{"id":322,"date":"2008-11-12T11:52:45","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T15:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/?p=322"},"modified":"2014-06-10T14:45:29","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T14:45:29","slug":"polish-independence-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/polish-independence-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Polish Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday (November 11th) was the Polish Independence Day (Dzie\u0144 <\/strong>Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bci<\/strong>), but according to my contact in Gda\u0144sk<\/strong>, the celebrations were mostly invisible. The white and red flags appeared on street corners, but I was told that was about the extent of it. Most people were just happy to get an extra day off. And what did they do with their day off? They went shopping, of course. Apparently, the malls<\/span> places that dared to defy the new law ordering them to stay shut for the holiday (and there were a few of them) were quite crowded.<\/p>\n

Yes, as you can see, I\u2019m back in Gda\u0144sk<\/strong>. And I plan to continue with my to-do list, which I had prepared for my last visit three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

But back to the Independence Day topic, shall we? It\u2019s a relatively new holiday. I say \u201crelatively\u201d because it didn\u2019t exist back in the olden times when I was born. Back then I think, but don\u2019t quote me on it, Poland had a different \u201cindependence\u201d day, which wasn\u2019t even called that. Instead, it was called \u201cNational Day of Rebirth of Poland on the anniversary of signing the PKWN Manifesto\u201d and it was celebrated on July 22nd, and if you ask me, that was quite pointless in the first place. A major holiday in the middle of summer when everybody was on vacation anyway? Well, that\u2019s the famous communist logic (or rather \u2013 lack thereof) for you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally, this independence day, reminds me of Thanksgiving. In a way, it\u2019s also a day to give thanks, and on November 11th many Poles do just that. Initially \u2013 they gave thanks for the end of the communist rule, now for an extra day to shop.<\/p>\n

But seriously, it\u2019s supposed to commemorate the anniversary of the foundation of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 after 123 years of partitions by Austria, Germany and Russia. It was celebrated only twice before WW2, and then reinstated in 1989.<\/p>\n

Few people remember now (especially few young people) that back in the olden days there was also a holiday in early November, alas for a very different reason. It used to mark the anniversary of the Russian (October) Revolution and was celebrated on November 7th. And in 1989 the government knew they couldn\u2019t just take away a day off and give nothing in return. So voila, we have a redressed holiday with a different name and an occasion we can be proud of.<\/p>\n

And the old \u201cindependence\u201d day on July 22nd? Now it\u2019s a day to celebrate the Baltic Sea,
\nor somesuch.<\/p>\n

PS. I’m having a hard time uploading images, so we’ll have to wait until I get to a computer that I can actually use \ud83d\ude09<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Yesterday (November 11th) was the Polish Independence Day (Dzie\u0144 Niepodleg\u0142o\u015bci), but according to my contact in Gda\u0144sk, the celebrations were mostly invisible. The white and red flags appeared on street corners, but I was told that was about the extent of it. Most people were just happy to get an extra day off. And what…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2212],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-independence-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}