them for now.
Rested and ready for what lay ahead, we clunked and rattled our way down the gangplank and into Belgium, a long journey ahead maybe 2 or 3 days and with still no idea what we would find when we were to finally arrive in Wroclaw. The flat we had rented for the next year, from loric the frog, as he had become affectionately known, could be a phantasm, in fact it was not wholly impossible that loric the frog himself might actually be a child in Hong Kong who by the wonders of modern technology and my own stupidity, had just made himself a cool couple of thousand by sending a few emails. All these and many other questions were jostling for positions in my head (an unruly place at the best of times) as we slipped in the early afternoon sun over the border and into Germany. By evening under a new found determination the Gulag and I have flashed past Halle and on into the night and it is not long before we are leaving the lights of Leipzig behind and our target destination for day 1. As we drive deeper into the night and deeper into what was once East Germany, ahead of us red lights start to flash in the sky like some strange alien crafts, hovering all across the skyline as far as we can see, as we drive closer towards these strange flashing lights, we discover they are the warning lights above what turns out to be an army of wind turbines. On the outskirts of Dresden with The industrial buildings lit up, flanked by these strange red flashing lights; looks like a scene from Blade runner, an arresting sight, which makes me think, that the darkness really can add an otherworldly beauty to a scene that in the daylight could be wholly uninspiring. I look at the Gulag and think that right now we are a regular Daryl Hannah and Harrison Ford racing through some futuristic night.
Finally we stop, completely spent sometime after 1am at some equally surreal service station after Dresden, where we are greeted by a mixture of exhausted families, ageing hookers and inebriated truck drivers. The foyer to the motel is more like the bar in star wars than Das Holiday Inn.
Seven Hours later and still slightly delirious we have somehow already managed to make it to Poland; we have driven across Europe in Just over a day. I feel as if we should have been greeted with some sort of fanfare for this feat, but somehow the news had not reached the polish border police, who just gave us a lazy wave, some greeting for such intrepid adventurers oh well. I have forgotten to mention our other companion on this herculean Journey, Lark Freebird the rather bohemian named Sat Nav, who has been to be fair almost entirely useless for most of the journey across Europe, intermittently sulking and reloading whenever he could have helped, But as if sensing the crisis point our relationship with him was reaching, he musters one last effort and comes good as we enter the outskirts of Wroclaw and manages to deliver us to the door of our new home. Now to find out if it actually exists!
The Gulag seems to be in no particular hurry to find out if it does or not, I start to get faintly suspicious as to why, but when she suggests we walk into the Centre , I decide for diplomacy’s sake to hold my tongue, Its 10am now and all I want to do is get inside this mythical flat of ours but I grudgingly follow the Gulag over the pretty green bridge and past crumbling old townhouses, After about 15 minutes the Gulag very gently ( knowing my predilection for diva like outbursts) breaks I to me that the estate agent will not be there to let us into our imaginary flat until 3.30pm. Excepting this none to happily I turn my attention more closely to the surroundings and as we slowly make our way to the Rynek (the main square) I find myself already starting to fall like some amorous young lover for this new city. The wide avenues with space for the trams that chuntle down the middle, the buildings old and dusty, yet still so beautiful, their flaky window frames fascinated me, like a face etched over a life time by the wind, salt and the sea. We walk further and suddenly find ourselves on a peaceful island in the middle of the city, surrounded by the river that seems to spread out around the island before dividing into numerous channels, so as you walk over bridge after bridge the river seems to snake it way around you at all times.
These first impressions of the city, I feel always set the tone for how I feel about a place, at least for the first few months anyway. I can still remember now the emotions I felt when arriving as a twenty year old at the stazione termini in Rome, the sun shining in early April, the remarkable architecture and the noise and the traffic, I was in a moment captivated, in awe but with a sense that anything was possible, that this was the freedom of the traveller, that I had craved as a child sat in those school assemblies, looking up at the blue sky in the windows and always imagining what was outside. I remember that sensation again many years later this time in the stifling August heat at Nicé train station. There are also less fond memories of arriving at places, I remember to easily the dejection I felt having left Rome after two years as I touched down on a wet and grey October’s day in Dublin, to start what was to be four very unhappy months there. I also felt that same emptiness of Dublin in London as a naïve 18 year old, full of dreams that dampened as quickly as the winter took hold that year. These are both wonderful cities, but for me cities have souls, and as people we all have souls that suit some places and not others, my soul was a stranger in those cities.
But walking into the centre of Wroclaw on that August Friday morning I felt my soul and the soul of the city meeting for that very first time and with a smile accepting each other, at that moment the doubts I had about this new place and how I would cope seemed not to fill me with fear anymore but instead were replaced by a excitement I had not felt for years.
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