Poland had had a very important role in my world since my
childhood, both as a topic of the literature I consumed and as the
language many of my fellow-students decided to learn at the
Technical University in Budapest. At the same time when I had the
opportunity to visit the GDR as a student, another group of the us
went to Poland. At that time Poles were living in a relative poverty,
for this reason I haven't had the intention to go there for a time. My
opinion changed soon, when I made a trip there first time in 1974. In
that year there was a conference on shipbuilding in Szczecin organ-
ised by the local shipyard. The three of us had been nominated to it
in the previous year by the Scientific Society for Mechanical Engin-
eers, where I had been a member for some years. My fellow part-
icipants were my colleague, Steve, who had been doing his study at
the Technical University and Otto, a middle-aged man, who had
come to work with us a short time before. He was named head of the
Documentation Department.
Otto has got an assignment of expert at the municipal police for
his great knowledge about river transport and emergency cases.
His life is a good example for a man, who fell off from a high place
because of a minor fault, but could climb up again by gaining a high
esteem anew with his honest hard work. At any rate, the four days of
the conference have been useful for us, I kept the guard with my
English knowledge, while they were discovering the town. I myself
was suffering from my injury in my ankle that had happened some
months before, I was freshly out-of-plaster. I moved only when it
was necessary. This way I have seen less of the town than I wanted,
what I know about it I know more from the collected prospects and
magazines.
Polish language is understood by a foreigner with difficulty,
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even, if he is speaking Russian. Neither O., nor S. spoke it. But O.
would have deserved to be rewarded by a prize for cold blood, as he
queued up for lunch with a notebook in his hand. After ordering from
meals on exhibit, he handed the notebook over to the saleswoman
to write the sum on to be paid for. This method has worked and he
has always kept his temper.
During conference we mutually earned the respect of each
other. He with his good nature and limitless calm, I with my know-
ledge in technical topics and languages -- beside English that I
could use well at that time, I have never completely lost Russian, let
alone German --. About Poland I have got a very positive impress-
ion, after that time I have never passed any opportunity to visit the
country.
The next one came for me in two years. The head of the hull
department in the shipyard, Michael, a very good sailor of sailboats
in international championships, proposed me as project manager
for the current object under construction, a river tug for rafts with a
power of 1,200 hp, to be present at the tow-tank experiments in
Gdansk. The factory management agreed. At that time I was a
student of the evening course at the University of Economics in
Budapest, the exam season was in full swing, it has been my last
semester. As soon as I finished my exams, we flew to Warsaw and
took the train there to Gdansk. Our room has been reserved in
Sopot at the outskirts of Gdansk, as in the town it has not been
possible to find any rooms. It meant the use of the electric suburban
train, but the hotel was really good. It even had a large beach and
we took advantage of it under the June sun at late afternoons. Being
the end of June and our staying some degrees to the north from
Budapest meant considerably longer days, the sun stayed up
almost endless. The beach was full of rambling vendors, they
offered their goods, mainly food, but most often we heard the voice
of the ice-cream vendor.
As we were waiting for our train in Warsaw during the first leg of
our trip, we also had time to make a walk in the old town. Later, in the
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mid-eighties, when I travelled there much more frequently, I could
look around more properly, this time we made only a short walk, but
I shot enough pictures to retain the beauty of fine old buildings. We
set aside some time to see the sights around Gdansk. We took a
ride on the hydrofoil from Gdansk to the Hel-peninsula making a
long tongue of sand of about 40 miles into the Baltic to Gdynia. It is
very narrow, only some thousand feet wide, and springs out of the
sea only about ten feet. But people like it and you can see small
weekend-huts everywhere. The farther terminus of the electric local
train is Gdynia, which doesn't have great historical traditions, but it
has an important port. There I have met the passenger ship
"Mazowsze", about which I wrote earlier in connection with my
Lower Danube adventures. It was built in the Ganz (then Gheoghiu
Dej) shipyard in Budapest in 1954. In Gdynia it has been used as
restaurant-ship being laid at the wharf, not because of her age, but
for the reason that she had an aluminium deck-house and super-
structure, which lowered her centre of gravity so much that it
became too stable. Against the normal period of swinging its period
is three seconds that makes even the oldest seamen sea-sick. As a
ship it is unusable. Gdynia is well-known for the Westerplatte, a
place where World War II broke out. We also carved out time during
the free week-end to take a ride and see the reconstructed medieval
fortress of the Teutonic knights in Malbork. It was the place from
where they ruled all the surrounding lands until the joined forces of a
popular uprising backing the Polish nobles smashed them. It was a
great experience to see this fortress, even more, as I have seen few
better films about historic themes than that made of the novel
"Crusaders" from Sienkiewicz, for which this castle has provided a
proper setting.
