Euro Filipino Journal: Poland

Ghosts at Wrobla

September 30, 2002 El Talonggo 0

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— by Gene Alcantara 
 
Not many people believe in ghosts.  This much I know.  Or perhaps many people would rather deny the possibility of the existence of ghosts for whatever reason, than having to deal with the scary prospect of seeing a spectre.  They would say, “Hmmm, hard to believe.  Are you sure it was not the wind or just your playful imagination?”  Well, if only. As for me, well, I do believe in ghosts.  Or rather I have to believe because I have experience of them first hand.  Right in the very house I lived in on Wrobla Street in Warsaw for the last three and a half years.  If anybody had told me before I came that there was a ghost in the house I would probably have treated the matter with some skepticism (Oh, ok, trepidation, but only a bit!). My first experience of the ghost at Wrobla happened in the first year of my posting when I was on my own, about three years ago.  I was facing the oven about 10-11 pm at night heating up one of those frozen packets of Spanish Paella or Mexican chicken.  Suddenly at the periphery of my left vision I sort of detected a faint movement in the archway leading to the dining room.  Naturally I turned my head to look and when I did, all my hair stood on end.  I felt my scalp tingling as my hair rose of its own accord, and I knew fear.  For there was this white woman peeking at me with a smile, long dark hair flowing down.  My stomach was suddenly filled with ice but although the terrifying vision only lasted perhaps a second, it is permanently imprinted in my memory.  I am normally a brave man but I was scared and had to call my family in London to seek some comfort. That was really the first and last time I had an encounter with the apparition until in April this year, a female friend, Normie Lopez de la Rosa, who transferred from Turkey and had some psychic talent, attempted to treat another friend, Fe Grzybowski, whom she believed was being bewitched.  This she did in the house apparently through some sort of prayer and ceremony.  I did not witness this myself as I was away in Berlin at the time competing in an international public speaking competition.  Somehow the ceremony seemed to have perhaps opened some mystical doorway or triggered some psychic phenomenon because when I got back from Germany I started having strange and scary nightmares.  And my family, who had since joined me in Warsaw, started hearing strange noises at night.  No one would venture down into the basement laundry room alone once dusk fell, for Normie said that this was the place where the ghost seemed to hang around. To deal with the problem once and for all, we called in a priest from the huge Catholic church on Dominikanska Street who came, prayed and blessed all corners of the house.  Unfortunately I don’t think it completely got rid of the ghost but we somehow got reassured that we have involved a man of God. As for me, I tried to deal with the ghost also.  Normie said it was a young woman she saw in our laundry room.  I went down one evening to “talk” to  the ghost and ask that it not bother my family.  But the minute I stepped foot on the basement floor, my head was enclosed by a cold presence and my hair stood on end again.  So I beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs (I mean, I ran back upstairs!).  Since then the family ended up leaving the lights on on the stairs all night, and the radio on on low volume.  We even had a few icons hung around although they seemed never enough.  Somehow I would still be woken up at night by something touching my face or a noise or a bad dream. When my children Giselle and Terence visited from university in May and June, I deliberately did not tell them about the ghost that haunted the house at Wrobla.  But I did not reckon on my youngest daughter Melissa telling them not to enter the first floor bedroom because apparently that was where she once saw her electronic piano playing by itself.  They were skeptical at first, my teenage kids, but when one night Giselle woke up hearing and feeling footsteps in her room in the middle of the night, they became firmly aware of the ghost. Two friends of mine, Dee Calmel and Edyta Ganczarczyk, said perhaps that the ghost was interested in me, liked me, and probably was protecting me and the house somehow.  