Finding the New Europe

Driving toward Gdansk, shipyard cranes soon peaked up above the horizon. The features of the lively city - blocks of flats, billboards for new, Western-style shopping malls, and the outline of the Old Town - began to appear. Gdansk seemed a poster child for Poland’s return to Europe.

Thanks to an annual street fair and a brisk but sunny August day, the downtown was teeming with tourists and consumerism. Tents selling hand-painted cat figurines, trendy clothing, World War II-era antiques, and street food snaked along squares, side streets, and the waterfront.

Music drifted across the rynek from open air cafes, but one melody with a more lilting, exotic tonality caught my ear. I turned to see a small girl with light, ratty hair and sad eyes sitting on a stool in the shadow of St. Mary’s Basilica, playing a tiny accordion that could have been from a nearby antique booth. Her case stood on the ground in front of her, near a hand-scrawled sign that read, in Polish, “money for a new accordion.”

“She’s pretty good,” I said to my cousin Lukasz, who was about to photograph her. And then I realized that she wasn’t your average child street performer. Maybe it was her hair that had thrown me off. Maybe it was because we were in Poland. But there she was. A blonde, Polish-speaking, accordion-playing gypsy.

He decided against the photo. “It’s hard to walk by something like that without shooting,” he explained, “but you don’t want to perpetuate it.” We moved on. Strains of the little girl’s melody kept making their way to my ears.

We sat down at a seafood restaurant on the waterfront and ordered a few beers. A chestnut-skinned, dark-haired woman came up to us and asked something that I didn’t catch in hushed Polish. He shooed her away. I raised an eyebrow. “She was panhandling. Selling perfume.”

Soon after, three young girls stood behind me silently, palms outstretched, so close I could feel their breath on my neck. A waitress came by and they scurried away.

We returned to our lunch, subdued. The girls later returned with their mother, inciting an argument with the waitress, laying claim to their turf. The oldest daughter yelled and cursed at the waitress, who threatened to call the police. The girl defiantly stuck her hand out and honked the waitress’s right breast, ending the argument.

Poland’s European identity meant European struggles. I sipped my beer and watched as the family walked down the waterfront and out of sight.