This trip furnished us both with a lot of useful knowledge also
professionally. Our time otherwise has been filled completely, as we
both wanted to get as much information as possible. The equipment
of the tank has been up-to-date, imported from Scotland, but our
contract was the first of that kind. We took with ourselves all the
drawings necessary to prepare the models of the hull and the screw.
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The rudder-blades had not been designed that far, the institute put
in an ordinary three-blade assembly for the tests.
The specialist, who did the work itself with the tow-bridge, was a
young engineer, Marian. His wife was expecting their first child. His
boss, the chief of the tank, was a peculiar elderly man with a unique
English-type wit. Not by chance, as he had been living in England
during the war as an officer of the Liberation Army. Our third con-
stant partner, chief for the business activities of the university, was a
true gentleman. The older Poles were fluent in English, but the
young M. could only communicate with us through his bosses or by
his extremely poor French with Michael. That time French was me
like Chinese.
The two weeks on that trip was very successful and we left with
the promise to return in September for the results and the free-turn-
ing tests on a lake in the middle of Poland. In September Michael
and me went again to Poland. The Polish countryside is much more
beautiful in the autumn, as rains make it lush green. It was cool and
windy, but we could not be aware of that, because we were con-
stantly busy. After the free-turning tests of the model -- for this
experiments a battery-operated propulsion has been mounted into
it -- we have been taken back to the university and we had some
days to see through the results. By the tests the propeller-screw has
proved good and the pitch properly selected. But the turning tests
suggested that with one central screw, the traditional three-blade
rudder would be ineffective. Thank to this question, I could have a
trip into a town in Germany the next year where I had never been
before, I will give an account about it later. Soon after that above trip
to Poland I left my employer for another one, and my next visit to that
country was due to a Comecon section meeting in the represent-
ation of my new employer, Machine Tool Works.
The winter of 1978/79 was very heavy with a lot of snow every-
where in Europe. Even in February, when the weather has warmed,
the winter had something in spare. An ordinary multilateral meeting
on machine tools was on schedule. The place was a resort house
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30 miles from Warsaw in Poland. In that country something has
been wrong that time, but it could only be sensed, there were no
uprisings that time yet. The meeting had to be postponed because
of forecasts in snow. One week later a decision has been taken to
assemble the participants after all.
From our country about 10 people have been there, including a
saleswoman, representatives of other machine tool manufacturers,
even people from firms buying import machine tools for their own
use. The total number of participants has been around 80.
Arriving at Warsaw we all were received by the organiser Polish
foreign trade company. They took us to our hotels. On the next
morning buses were taking us to the venue of the meeting, a typical
modern recreational home of a big party. Built for summer vacation-
ers the single-glass windows radiated cold when you got near to
them. Heating was almost nothing. All the same, the first two days
everything went in order. The third day a big quantity of snow fell,
about two feet, and a forceful wind made snow-drifts. The temperat-
ure fell to around 0 degrees F. We finished our tasks anyway and
were preparing for the final party, when there came a black-out. The
air cables could not bear the load of ice and were torn apart. All
services had been based on light. Not only that we remained in
dark, the water pumps and the heater would not work either. We had
only one choice, to wait, until the People's Army of Poland would
save us.
Two other days passed and, on the sixth day around noon the
armoured tanks arrived. They made the road free and our trucks --
buses could not come in -- took us to the airport. I took my shave,
went to the toilet and shaved. After the three-day-old Tartar-
beefsteak even snacks in the airport refreshment room were delic-
ious. Even the notorious Polish coffee tasted good. Polish coffee is
made similarly as Turkish one, only Poles do not boil water with
coffee. They pour boiling water simply on and mix it. At talks it is
good. When your hosts do not offer you anything more and you are
hungry, you can eat the remains from the bottom of your glass.
