Easter in Warsaw

Holy Thursday. The plane from Frankfurt to Warsaw is empty. When I present my ticket and my passport I detect a flicker of surprise on the face of the woman at the Lufthansa counter, of the porter, of the German customs official. A long wait. 1 read a German newsmagazine, in which the longest article deals with sex research five or six experts assuring German manhood that they need not worry about the length of their penises, anything more than 8.5 centimeters ought to do. In front of me two Germans in Bavarian hunting suits, with pinched, high-colored Holbein faces and blue eyes, carry shotguns in fine leather cases. To go shooting in Poland, in a poor country, is a bargain now. The plane flies over Czechoslovakia, avoiding East Germany. Over Prague it changes course to the northeast.

Even before our landing, the poverty of Poland is visible. As the plane descends and swoops low I see smoke-darkened farmhouses, with faded red, battered roofs; an old, broken-down truck in the yard here and there. And now we roll to a stop on the runway. The bus is an aged German airport bus, obviously bought second-hand. The airport is reminiscent of the 1950s: a crowded, soiled hangar. Before me a Polish woman, coming from the United States or Canada, opens up her suitcase: it contains oranges and grapefruit, nothing else. They let her through. It takes me, with a single, hand-carried bag, half an hour to go through the passport booth and the customs. Through the rickety steel doors I emerge into a hall packed with people waiting for relatives to pass through the official sieve.

JL

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John Lukacs

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Holy Thursday. The plane from Frankfurt to Warsaw is empty. When I present my ticket and my passport I detect a flicker of surprise on the face of the woman at the Lufthansa counter, of the porter, of the German customs official. A long wait. 1 read a German newsmagazine, in which the longest article deals with sex research five or six experts assuring German manhood that they need not worry about the length of their penises, anything more than 8.5 centimeters ought to do. In front of me two Germans in Bavarian hunting suits, with pinched, high-colored Holbein faces and blue eyes, carry shotguns in fine leather cases. To go shooting in Poland, in a poor country, is a bargain now. The plane flies over Czechoslovakia, avoiding East Germany. Over Prague it changes course to the northeast.

Even before our landing, the poverty of Poland is visible. As the plane descends and swoops low I see smoke-darkened farmhouses, with faded red, battered roofs; an old, broken-down truck in the yard here and there. And now we roll to a stop on the runway. The bus is an aged German airport bus, obviously bought second-hand. The airport is reminiscent of the 1950s: a crowded, soiled hangar. Before me a Polish woman, coming from the United States or Canada, opens up her suitcase: it contains oranges and grapefruit, nothing else. They let her through. It takes me, with a single, hand-carried bag, half an hour to go through the passport booth and the customs. Through the rickety steel doors I emerge into a hall packed with people waiting for relatives to pass through the official sieve.