Gdansk, Poland, 1991
In November of 1990, Mr. Miscellany and I went to live in Warsaw, Poland for a little over a year. We arrived at an interim — and interesting — moment. Wojciech Jaruzelski was still nominally the head of state, but Lech Walesa had been elected the first non-Communist President of Poland and would take office on December 1.
During our year in Poland, we saw many changes — big and small, such as currency reform, shops stocking more imported goods, travel restrictions easing throughout all of the former Soviet bloc, the opening of innovative galleries and restaurants, and the politics of returning property to the original owners (the restaurant across the street from our apartment was one of the first to be returned to its pre-Communist era owners. We also saw the slow but steady infiltration of American brands and Western-style advertising, such as this billboard for Frito-Lay’s Ruffles potato chips along the waterfront in Gdansk.
The loose translation: Ride the wave with Ruffles!