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Some months later I got an opportunity to take an assignment of
an aid-expert for some years in Africa. About that you can read my
recollections later. When this assignment ended I returned to the
same employer, in almost the same technical salesman job as
earlier, my next trip to Poland was the result of my business
activities. I had not been there for four years, it was 1983, two years
after general Jaruzelski prevented a similar tragedy that happened
to us in 1956. Anyway, the Polish economy was very weak, it could
only produce enough goods for the black market, and those goods
came to Hungary through "export-tourism". The Polish market in
the village of Gyál near our capital city has been in full blossom.
Shortly before that trip I made a visit to Plovdiv, Bulgaria with a
young talented salesman who was to make a fine career, some
years later I met him as commercial councillor of Hungary in Tunis.
He was responsible at his employer for the Polish issues at this
time, too. At the Plovdiv exhibition a Polish visitor found him with a
suggestion about co-operation on air-brake components for trucks
and buses. It was this trip that could come true in October 1983. Joe
H., a leading designer in our brake factory at Kecskemét came with
us, too. The seat of our co-operation partner lay far from the capital,
we were taken there in the car of the representative of responsible
foreign trade company.
For Poland it has been a terrible period. There were no goods in
the shops, people were taking all abroad to sell them there. Poland
was the only country where you could not spend your allowance, for
this reason it was allowed to take it back to Hungary and change it
into our currency. Poles were in low morale, a girl could be bargain-
ed for a dinner by any foreigner. I was suffering physically seeing
that poverty, I have a very high esteem of Polish people. In the bigg-
est store of the capital all the giant halls were empty. Even shelves
had been taken out, there was activity only in one corner where
stainless cutlery was sold -- without handles.
Our partners were true gentlemen. All the time we were engag-
ed on business, even we got good food -- a little hidden from the
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eyes of their employees in a special room -- at noon. They were
keen to explain the contradiction between food shortage in general
and our ample food: the company was raising pigs within the factory
and was providing the workers with meat on production cost, at
least in a minimum quantity. It was the same in the evening, we had
enough food and vodka. It was a concern for me, I cannot drink
without getting sick, but it was impossible to reject drink completely,
and it spoiled my night in large part.
Sorry to say, in spite of all our goodwill and that of our partners,
this technical co-operation would never realise. It was one of the
most unstable times in policy. Almost anything might have happen-
ed, it is not only by chance that such films as “The Day After” have
been produced.
My next trip to Poland has been the first one on machine tools
and it has been in April 1986. It has been a monster event, two sales
executives, sales engineers from machine tool manufacturers and
service representatives. In Warsaw we have been placed in the
hotel “Forum” in the centre of the new town. In Warsaw we had our
talks with foreign trade partners, the next day we travelled to the air-
plane works in the country, where the seat of the customers for our
five-axis machining centre could be found.
A very pleasant sight the Polish country is, we had a fine exper-
ience, although the roads were far from excellent. As a result of
centuries old influence Polish settlements resemble German count-
ry towns. Poles have also saved their historical objects, such as
castles, palaces, monasteries. A lot of beautiful forests remained in
virgin state thank to the size of wooded area. This has not been my
only trip by car to the Polish countryside, and I guard the same
memories about all of them.
In the Mielec factory of the Polish airspace industry we have
been welcomed cordially. They would be the actual customers. A
very hard day followed, problems had been turned upside-down.
Ordinarily sellers would sell more, customers buy less, than propos-
ed. We could sell less, than they wanted to buy. In the Comecon it
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has always been that way. In the meantime the other sales exec-
utive went to another customer, a buyer of Csepel machine tools.
At dinner I had to be alert. First, I was to drink as little vodka as
possible. Second, Poles are always offering Tartar beefsteak -- raw
minced beef with a raw egg -- for savoury dish. Neither raw meat,
nor raw eggs I consume. My hosts would not notice it, as I covered
my bread with butter and mixed meat as long as I needed, only ate
my bread and butter, but never meat and eggs.
The very day we were returning from Warsaw there happened
the calamity in Chernobyl. We did not know about it then, but we
have got a fair dose.
In June I had to be present on the international fair in Poznan,
Poland. I had to meet my customers all. Our representative in
Warsaw, chief of our service office, Leslie T., helped me to find
them. It was a short, but very tiring trip with as little time to see
attractions as possible. My next trip to Poland followed in August,
but the situation was the same as before. In the meantime there
came changes in my conditions. Leslie T. had decided to terminate
his assignment in Poland and to return home, he had tried to help
me in getting his place, but the Polish economy turned again down-
wards and events developed differently.
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Germany