Muskauer Park straddles the Poland/Germany border at the town of Łęknica and it is really out of the way, unless you are determined to visit each of the World Heritage sites in Poland. The Park is the brainchild of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and is more of a work of art made with plants than a formal English garden. I personally can’t see its merit as a WHS site but it was particularly beautiful on this last day of October.
An added benefit was our host at Pension Queen, Gregorz, better know as “Greg the Big.” With a combination of his faltering English and my terrible German he told us a bit of his history. His grandfather, a career soldier in the Polish army, died at Auschwitz. And his politics. He grew up under communism and greatly fears another era of Russian dominance in Poland. When he asked me, “Obama or Romney?” I replied I was going to ask him the same question. With tears in his eyes he told us how FDR sold out Poland in the 30s and how the US should never have let Vietnam slip away. He loves Americans and American soldiers, none more than Ronald Reagan. He is four square for Mitt. Obama, he believes, will ignore Central Europe and Poland in particular. We didn’t have the words to explain that the President – whether FDR, Reagan or Obama – doesn’t act as a monarch, implementing whatever he feels is best, but must respect the will of the American people. And Poland is pretty far down the list of our concerns right now. Once again it emphasized how much the rest of the world looks to the US. But Greg may be right. The only English language news channel at our hotel, Russian RT News, portrays a very unflattering United States. Maybe Putin is yearning for a reprise of the USSR of old.
Flower sales at the cemeteery
While America is donning costumes for Trick or Treat – or treading water, depending on where they live – Catholic Poland is preparing for All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints Day. There is a traffic jam outside of every cemetery as the faithful arrive with buckets of gardening tools and armloads of flowers. This is the day when they tend spruce up their loved ones’ gravesites in preparation for family visits, prayers and reminisces. Florists are doing a land-office business in mums of every hue, lilies and memorial candles.
Ready for All Saints Day
