Dual-city Cieszyn. Polish, Czech, shared?
panorama of Czech Cieszyn, in the foreground on the right - Romanesque rotunda
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What is it about Cieszyn, why do I sense some strange tension here? This is a question I address to myself, at the same time delighting in Cieszyn's Venice - along Przykopa Street flows an intriguing artificial water channel, historically used by numerous professionals and craft guilds. At the so-called Młynówka there used to be manufactories and workshops of tanners, blacksmiths, white-skinners, weavers and clothiers, using the energy and possibilities of flowing water in their work. What remains of them are memories and one of the most charming streets and architectural layouts I have ever had the pleasure of admiring. This place, with its bridges over the Mlynowka River, low houses and history inviting you to learn more about it, is already beautiful, original, engaging. Although also some not yet grasped, not ready to look proudly in the mirror. A little neglected, a little undiscovered anew, like Krakow's Kazimierz in 1995.
Cieszyn's Venice
Photo: Wojciech Wandzel © UM Cieszyn
Cieszyn's Venice with the Młynówka River, after a wise revaluation, a crisp reinterpretation, could be the same hit as the Staircase Street I predicted in Bielsko-Biała, Poland's answer to Rome's Spanish Steps, perhaps less spectacular, but more atmospheric (note, Staircase Street is also in Cieszyn). Exactly - Schodowa - such a street name means that the city is not located on a boring flat terrain, but on an interesting undulating one, this I also scrupulously note in my mind, knowing that cities on hills are often really cool.
Cieszyn's Venice
Photo: Wojciech Wandzel © UM Cieszyn
I look at the museum, more backstreets and courtyards, and scan the walls at City Hall. I eat great Japanese food at Kusa Sushi and think. I peek into the nearby Tram pub, register the theater building out of the corner of my eye, frantically page through the stack of books I brought from Kornel, and I'm already slowly beginning to think I'm close to my goal. I feel joy, because I discover a city that is beautiful, that arouses much deeper than expected reflection, a surprising city.
Lest it be that my getting to know Cieszyn consists of mere admiration: it smells of smog that it's a shame. Many facades are gray, burly and gloomy. It reeks of province. The hilltop apartment blocks are as ugly as anywhere in Poland. On the Czech side, zero historical atmosphere - their absence is palpable.
I'm tempted by the gaudy, Czech-written, colorful advertisements along the Olza River, piled up on the Polish side. I dash there: a thicket of soap and jam stalls transports me back in time and space. A Czech movie, full of Czech women and Czech men, tights, furs, shoes, coats, panties, bras and wellies. It was as if I had blended in with the vivacity of Warsaw's Jarmark Europa in 1993 - where today the Polish National Stadium proudly rises. Let me explain to the younger ones - the post-communist relic of the 10th Anniversary Stadium used to sprawl here, housing the largest bazaar of Europe at the time in a young, tacky, nascent, fresh and energetic Polish version of burgeoning capitalism.
Also, this Polish-Czech entrepreneurial bundle native to a distant era completely captivates me. If I were a Dane, I would say to myself: "It's groovy as hell here, Egon." I eat potato pancakes with mushrooms at a local bar, which I call without hesitation in my soul a cult.
I chat with the waiter at another cool pub - U Trzech Braci you can drink craft beer from the Czech city of Cieszyn, the brand is called Baraba. Next time I'll go to the brewery itself, on the Czech side, they supposedly have their own pub - I love drinking beer while listening to the Czech speech resounding all around.
Three Brothers Street
photo: Rafał Soliński © UM Cieszyn
Exactly: Czechs. When I eat sushi, I register them at the table next to me. You can feel that Cieszyn is alive with Polish-Czech people, trading, walking, entering into relationships. Not necessarily exclusively positive - some part of society on either side of the river certainly feels resentments, a sense of injustice, feeds the demons of the past with its attention and emotions.
But I know my own, I was taught this by the head of the Jewish Religious Community in Bielsko-Biala, the wonderful Dorota Wiewióra: "there is no point in living in the past". It's a bit as if today someone reminds us of Volhynia, trying to spoil our touching, affectionate, Polish-Ukrainian festival of kindness and cooperation. There's no point in living in the past, it's a terrible trait (not to be confused with knowledge of history).
Open Air Museum, design: RS+ Robert Skitek
photo: Wojciech Wandzel © UM Cieszyn
So for me what matters is the here and now, filtered from the past and focused on conscious and positive creation of the future. Cieszyn is full of integrative Czech-Polish initiatives, cross-border EU projects, traces of an extremely rich, abundant history, with the excellent Open Air Museum (proj.: RS+ Robert Skitek) at the forefront. The Museum of Cieszyn Silesia (the oldest public museum in Poland) is full of memories, breathing with an imperial-princely, somewhat Viennese atmosphere. Memories obtrusively reminding us that once it was a proud, independent duchy of Cieszyn, not some Silesian or Bielsko-Biala, but Cieszyn itself. The Cieszynska Ksiaznica (worth noting, founded by a Polish Catholic), also a record in many ways, is trying to tell us something, to convey something. Yes, I already know what it wants to say: the largest Evangelical community in Poland has lived here for a long time and still lives here today. Pastor Krzysztof Cienciała told me about it in Bielsko-Biała: Protestants (and Jews) - they all knew how to read, write and count. This had an impact on their Catholic neighbors: these made a massive educational effort to cope with the daily competition from their more enlightened older and younger brothers in the faith (and sisters, too, of course). Hence, the Duchy of Cieszyn was traditionally the region with the highest rate of grammar, the best reading, education - with all the consequences. Among them we will find the Museum of Printing, which belongs to the Route of Monuments of Technology, for the tradition of book printing is ultra-long, exceptionally important and still alive here. This, among other reasons, is why Kornel Filipowicz wrote these significant words: "A beloved, proud province." Reading, writing, literature, books, Polish, Czech and German languages, different religions, Protestants, atheists and Catholics. From these ingredients is created Cieszyn's original concoction, an extremely ecumenically gifted, cooperative society.
