Communism Deluxe Tour of Nowa Huta in Krakow

The amusement saw no signs of abating from the moment we were picked up. 

I was standing outside our hotel, smoking a cigarette, when I heard this almighty racket coming down the road. As I looked up to find the source, my friend joined me. We both immediately gave in to heartfelt guffaws.

What other reaction could there have been to two men beaming at us like chipmunks, from behind the window screen of a tiny, rickety car?  The thing looked like it was made from plastic and held together with rust!

Yet the men inside it were obviously having so much fun. It was infectious.

Our Communism Deluxe Tour Guide was Philip. His gleeful companion was another tourist enjoying the ride.

Philip explained that the Trabant was now a classic car in Poland.  No-one in their right minds would drive one, unless they were connoisseurs of vintage iconology. As a child born into Communist Poland, Philip could recall being driven around in one of these. Everyone had one.

His father had put down a deposit and paid it off in three years. Still the Trabant never turned up. He'd owned it for another three years, before it was finally delivered. Thus was the efficacy of the system.

The Trabant reminded me of the old Ford Cortina, that my family were driving around in during the 1970s. It sounded like it too.  There was the same propensity for bits to fall off, if you knocked them in the wrong way.

It wouldn't be the last time that Communist era artifacts (and architecture) would make me recall Britain in the '70s. In many ways, it was like going home, time traveling into my own past.

I loved every second!  Especially driving around in that Trabant, grinning at startled passers-by. Make no mistake. The Communism Deluxe Tour is a whole lot of fun.

Nor was this a particularly wonderful site for the industry that would replace them. The steelworks could not be fueled by any mines in the region. The raw materials were simply not there. They had to be shipped in, at great (and ultimately crippling) expense from elsewhere.

However, just up the road was Krakow, that great city of wealth, privilege and middle class culture. For centuries, Wawel Castle had been the seat of Poland's monarchy.  While the aristocracy may have relocated themselves, and capital city status, to Warsaw, they'd left behind a population that was distinctly bourgeoisie.

That was why Stalin ordered Nowa Huta to be built right there. It brought the working classes right into the heart of Poland's hierarchy. It created the conditions in which Communism could flourish.

But for the Poles lured by the promise of a fine home and secure employment, there was a bit of a shock in store.

First they had to build it.  None of the literature and campaigners had mentioned that little snippet. The pictures had depicted what it would all look like, not what was there right now. The incomers were all handed a shovel and told to get to work.

They were in this together.  Workers Unite!

The Avenue of Roses (pictured above) is a main pedestrian thoroughfare leading to Nowa Huta's Central Square. 

It was once famously home to a three storey high statue of Lenin. The Poles pulled it down after the Solidarity Movement succeeded in kicking out the Soviets.

Also now missing were the huge letters lining the rooftops, which left the Polish population in no doubt that all this had been a gift of the USSR.

They struggled to hit the right note of gratitude, when the funding dried up from Moscow, taking the steelworks with it.  The shops emptied of all supplies and Martial Law banned all employment. They'd barely managed a muttered 'thank you', when it was all going well, and everyone was suddenly a brick-builder!

I doubt they even tried, when a wrong word could see people disappeared; nor when a sixteen year old boy, protecting his grandfather bodily from crowd control water chutes, discovered that rubber bullets were hidden in the stream. The memorial to the boy is over the road from the Catholic church, which was itself constructed under terms of stoic protest and violence.

Anecdotes and histories abound on the Communism Deluxe Tour, punctuated by complementary shots of vodka (or whisky, if like me you're allergic to the stuff). We visited the locations, heard the stories told with fascination and humor, then jumped back into our trusty Trabant.

Along the way, we visited an apartment which frankly looked a lot like the one my Nan lived in back in Britain.  My friend found her own grandmother's house-coat hanging on a peg.

Did I mention that Soviet era Poland was a lot like Britain in the '70s and '80s?  Though not quite as underscored by the Communist ideology.

Finally we were deposited in a Milk Bar (Bar Mleczny), which offered the cheapest food in Poland. Another relic of the age, they were established in order to ensure that workers could afford at least one hot meal a day. 

The menu is still subsidized by the Polish government, hence the queue stretched nearly to the door.  It gave Philip ample opportunity to describe how his childhood was pretty much spent standing in queues too. But that was Communism for you.

And probably much less fun at the time, than it was for us visiting. We were like the Greek girl in Pulp's Common People, delighted tourists glimpsing another culture. But yes, it was fun. I thoroughly recommend that you do it too.