Mr. Slade Goes to Poland

After I came back to Frankfurt an der Oder from the Seelow Heights battlefield (see posting below), I walked across the Friedensbrücke ("Peace Bridge") from downtown Frankfurt to downtown Słubice in Poland.

There's no border post or anything -- you just go back and forth between countries as you like. Słubice used to be just the part of Frankfurt that was on the other side of the Oder. But then the Red Army came through and the Soviets took a huge chomp out of the Reich and expelled millions of Germans, and pushed the border to the Oder. So now across the river it's in a whole different country. The two towns are very tight with one another now though - the joint university has some classes on one side and others on the other.

As you enter Poland, you see dozens and dozens of "Zigaretten" and "Tabak" signs. I mean, LOTS of them. Apparently, Poland is the place for Germans to go to buy their smokes. There are also lots of "Kantor" signs, where you can exchange your euros for złotys - Poland doesn't do euros.

I just took a short walk, to savor being in a whole nother country (31st one for me). I went into a supermarket and snagged two cans of Polish beer and I asked the very young female check-out clerk if I could pay in euros, and she said yes. So I brought two cans to the checkout and she got out her calculator and figured that I owed her €1.80, which is absurdly too cheap (it should have been about €5). She made a mistake. But, since I don't speak Polish, all I could do was pay her and leave.

Having finished my Polish adventure, I walked back into Germany and took the train back to Berlin. The trip back took less than an hour. So weird.