A Western Kid Living in Communist Poland
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
So, basically, the tragedy of the commons is painfully accurate.
People would just throw their trash out of the window of their apartment building, because why not? Never mind that this created a terrible smell and there would be trash right where people walked.
They meticulously cleaned the tiny bits of concrete road in front of their house, but not care about the very dangerous open pothole that would be hidden in a puddle after a little bit of rain. In fact, someone probably took the pothole because it was somehow useful to them.
From what I remember, this changed over time, and people became more aware of the fact that the public space was also their space.
In a way, it's a bit like doing chores because your authoritarian, cold parents force you to. You'll do the minimum, and never do it because you feel it's a good thing to do.
Maybe it's not so much that people don't want to work for the common good, but rather that forcing them too just doesn't work.
Either way, great blog post and it reminded me of my own experiences!
"A tent on wheels", that is an excellent description of the 2CV. I saw a frustrated owner who couldn't get the key working literally pull off the side door, and put it in the back and drive off.
The descriptions of the forms and questions was also great, and I've concluded that there is a corollary to the Spiderman "Great Power" quote that goes something like "With great Bureaucracies comes great ass covering." Basically everyone in those systems seem to be in fear that a colleague or a supervisor is going to "get them" if they screwed up something, and the endless forms and papers and signing is a way of creating defensive evidence that they were not the ones the screwed up, if what ever it is that is happening turns out to be a problem. It is really a cancerous organizational dynamic and one that leads to huge inefficiencies.
And this article is referencing a time only around 25-30 years ago...
What I find extraordinarily sad is how many people still want to return to central planning. I think it's very attractive to the sort of Bright Young Thing who's never held a real job and dealt with real people, and who ends up living his life mooching off of those who have and do.
I still don't understand how they survive. There've been 3 malls within few kilometers on the same road in Slupsk.
Edit: Oh it's called "Galeria Slupsk" now and they had to demolish the house down the road. It didn't look very safe before. Crazy how different parts of the town look. The 6 goes around the city finaly. So much change. So fast.
The AA guy turned up, shook his head and said "Bloody French crap" and ordered a flatbed to pick it up. By the time it turned up, all the hydralic fluid was all over the road. This was 15 miles from Manchester so the poor AA guy dragged us back to London begrudgingly.
He bought a Mitsibishi Galant VR4 after that which was a wonderful car.
I wonder how a hydraulic suspension would fare if produced by today's technology and quality standards. DS has a flying carpet ride feel to it and even the most upmarket cars of today can't reach that.
Then again I have a FIAT (Fix It Again Tony) with a MultiJet engine which has been hellishly expensive to keep alive so today's technology and quality standards are debatable.
Unfortunately it's plagued with electrical problems. When you plug in an iPhone into the USB charger port, the navigation and heating crashes. The ECU and several CAN bus controllers have been replaced and it still does it. Plus the alternator exploded. Fortunately all under warranty but for a car that has been on the road for 4 months, it's spent 6 weeks in a garage.
I drove a 1992 V8 110 county a few years ago. Best car I ever had. Didn't go down well with a young family though, all the climbing and stopping for petrol, so I had to give it up for a people carrier :(
- with all the weight of the engine over the front wheels imagine you're instantly the proud owner of a non-power assisted tank, you can still steer but it takes real muscle and it is impossible if the car has no forward speed, everything happens in slow motion. A quick evasive manouver would be impossible but with some long term planning you might be able to make turn of about 3 miles in radius.
- the suspension goes. Depending on how big the leak is you either fall like a brick or float down like a feather. After that even a chalkline will feel like you've just hit a kerb.
- the brakes go. This is a really neat extra kick in the pants, especially once the lack of steering has caused you to come aimed at something you'd rather avoid contact with.
Fun times.
That said, when it works it's the best ride you'll ever encounter bar none. And it mostly works.
One problem with the ancients is that you're so far out of regular maintenance schedules that it is next to impossible to predict with any accuracy what will fail next. So you carry a lot of spares and you get to know the owners of the major DS garages in all European capitals :)
http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ro/en/status
Until then maybe Livemocha will do.
I had a 2CV as my first car too. Friends nicknamed it the "Can of Death," for reasons you're very familiar with. My favorite trick was going camping with it and removing the back seats which made a very comfortable camp chair. It could also transport a drum kit, two guitars, two 100W amp cabs and heads, (and my band's sexy drummer) without any hassle. I loved that car, and the drummer, and every hot summer's day I spent driving with the wind in my hair and a hand on the window to keep the door shut.
His "The Polish Revolution" is a great in depth account of the 1980/81 Polish uprising, and "The Magic Lantern" is a romping retelling of the last few months of Communist rule.
Beautiful books.
It opens you up to so many unique, wonderful (and occasionally scary) situations, and has a way of 'shaking loose' the structures that one inevitably builds up over time.
In fact, I caught myself hitchhiking sometimes just because of how much the people who picked me up seemed to enjoy or need it. I've had people give me their life story, or share something deeply personal that they really wanted to share, or simply enjoy my 'youthful' presence on a long, boring drive. Part of what makes it amazing is that there are so few pre-suppositions in the whole thing. You are likely to never meet the person who just shared his woes again, and sometimes that's exactly why they let themselves talk. But it's also possible that this one connection is the start of a wonderful, lifelong friendship.
I met one of my current best friends through CouchSurfing on the other side of the globe. It was quite likely that we'd never meet again, but instead we ended up spending a few years in the same city, even working together.
(plus, these kinds of thing have way of restoring one's faith in humanity. They're a great counter to the insulating processes that are especially present in Western-European society)