KRAKÓW — I am stuck in a Polish time warp.

Somewhere down a narrow laneway in Old Town, the sound of 1997 draws me into Café Kratka. For anyone wondering whatever happened to the Mighty Might Bosstones, their music lives on in a dive bar amid the cathedrals and cobblestone streets of Kraków.

Ska never died, it's just resting in Eastern Europe.

Matthew sips from his pint of Zywiec as footage of bombed out apartment buildings plays on the news. He stares at the screen and shakes his head. Putin’s army shelled Borodyanka into smouldering rubble Saturday. Another offensive marked by indiscriminate destruction from the sky.

The brass-infused pop music plays on.

“Putin can dominate with bombs and jets but he will never, never, never break Ukraine’s resolve,” says Matthew, a 37-year-old pirogi salesmen. “You cannot occupy Ukraine, you cannot win that kind of war. That’s what’s so scary. It will never end if it keeps going like this.”

The TV cuts to footage of refugees swarming across the border at dusk. They’re hemmed in by chainlink fences that lead them into the arms of missionaries and paramedics. In the distance, you see people embrace under the glow of police lights.

“They are nice now, it’s all open arms now but give it time and they will start to grumble,” Matthew says. “Give them time and they’ll complain about the refugees from Ukraine taking our tax dollars. It’s just how people are. It would be the same anywhere else.”

He taps his index finger as Chris Cornell’s raspy voice blares over the stereo. Soundgarden. Another lost treasure found in Poland.

Matthew isn’t as cynical as he lets on. You can sense the affection he has for his friend Taras when they tease each other from across the counter. Taras, the bartender at Kratka, is Ukrainian and most of his family refuses to abandon their homeland for the safety of a NATO country like Poland.

“Taras like the poet?” I ask.

“Excuse me?”

“Shevchenko,” I say, pretending I’ve been some great student of his poetry when in fact I only discovered the 19th century bard a few days ago.

“Ah yes, him. Well, not quite as… expressive?”

Shevchenko is Ukraine’s most celebrated poet. Bone dry humour about living under the yoke of his Russian neighbours. A sample:

If only I could see
my fields and steppes again. Won’t the good Lord let me, in my old age,
be free?
I’d go to Ukraine,
I’d go back home.
There they’d greet me— glad to see the old man. There I’d rest,
I’d pray to God,
There I’d—but why go on? There will be nothing.
How am I to live in slavery with no hope?
Do tell me,
please,
lest I go crazy.

Matthew and Taras (the bartender not the poet), say it’s their duty to help welcome displaced Ukrainians but that Putin’s war is already hurting Poland. Trade with their eastern neighbour and Russia is suffering and, as many if not most of the 1 million refugees have passed through Poland’s border, it will inevitably come with additional public spending and waining confidence in the markets.

Unlike most European Union states, Poland still uses its own currency — the złoty — and doesn’t have the luxury of other member states to stabilize it in times of conflict. Until about eight years ago, Poland’s deficit was considered “excessive” making it ineligible for the Euro. Considering Mediterranean EU members like Spain and Greece have both called on EU to help bail them out of financial crisis, there’s a feeling that Poland’s situation is tainted with a touch of condescension from the western nations.

Poland got its financial house in order in 2016 and continues to rein in its expenses. Whereas deficits accounted for 5.1 per cent of GDP in 2012, that figured dropped to 0.7 per cent by 2020. France’s was 9.1 per cent that year.

But now Poland’s right wing Law and Justice Party is no longer interested in adopting the Euro, declaring that currency “should benefit Poland and not the other way around.”

The governing party is extremely conservative in its views on reproductive rights, homosexuality and taking in non-white refugees. In fact, it took power in 2015 after millions of refugees escaped the Putin-backed Assad regime on foot and into Eastern Europe. Law and Justice ministers have claimed these people would spread disease and poverty in Poland and one went so far as to invoke the need for a medieval ruler like Charlemagne who “stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe in the eighth century.”

Before you look down at the Poles, remember how popular that sort of rhetoric is becoming in the west. And before blaming our American neighbours, remember that one of Quebec’s most influential columnists, Mathieu Bock-Côté, tries to obscure his anti-Muslim bigotry with nice words and a PhD in sociology. For the record, he once shilled for the Russian propaganda outlet Sputnik France.

Read into that whatever you like.

Though their government is extremely conservative, the Poles I met were young and progressive minded.

“I have friends who’ve taken five people in,” Maddie told me earlier Saturday, when we met on a flight from Paris to Kraków. “Only two of them can work. The rest, they struggle with the language barrier. What kind of work can you do when you don’t speak Polish or English?”

