I had some culture today.
I had the day mostly to myself so after a lazy morning of attempting to plan journeys (I failed, full day of work tomorrow, do I want to go Vilnius?) I decided to have a go at doing some tourism, which was mostly churches, art, and bears. This was successful, although by the end of the bear quest I had cheated a bit by looking at a map on the Interwebs.
To leave the place where I’m staying and walk into the centre of Białystok, I pass the memorial which stands on the site of the former Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery at Sienny Rynek. It dates back to the 18th century but was paved over by communist authorities and turned into a market (not-)square. After a lot of work, the memorial was unveiled in 2020 and the art (but is it?) installation that now stands where the post and cross-piece of a cross formed by the paths to it meet is a sarcophogus and holds the remains of the people who were buried there.
The Basilica of Saint Roch is a dominating white church built on the Saint Roch hill on the site of a cemetery that was desecrated by Russia during the January Uprising which started in January 1863 and lasted about a year. This insurrection would ultimately fail to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but Poland finally regained its independence just over fifty years later and in 1927 work started on construction of a church which was to serve as a monument to the regaining of independence.
Work stalled during the second world war when under German occupation it was used a barracks and under Soviet occupation it was going to become a circus, and it was not until 1946 that the building was finally consecrated. Its official name is Church-Monument of Poland’s Regained Independence (Kościoł-Pomnik Odzyskania Niepodległości). It is apparently one of only a handful of Catholic churches not in the form of a cross, instead being formed as an octahedron. Inside, it’s actually quite reserved and very white, which works well with the light it gets so easily from being high up on a hill.
There is a stained-glass dome over the chancel which merits a look up.
Churches aside, there are a few trails that lead tourists around Białystok, such as the one for wooden architecture, the one for murals, and of course the one for Esperanto, but since the end of last year there are also little bear statues hidden around the city, each telling a little bit of a story about the part of the city in which it is found.
They are the result of suggestions from residents for ways of improving things to do around the city, and the idea for a new tourist trail was submitted to the Civic Budget in 2018. Over 630 residents voted for its implementation and as a result, eight little bears are located in places important for history or culture in the centre of the city and create their own tourist route.
I’d already seen two during the whirlwhind tour of my first day and been told about the two near the Orthodox church by the barman in the beer and vodka place, which I was quite excited to find. As they’re only about 50cm tall and hidden in sometimes obscure places, there’s quite the surge of excitement when finally you spy one peaking at you from somewhere secluded and in the case of the ones that are a little more obvious it’s fun to see the delight of children (I’m not referring to myself) as they see one.
As the day went on I decided to cheat for the remaining four as I was running out of time before an unexpected culturally-rich evening of art, drinking, karaoke, drinking, and then vodka-and-beer.
The art was an exhibition of an artist local to Białystok, Teodor Sokołowski, whose oil series Kolorowe jamarki shows scenes of the city centre that bring together the different people and cultures in famous places. Within the paintings are hidden other artists who were all quite excited to be looking at themselves on canvas from the real world (or perhaps the other way round). There were free biscuits and tea-or-coffee was also provided.
After culture, I discovered there’s a bar called Antypub dedicated to the Ministry of Silly Walks (nice beer), that in the restaurant next to the Esperanto Hotel there’s a nice local porter which goes down nicely, and that, ultimately, a bar that proclaims itself as “beer and vodka bar” full of pissed-up Poles doing karaoke at two in the morning is a simultaneously terrifying and exhiliarating experience. Shots were cheap; the Kamikadze shot menu in beer-and-vodka provided four shots for 20 złoty, although the chirpy barman was happy to do me eight for 30. As I’d already had some cocktails and some lemony shot-things called Cytrynówka which went down far too easily, reason dictated that I should probably limit myself to only four shots so I’d be bright as a button for work in the morning.
As it happened more than four shots somehow happened as I was befriended by a dancer from a visiting ballet who seemed to think it culturally important and nigh-on insisted that I slowly work my way through everything that was on offer until I realised I was in far too deep to be able to extricate myself for fear I might offend. Meanwhile my host for the evening — previously culturally-inclined and unimpressed by my choice of beer-and-vodka bar — had warmed up to the concept of karaoke and was belting out various REM masterpieces, much to the delight of the assembled revellers who thought it a great idea to sing along.
Every now and then, some Polish drinking song with lyrics no more demanding than occasionally shouting “hey” at each other would come up on the screen which demanded much banging of things — and impromptu shots from nowhere — until about blurry o’clock when I remembered I needed to be up bright and early in the morning.
