Poland: The Rising of the Phoenix! Text by Ragini Ramachandra

Abstract

Poland: The Rising of the Phoenix! is the sixth in the remarkable series of Travelogues by Ragini Ramachandra and Ramachandra. It recounts how their recent visit to Poland enabled them to make an amazing discovery that here was a battleravaged country which despite its bruised psyche was striding towards progress and prosperity, emerging like the mythical phoenix in the process. This impression is confirmed by their visits in particular to Krakow, the “Cradle of Polish Culture” and Warsaw, “a City of Ruins” now metamorphosing into “a City of Re-birth” which serves as a “symbol of the resilient Polish spirit”. Krakow, the earlier capital of the country with its medieval-antique look, its Old Synagogue displaying amongst many other artefacts a painting of Shylock with Jessica, its reputed Salt Mines (Wiesielka), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its Wawel Castle along with the Wawel Cathedral, Leonardo da Vinci’s seminal painting, “Lady with an Ermine”, Chopin concerts that served as a “mediation between spiritual and sensual life” and its Jagiellonian University where Copernicus, the great astronomer had studied rightly attracted the authors.