Warsaw

Warsaw both came and went with its short preview of the summer. Flying back over the island of Bornholm my mind scrolled through the cobblestones streets, the ostalgic Pewex club interiors and the quick airport bus good-byes.

There was a time, before Rawls & Me, when I used to go to Warsaw on a fairly regular basis to see my friend who was then working at the English-speaking section of the Polish state radio. He has since moved on to other jobs closer to home and I reckon that it must have been four years since my last visit to the Polish capital. Coming back now in the aftermath of the Katyń disaster, the streets were still covered with wax from all the candle lights and, in the corners, there were black posters commemorating the dead. As a foreigner it is difficult to comprehend the scale of the catastrophe, that almost the entire political and military elite was wiped out that morning. I remember when Olof Palme, the prime minister of Sweden at the time, was shot in February 1986 and how the whole country came to a standstill. Though an assassination clearly is different from a plane crash, the sense of national trauma reminded me very much of when I, as a seven year old, was watching the news after Palme had been murdered.