I went out with her and some of her friends on Friday night. One’s learning English so could hold proper conversation and she’s cool. The club we went to was surprisingly good and reminded me quite a lot of Urban Gorilla (good breaks but a bit of garage unfortunately, wicked cosy venue though, female DJ, which is apparently far from uncommon).

Then last night I went out on my own to a drum and bass night I’d seen advertised. Some of it was good, big fat Polish man MC-ing which was quite amusing (MCing in Polish sounds quite good). The club was really cool. It’s in the middle of a park by the 3.5km sandy beach, apparently it used to be a public toilet! Grimy. Met a bloke there called ‘Kuba’ who is an actor and plays the drums so I’m going to go and discover the Polish underground with him (he was pissed off that the club we were at was going increasingly commercial).

It seems that there is a special group in Polish society (or at least in this part of the country) that calls themselves ‘artists’, encompassing people who paint, act, play music etc. The girls I went out with on Friday have disdain for them and think they’re posers, whist ‘Kuba’ loves it, and says things like “it is impossible for me to do anything with my life except act”. He wears a big tweed jacket and a stripy beanie… He’s got something to say for himself anyway so I’m going to get to know him a bit, and play his drums.

Tonight I’m hopping on the train to Gdansk to meet Agatha (what a name), the girl who is learning English and is really sound. We’re going to a party her friends are putting on with fire (assuming poi and staff etc) and music. Should be good. Have had some bloody great discussions about politics and history for those who are interested.

Agatha’s granddad helped Jews hide during the Second World War and eventually he got shot by the SS. When I was in Berlin I was reminded that 3 million Polish Jews were killed, it’s so unbelievable. And the fact that there were some non-Jews will to stand up against the tidal wave really touched me, and it obviously meant a lot to Agatha. The first shots of the Second World War were fired in Gdansk as the Nazis invaded Poland by sea, and the city was the one area in an active war zone for the longest time out of anywhere, basically the full six years.

Even when the Russians liberated Gdansk from Nazi control in 1945 they continued the destruction of the city because it was at the time called Danzig and therefore they saw it as part of Germany. So obviously after 1945 Poland was under Communist control, and in 1970 the Solidarity movement started when some workers at the shipyard in Gdansk striked. They were shot dead but the movement continued to build until in 1989 it finally executed a peaceful revolution and threw off Communism (in the meantime the late Pope, who was Polish, visited the city and offered his support to the movement).

Now (this was written in late 2006 the country is run by two twins: one as President, one as PM (the former appointed the latter). The government is a coalition and one of the parties in it, the ‘Family Party’ is deeply homophobic (linked to the high levels of Catholicism in Poland). Strangely though, apparently it has the highest levels of membership by gay men out of all the parties (this seems very odd and I want to read up on it). The majority of the population is rural and a lot of them take as gospel what is said by a very powerful priest who has his own radio channel and TV show. The country is supposedly secular but he has a lot of sway and the educated girls I was talking to are very worried about his influence. Also, the aforementioned Family Party has underground militas (not publicly linked to the party) similar to the SA in Nazi Germany, or the RSS in India (Hindu fundamentalists linked to the BJP).

I am interested in trying to get to the heart of what young people see as their political orientation, or duty, since they are the first generation to grow up in the post-communist era. There were some quite heated debates over drinks on Friday night, and in true geeky fashion, I was absolutely loving it.