Day 16 Gdansk

I had dinner tonight with Chris, a gentleman from Kent, England, who's here to have two root canals and a broken tooth fixed. "The dentists in Poland are very good and I can get it done for 1/3 of what it costs in England." "But don't you have a National Health System in England," I asked. "We do, but it's inefficent and costly. My NHS dentist insisted I see a private doctor. He didn't feel qualified to do the work." Chris continued, "Nine out of ten doctors opt out of the NHS because they don't get paid enough and those that remain aren't very good. The system in England is okay if you're dying on the street but if you have anything that is remotely elective, you wait, don't get it done, or get it done privately. The Swiss and French systems are the same, people there go to Hungary or Poland." So listen up, Nancy Pelosi, you should be careful what you wishes for.

Gdansk is so accessible. I've walked from one end to the other, visited six museums, and crammed my tiny brain with a zillion factoids that I'll soon forget. Then one factoid strikes you like a bolt of lightening summing up the tumultous history of this region. At the end of WW I, 90% of Gdansk was German and was accorded, under the Treaty of Versailles, an independent status subject to the control of the League of Nations. Other German areas in what was then Prussia came under control of Poland. Of course, this didn't please Hitler and became his justification for attacking Poland in 1939. And so it goes, the history in Europe, and the rest of the world, is one continuing saga of a religious or ethnic group retailiating for the real or purported disinfranchisement they've suffered under another group.

Lately, I've been liking the idea of being a roving anthropologist. It's a label that helps keep things in perspective. When I run into a disagreeable situation, like the extremely bad dinner of Pieroui, a type of dumpling, that tasted as bad as the rabbit I had in Barcelona (my family knows how bad that was) or my first night here, sleepless, due to church bells ringing on the hour and half hour, while revelers, on the street below, partied until four, and construction workers started jack hammering away at six, I just tell myself it's all part of my research as a roving anthropologist. As a roving anthropologist your research is not bound to this or that, the good or bad, but can extend to any aspect of human behavior. It's an idea that seems to suit my present situation quite well.