Carmila, my spouse, tried to be brave about it – she was not about to give me up for a ghost!  For if it was an unfriendly ghost it might have done us or our relationship harm.  It could even be apparently a naughty ghost who moved things around the house because  sometimes we ended up not finding things where we were supposed to have left them.  This last was true because looking back over the years, I have indeed lost or misplaced items of clothing and other small things and I had always suspected my cleaner Pani Grazyna of hiding them! Actually Wrobla was not my first experience of ghosts in Poland.  About two years earlier I went to attend a series of classical and jazz concerts sponsored by the British Council in Zabrze and in Tarnowskie Gory in the southern part of the country.  In winter it was, late in cold November.  The Zabrze event went very well and the following day I travelled to Tarnowskie Gory and looked for my hotel in the town.  It turned out that my hotel was some distance away in a village called Rybna.  It took the taxi about 20 minutes to get to the village across white fields.  The hotel was in fact a 200-year old palace called Palac Na Rybny, a magnificent green building right in the middle of this snow-covered estate with leafless trees around.  My room was a huge apartment on the first floor with impressive original 17th-18th century furniture and a palace room feel to it.  Only I could not sleep a wink, the bedroom felt very strange indeed as if there was somebody there watching me, and I kept hearing all sorts of peculiar sounds.  I thought there was a ghost in the bedroom.  I spent the night with all the lights on watching BBC World. So was I perhaps simply sensitive to supernatural things?  Well possibly.  The presence of a ghost in the house was further confirmed by an independent person.  At the end of July I ran an international health and safety course in Warsaw and hosted dinner at home one night for the participants.  A  Brazilian colleague, Alexander W, who was into yoga, psychic stuff and out-of-body experiences confided in me the following day while having lunch at the Patio Restaurant that he saw two manifestations in the garden of the house at Wrobla.  One was apparently a yellow circle of light/energy  normally associated with Buddhism.  When he asked if I was a Buddhist or have anything to do with Buddhism, I said no but that I did have a collection of amulets and charms from the Philippines, Hong Kong and other places which might emit such yellow light.  The other thing Alexander saw apparently was the ghost of a young woman standing in the backgarden.  He said that he did not feel anything negative about the ghost so it was possibly a friendly one.  In a way I was pleased by the fact that the ghost appeared a friendly one, but I was even more pleased to get confirmation that it was true that my house was host indeed to some supernatural presence, considering the skeptical tones some British colleagues made when they heard my story . My landlord, Jerzy Buczkowski, was sympathetic but adamant that nobody had died in the house.  It was a relatively new house and my predecessor and I were the only tenants.  So perhaps the ghost was of someone who died a long time ago, for who knows what the place was like over the long bloody course of Polish history? Another psychic friend in London, Diana Reed, gave me a smudge wand made of Taos sage, cedar and juniper, all sacred Native American herbs, to smoke the house out one night to clear it of the ghost.  The term ‘smudging’ is supposed to be the practice of cleansing ritual spaces, altars and tools with the smoke for purification and protection.  Well, I had not managed to do it despite repeatedly wanting to, with something else always happening, and so I eventually left the house with it undone at the end of my posting. The house at Wrobla was a lovely six-floor house, and I have many fond memories of living there.  Sharing the house though with a ghost did not really inspire much confidence especially at night when all one wanted and needed to do was to have some sleep.  Perhaps the female ghost was indeed looking after me and protecting the house, but it was not the kind of caring that I really would like to have.  Not in Poland.  Not anywhere else if I could help it. 
 