When the full-scale invasion began, Maddie went to a pharmacy in France and loaded up on medical supplies to send back home and over the border. She was born and raised in Poland but started travelling Europe at 14 to pursue a modelling career. Maddie lives in Paris now.

She offered to introduce me to her friend Mikolaj, a model with 100,000 Instagram followers whose been moonlighting as a war medic. His latest post: “I would like to inform you that my modelling career has been suspended due to the moral obligation to provide humanitarian aid. Some costumers will understand. Others won’t. One way or another, the value of human life is what matters most to me.”

krawieckim

A post shared by Mikolaj Jakub Krawiecki (@krawieckim)

Maddie’s going home to work on a shoot and visit her mother for a few days. Lately, she’s been trying to get her mom to move west, far from the war, far from an unpredictable despot.

“She won’t move though,” Maddie said. “She’s too proud, she’s too attached to Poland. I worry about her being so close to the war. Putin is unpredictable, there are rumours he’s isolated himself for two years because he’s terrified of COVID. Rumours he may be going mad.”

Poland’s embrace of Christian populism makes people like Maddie cringe. A 2020 court ruling criminalized abortion except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother’s life is at risk.

“Even something like the 72-hour pill, you can’t get that anymore,” Maddie said. “You used to have to talk to a doctor and it was embarrassing and awkward but you can’t anymore. Not everyone wants to be a parent, not every woman wants men to make decisions about their body.”

Back at Café Kratka, the news cuts back to war. Matthew is a fan of the online shooter Counterstrike and sometimes plays against Russians. He says they speak English to each other through a headset

“I was playing with a Czech and two Russians and fuck man the Russians believe their own propaganda,” said Matthew. “They said their is no war, that it’s all an invention of the west. They say they’re being greeted as liberators. Tell that to the people of Kyiv, fuck. I muted them after that.”

Matthew does, however, give the Russians credit when it comes to their propaganda.

“It’s smooth, smooth propaganda. It looks just like the news but it’s like … unreality,” he says. “They had Larry King on Russia Today. Larry King! He’s not a nobody. In Poland, our propaganda is…”

He pounds the bar.

“Too strong, too obvious.”

I ask what he thinks of American politics.

“You have Democrats and Republicans, you have a Democrat truth and a Republican truth, it’s fucking crazy man,” he says. “Fox News, CNN, propaganda too!”

The subject moves on Matthew’s favourite American filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino. He says he just re-watched Death Proof — an exploitation film that pits three tough women and their Dodge Challenger against a homicidal Kurt Russel and his Charger.

“Kurt Russel, he’s the man,” Matthew says.

Outside, hundreds march against Putin along Old Town’s winding roads, waiving Ukrainian flags and chanting “Clear the skies.” Not exactly a call for peace — they want NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukrainian airspace — but from what they’ve seen of Putin’s government, compromise isn’t the Russian president’s strong suit.

Apologies for the poor quality. Didn’t have my camera loaded up.

***

I awake to the sound of church bells echoing off the stone walls and streets of Old Town.

Breakfast here is smoke fish, cold meats, cheese, rye bread with powdered sugar and two double espressos to wash it all down. I’ve heard that food and water are hard to come by in eastern Ukraine but things are more stable in Lviv, where I’m heading once this goes to print.

“You’re staying in Poland, right?” Marek, the car rental guy asks.

My Ukrainian fixer Anna told me to that sometimes you have to lie in service of a greater truth.

“Of course.”

“Are you a tourist?” he asks.

“Journalist.”

“Fucking Russians are crazy man. This is terrible, it will go on for years.”

He hands me the keys to an SUV with big tires and enough trunk space for two an extra canisters of gasoline should the gas shortages get worse outside of Lviv.

I spoke to a TV reporter from a national Canadian outlet after arriving in France and he told me his bosses hired a security firm to get them into Lviv. It makes sense, these are employees with families, children and the network owes them the safest possible trip into a war torn country.

The Rover does not have employees so I can afford to cut a few corners. My security is Anna and my insurance is $4,000 in American currency duck tapes to my left thigh.

Please don’t tell anyone that.

The churches are emptying out now to the sound of organs and what I believe are brass instruments. Children dressed in their finest Sunday attire run trod down the stone road as I finish packing.

Godspeed.

Editor’s note

Thank you to those who’ve offered words of support, donated to the cause and subscribed. It fills me with love and that’s the greatest weapon any journalist can have. Well, that and a portable phone charger (which I have).

God bless you all.

The Rover

Part Zero: Truth and "Unreality" in Poland