As a Polish person myself - I have to say it's fascinating. I know everything about the communist times from the inside, from the million stories told by my parents, and I know this exact process in reverse - getting out of Poland, and then being fascinated that there are no queues,that you can buy anything you like, that everything is organized and seems like people care about their surroundings a lot more(which is ironic,if you think that the very foundation of a communist country is that everything belongs to everyone so everyone should care about it - well, you couldn't be more wrong. If something belongs to everyone then no one cares about it).
Loved the story. Reminds me of my own odd immigrant story: In the 1970s, my dad decides he had enough of living off the family, takes off on a 30-day tourist visa to Communist Ethiopia. Grabs a cab to the Ministry of Education, somehow finds convinces that person that he, a non-native speaker of English (Indian origin), is the best person to teach English to rebels in the south of the country. He does that for five years. Gets married, lives there for the next twenty more years. I was born, grew up there. It always amuses me how a random whim 30 years ago has influenced so much of my life. (And also proves to be entertaining to sit in the back of a cab with an Ethiopian cab driver and occasionally startle them by speaking fluent Amharic. ;-)
Great story Jacques!<p>"A tent on wheels", that is an excellent description of the 2CV. I saw a frustrated owner who couldn't get the key working literally pull off the side door, and put it in the back and drive off.<p>The descriptions of the forms and questions was also great, and I've concluded that there is a corollary to the Spiderman "Great Power" quote that goes something like "With great Bureaucracies comes great ass covering." Basically everyone in those systems seem to be in fear that a colleague or a supervisor is going to "get them" if they screwed up something, and the endless forms and papers and signing is a way of creating defensive evidence that <i>they</i> were not the ones the screwed up, if what ever it is that is happening turns out to be a problem. It is really a cancerous organizational dynamic and one that leads to huge inefficiencies.
Nowadays Poland seems like any other European country (for me, being a tourist it does anyway).<p>And this article is referencing a time only around 25-30 years ago...
Slight diversion from the point, but a DS anecdote: A friend of mine at university had a 1973 Citroen DS. This was in 1997. The hydraulic system failed violently (rapid depressurisation) whilst we were going up the M1 in the UK. The steering basically stopped working and thing sunk like a ship over the space of 30 seconds. I imagine it was sort of like an Apollo 13 moment for him driving.<p>The AA guy turned up, shook his head and said "Bloody French crap" and ordered a flatbed to pick it up. By the time it turned up, all the hydralic fluid was all over the road. This was 15 miles from Manchester so the poor AA guy dragged us back to London begrudgingly.<p>He bought a Mitsibishi Galant VR4 after that which was a wonderful car.
So that's why he was saying he's learning Romanian. Btw, watch out for Duolingo's Romanian course (should take half a year or so to be finished):<p><a href="http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ro/en/status" rel="nofollow">http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ro/en/status</a><p>Until then maybe Livemocha will do.
Wonderful story, nicely told. Thanks.<p>I had a 2CV as my first car too. Friends nicknamed it the "Can of Death," for reasons you're very familiar with. My favorite trick was going camping with it and removing the back seats which made a very comfortable camp chair. It could also transport a drum kit, two guitars, two 100W amp cabs and heads, (and my band's sexy drummer) without any hassle. I loved that car, and the drummer, and every hot summer's day I spent driving with the wind in my hair and a hand on the window to keep the door shut.
If this story piqued your interest in late Communist Poland, give Timothy Garton Ash a read.<p>His "The Polish Revolution" is a great in depth account of the 1980/81 Polish uprising, and "The Magic Lantern" is a romping retelling of the last few months of Communist rule.<p>Beautiful books.
Glad it all worked out so well, what a nice story. It's crazy how much of our lives can be decided by such a small moment - like helping a couple of hitchhikers on an otherwise boring, routine day!