Written in 30 September 2002. Revised 9 October 2012.
 
 
 
 
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Photo from commons.wikimedia.org — by Gene Alcantara Not many people believe in ghosts. This much I know. Or perhaps many people wou...

Russian Market

August 22, 2001 El Talonggo 0

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMiMzUWgUX4uamIQNVkshfirGhbpS9TJRdx2EOZa0S0Sf6CEXW_a58k6kiT4q5-s54D7LEB3wmQLluZQ9du8iXWoMFvxYn1DrJxo2m0J5hszsiyShwFV3VYCYgZRCdWBp8CgoZ6Tvzq3h/s1600/6633915161_30f7c78723_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMiMzUWgUX4uamIQNVkshfirGhbpS9TJRdx2EOZa0S0Sf6CEXW_a58k6kiT4q5-s54D7LEB3wmQLluZQ9du8iXWoMFvxYn1DrJxo2m0J5hszsiyShwFV3VYCYgZRCdWBp8CgoZ6Tvzq3h/s320/6633915161_30f7c78723_z.jpg" width="320" /></a>When I tell Polish friends and colleagues that I go regularly to Warsaw’s Russian market, many of them react with horror. They might look at mewith incredulity, perhaps to see if I was joking or whether I had simply gone bananas. Their response would inevitably be, “Oh, it’s a very dangerous place.” “It’s all fake, you know.” “It’s run by the Mafia.” Or some other equally unfavourable phrases. Even some of my British and Irish friends react negatively to the idea of going to the market. But have they actually been there? Many reply, “Never!” I am afraid that they are all missing something. The Russian market, whatever its reputation, is something that needs to be experienced by every visitor to the Polish capital. It is part of the landscape, the tapestry that makes Warsaw one of the liveliest capitals in Central and East Europe. I cannot speak for the Poles who obviously decide what they want to see of the reality of their own city, but for fellow Brits especially I don’t think one can say he or she has lived in Warsaw without seeing its most famous market. There one can find colour, stumble upon drama, catch a whiff of poetry, and obviously grab a good bargain. CDs abound, very good copies of the latest releases which I understand get shipped over from farther east, and are sold for just 10 zloties (that is about GBP 1.50 – try comparing that with prices in Virgin or HMV music stores in the UK!). Sure, you might want simply to look but, just in case, there are swords, medals, gloves, busts of Lenin or Stalin, fox stoles, matrioshka dolls, lacquer boxes, pistols, knives, fur coats, cheap socks, shoes, shirts, clothes, pots and pans, tea urns, coffee grinders, books, African carvings, vegetables, fruits, drivers license, M&S plastic bags, mobile phone cases, CD-Roms, software programmes, games, puppies, shower heads, whisky bottles and more besides. True, there are lots of fakes—one can get his and hers colour-changing Calvin Klein watches for 25 zloties (GBP4) each. Actually the place is not even called Russian Market by the Poles. Its full name is Stadion Dziecieciolecia, since it is an old football stadium. The market sits atop the circumference of the disused stadium, with different sections scattered around the ever-widening base of the circular pyramid. The top is the best bit to head for, with its magnificent view of the Warsaw skyline, as well as the tragic view of the stadium’s decaying bleachers. One particular spot to the right presents an excellent photo shoot, with the Palace of Culture in the background. The market is located on the left hand side just past the Poniatowskiego Most (bridge) which spans the Wisla River. It is walking distance from Centrum, the centre of town, and therefore very accessible; otherwise it is the first tram stop after the river. It is open very early, some old timers claim from 6 am, and then closes around 1-2pm when business dwindles to nothing. There might be Russian traders there but the sellers of CDs sound very Polish. There are black Africans, lots of Orientals (mostly Vietnamese, I believe), and a handful of Asians from the sub-continent. I think the stadium rynek in Warsaw is quite unique. There is not a similar market elsewhere in Poland or indeed in Europe in terms of size and setting. I was for example in the black market in Riga’s Russian district in Latvia recently, and I was very disappointed by it. I wanted to see colour, bustle, and lots of merchandise to choose from. What I saw was gray and rusty brown, a boring rectangle of low small huts arranged in rows with little corridors, but only selling all sorts of metal, electrical, and machinery parts although I did see a child’s bike. Yes, there was a book stall and pirated CDs, porno and computer games, touted by black leather-jacketed young Russians, but somehow it did not have the same pulse, and the odours were overpowering.. 
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 Going to the Russian market requires some planning, of course. You don’t just go there on a whim. You must not dress to kill and you do not go there bedecked with jewelry, or with piles of cash in your pocket. Just bring enough for the odd bargain—if you need more cash then there are bankomats around the corner on Francuszka. One must consciously avoid bringing expensive cameras. You do not want any come on from potential muggers. And of course you cannot bring young children with you, for the Russian market is very crowded indeed on a Sunday morning. How crowded, you ask? Imagine the rush-hour in the Warsaw metro at 8 am during school term. There is an art to going to the Russian market too, or should I say an art to getting a good bargain. A visit to the market is never complete until you emerge with something you successfully haggled over. Basically one does not jump at the first