Poland's presidential crash; first insights from a train to Warsaw

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A man's cell phone rings and the news flies. So are transmitted within minutes the news today. In a carriage that seems from another era, in a train cabin. Five young people and a serious businessman of disturbing coldness. In this environment comes the news. In a train from Poznan to Warsaw, few minutes after 11 a.m.

One of the youth has the privilege of being the first to receive the news and responds incredulously to what they're telling to him and he thinks that it's a joke. Who speaks is his own mother, but in front of so significant news the holiest seems liar. I have the luck to be in the heart of the events, for who tells the stories it's better to live by his own what he's going to tell. Lucky to be in Poland, lucky to be just in the way to the capital, where not everything happens, but a big part, and finally the chance to know the young man who gets the exclusive.

The other youth soon caught the thread of the conversation. They don't know each other from before this train trip, but the atmosphere is close and they look puzzled and their looks and gestures require the chosen boy to disgorge while he keeps on speaking. He receives all the information and account. Within minutes, at most within hours, everybody throughout the country hears the news, but trains continue their journeys.

"Now you live in a country without government -I say to them, for searching their impressions- you can do whatever you wish". The country's president has died in a plane crash with his wife and several other dozens of the representatives of the state.

I ask for explanations, for opinions. At the beginning these young people of the cabin seemed to say that both the Polish president and his twin brother (one of the most important Polish political scene in the country) were in the plane, which has been proven false. Maybe it was because they wished, or perhaps their unconscious. Can anyone wish the death of another person? We can discuss whether it is right or not, if it is unethical, but many people can rejoice in such misfortune.

Let's take a little explanatory backward. The president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński was not the most popular president who has been in the country. Many were his detractors, which was also something widely known among people in the rest of the world, at least between those who follow international news minimally.

Being young does not mean being foolish or thoughtless. An interesting reflection of one of the young of the coach, just after receiving the news proves it: "Now for a week people will be very united by this tragedy, but after a week all politicians will begin to fight again". And not only politicians, people also have political opinions and want to defend them. When people begin to say what you think usually there's somebody who thinks completely different.

After the Polish tragedy the country's institutions have decreed a week of mourning, the magnitude of the political tragedy is important, at least from the psychological and symbolic standpoint. A president is someone chosen by its people and even if he looses popularity after his election the death of the incumbent president it represents to lose the leadership that the nation had given to itself. Of course this is theoretical, and while many Poles can show their solidarity with the tragedy or wait silently while the manifestations of sadness take place, many others also for instance raise their voices, five days later of the crash to reject that the President becomes remembered as a hero.

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>> Direct from Liège, testimony of a visitor in Poland. You never know what will fall from the sky when you look at a pigeon that flies ... It's about being in the right place, chance and open your eyes and listen carefully.
More notes from the witty reporter soon ;)

R. B. R.