cheap-sounding offer for a chunk of amber with fauna trapped inside for eternity, or for the most dramatic, original looking silver-surrounded ikon you have cast your eyes on. Remember that the stall-holders are experts at spotting dupes, and I understand that there will always be a higher starting price when it’s a foreigner asking. Try bargaining first by cutting the price to half then work your way up slowly—if it is really expensive, you won’t get any more than 10% reduction. But it is worth a try. A few pretend about-turns might just net you a few satisfying extra zloties in savings. Punters can watch operators transform their questionable wares into respectable lines say in handbags or shirts at the flick of a hand. Somehow if a police inspector arrives, everybody knows it and one moment a stall is full of pirated CDs, the next moment it only sells bags or branded t-shirts. My friend Javed Iqbal from Pakistan was equally fascinated by this ‘magic’ trick as well as by my linguistic skill at bargaining in my passable Russian-Polish with a Lithuanian amber-seller who it turned out knew English after all. If you get thirsty watching all this palaver, there are trolleys selling hot drinks, but it is best to avoid the wasp-surrounded mounds of bread. I think the stadium rynek in Warsaw is quite unique. There is not a similar market elsewhere in Poland or indeed in Europe in terms of size and setting. I was for example in the black market in Riga’s Russian district in Latvia recently, and I was very disappointed by it. I wanted to see colour, bustle, and lots of merchandise to choose from. What I saw was gray and rusty brown, a boring rectangle of low small huts arranged in rows with little corridors, but only selling all sorts of metal, electrical, and machinery parts although I did see a child’s bike. Yes, there was a book stall and pirated CDs, porno and computer games, touted by black leather-jacketed young Russians, but somehow it did not have the same pulse, and the odours were overpowering.. Going to the Russian market requires some planning, of course. You don’t just go there on a whim. You must not dress to kill and you do not go there bedecked with jewelry, or with piles of cash in your pocket. Just bring enough for the odd bargain—if you need more cash then there arebankomats around the corner on Francuszka. One must consciously avoid bringing expensive cameras. You do not want any come on from potential muggers. And of course you cannot bring young children with you, for the Russian market is very crowded indeed on a Sunday morning. How crowded, you ask? Imagine the rush-hour in the Warsaw metro at 8 am during school term. There is an art to going to the Russian market too, or should I say an art to getting a good bargain. A visit to the market is never complete until you emerge with something you successfully haggled over. Basically one does not jump at the first cheap-sounding offer for a chunk of amber with fauna trapped inside for eternity, or for the most dramatic, original looking silver-surrounded ikon you have cast your eyes on. Remember that the stall-holders are experts at spotting dupes, and I understand that there will always be a higher starting price when it’s a foreigner asking. Try bargaining first by cutting the price to half then work your way up slowly—if it is really expensive, you won’t get any more than 10% reduction. But it is worth a try. A few pretend about-turns might just net you a few satisfying extra zloties in savings. I have heard of people getting really good buys, with one or two gems of a find. One claims to have purchased an antique Russian watch for a song which turned out to be genuine and belonged to some aristocrat before the Russian revolution. When the Inocians (Junix, Annie and Ynaqui) came to visit with my family (Carmila and Melissa) in the summer they bought lots of lacquer boxes. I myself am very proud of a raw amber chunk I bought for 70 zloties (about GBP10) which has a pre-historic mosquito and another tiny insect in it. And sshh.. don’t tell anybody but I have also purchased one or two religious artefacts which appear to have survived the cultural conflagration of 1917 Russia, although my teacher friends at the British Council have always insisted they are of very recent vintage. One can get attached to this Polish manifestation of the free market economy. I have experienced it now in all weathers to savour its various hues and sounds and flavours. I have sloshed there in the snow, got wet in the rain, sweated under the sun, and once almost got blown off the top by howling winds. Whatever the weather, the market remains true to its attraction as a seething cauldron of bargain-hunting humanity, young and old, rivalling the magnificent covered souks of say Bahrain, Istanbul or Rabat, except that nobody wore exotic costumes. Having gotten used to the magnificent setting of the Warsaw market atop the pyramid of the stadium, I know I will never be satisfied by other markets in the same way again. It’s not quite Portobello, I know, but the area is not Notting Hill either. I always show Warsaw’s historical Old Town Square first to visiting relatives and friends, followed by an hour or two in the Russian market and they are always staggered by the experience. I know that it could equally dumbfound my local friends if they would only venture forth. And just wait till I tell them about the Kolo antiques market… [This article was written by the author during his British Council assignment to Warsaw, Poland 1999-2002]
 
 
 
 
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