Eastern Europe 1990: An Interlude in Vienna

Saint Stephen's Cathedral, the center of Roman

Catholic worship in Vienna, was completed in 1433.

The tourist agency helped us find a reasonably-priced "pension" in a good, central-Vienna location. Checking in, we found the staff helpful and the room pleasant in an old European style. The Pension Andreas occupies the third floor of one of those massive, old, five or six-story buildings which seem to occupy most of Vienna's blocks, and is about a block and a half from the church where Beethoven is buried.

Pink Volkswagen, anyone?

By this time it was about 8 p.m. and we were hungry, so we went looking for food. Supper for two at a nearby Chinese restaurant set us back about $34. Everything in Vienna costs three or four times what we were used to paying in Chattanooga. If I describe the cost of something in Vienna as "reasonable," remember that it's all relative.

Normally I'm a nightowl, but when you're traveling, especially on a working trip, you take your rest when you can get it. And we did get a very good night's sleep.

Monday, March 26  The next morning we had the "free" breakfast in the hotel's breakfast room -- the usual meat, cheese, jam, and so-so coffee. But a good deal compared with the price of breakfast on the town.

Crowds in the Kartnerstrass, a pedestrian street which

links the opera house with St. Stephen's Cathedral.

And then we were off for two days footloose in Vienna, like two kids let out of school! We had picked up maps and tourist brochures, but found it all very confusing, especially the transit system. Finally we took the plunge and bought passes and set off for the center of town. I carried cameras, of course, but Louise, exhausted from carrying the heavy S-VHS camera around Eastern Europe, left it in the room.

The monument to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

was erected in 1896 in the Burggarten in Vienna.

All kinds of people enjoy a sunny March day in Vienna.

Louise took the opera house tour and enjoyed it very much, while I photographed the area around St. Stephan's Cathedral. Pizza and salad for lunch set us back $20. In the late afternoon we took subway and tram about 12 miles to the end of the line -- a town called Boden -- to see the Roman ruins. By this time it was nearly dark and too late to see the ruins if we had found them. We found instead a lovely park, a good supper of roast beef and potatoes, a friendly waitress, and more reasonable prices. It took us a little time to find the station, but we eventually got back to the pension, tired and satisfied.

The Anker Clock was created by the painter and sculptor

Franz Matsch and completed in 1914.

Tuesday, March 27  The day dawned gray and gloomy and stayed that way. I spent some time trying to find out if any part of the Iron Curtain fence was still standing between Czechoslovakia and Austria  that I could photograph. I was informed that the fence was being taken down by the Czechs and no one knew for sure where to find the remaining sections. I would like to have had the photographs, but it looked likely to be a wild goose chase. So, we went out to see more of Vienna.

Pavement art in the Kartnerstrasse.

The weather put a damper on picture-taking, and Louise was tired from the previous day's walking, After a light lunch ($20 -- not much today, but this was 1990) I took her back for a nap and went out for a while by myself. The light was still bad.

A stained glass window in St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Later, we took the tram to the McDonald's on the Franz Joseph Quay, then back to the Karntnerstrass, but the crowds had gone, and with them apparently, the street musicians. And it was starting to rain. So we went back to our room and began packing for our 7:10 a.m. flight.

Everything was fine until we came to security, where they flatly refused to hand-inspect my film. This was important, because airport x-rays can damage film. I stood my ground and asked to speak to the person in charge. They kept us waiting until 15 minutes before take-off, when a senior person showed up and passed us through without even looking at my film! That was life before digital cameras.

And then home, after 21 days of intensive, fascinating, enjoyable travel and work.

(Photographs made with Olympus OM and Leica M cameras and lenses, Fujichrome 100D and 400D films.) 

Soli Deo Gloria

Eastern Europe 1990: A Portrait of Poland

Bethany Church of God is building a 2500-seat

worship center on a site that was once a swamp.

Saturday, March 24   After tub baths, which we were getting used to and tired of at the same time, we were taken to the church for breakfast. It was the usual eastern European cold cuts, cheese, and jam, but it was good. (Or maybe we're just getting used to it.) And lots of that good coffee!

After breakfast we were taken to the  site where the church's new, 2500-seat worship center is under construction. In an attempt to "get rid of the Pentecostals" by appearing to give them something while actually giving them nothing, the city gave the church four and a half acres in a prime location near the intersection of two main arteries. The catch was that the land was a worthless swamp. But to their surprise, the despised Pentecostals drained the swamp, Filled it with dirt, and proceeded to build.

The Black Market in Katowici looks much like an

American flea market that has fallen on hard times.

Paul had to give a seminar at the church, so we went out to photograph the Black Market, which looks very much like a U.S. flea market fallen on hard times. Then back for another Polish dinner (these folks apparently don't do lunch) and more of that great coffee. (Do you detect a coffee addict rescued from withdrawal here?)

Farmers in rural Poland still plant

potatoes in the old-fashioned way.

After the meal we were driven around town and out into the countryside, where we found farmers doing their spring plowing and people planting potatoes in the traditional way. Then back into town, where we photographed a group of young people from the church holding a street meeting in the town center. Playing their instruments, singing, and then preaching, they had attracted a good-sized crowd. 

A group of young people from Bethany Church

hold a street meeting in the Town Center.

For the rest of the day we were ferried from Bible studies to home churches to children's meetings to music groups, with hardly time to catch our breath. But we did our job as best we could and when we got back to the hotel were very glad to call it a night. As the trip winds down and the excitement and adrenaline ebb away we feel the weariness more and more.

Faces of Poland

 

A young singer at the street meeting.

Anna, the Karel's 11-year-old granddaughter

is a budding concert pianist.

Ferdinand and Lydia Karel. Graciousness personified.

 

Sunday, March 25   We were tired and moving slowly this morning, but since we were leaving Poland that afternoon, we had to be packed and checked out of the hotel before being picked up at 8:15 for breakfast and the church service.

Breakfast was the usual meat and cheese, but redeemed again by great coffee. The church service was packed with people, which made it difficult to move around, and the lighting was not-very-bright fluorescent. But we covered everything thoroughly. The Polish Pentecostals are quite unrestrained in their worship. I'm sure I witnessed several solo performances of Polish folk dances. Or something.

Sunday morning worship at Bethany Church. Getting

good color under mismatched fluorescent lights

was notoriously difficult when shooting film.

After a great lunch with the Karels, we loaded ourselves into the church van for an hour's drive to the airport, near Krakow, and were soon on our way to Vienna and some badly needed R&R.

Our time in Katowici was altogether too structured. Having only united with the Church of God a year earlier, Pastor Karel and his associates were eager to show their new denomination the effectiveness of their ministry. However, they did not understand the work of documentary photographers, as indeed, few do. Consequently, we spent too much time photographing various aspects of the church's ministry and not nearly enough time documenting the things that would put that ministry into the context of the life of the community and the nation. I'll have more to say about this in an upcoming post. 

(Photographs made with Olympus OM and Leica M cameras and lenses, Fujichrome 100D and 400D films.) 

Soli Deo Gloria 

Eastern Europe 1990: An Encounter with Evil

The entrance to the Auschwitz death camp. The sign says

"Arbeit Macht Frei" which means "Work Makes Free."

We passed quickly through customs and security in Warsaw with no questions asked. The taxi to the Noveltel cost 80,000 zlotys, which fortunately turned out to be $8 U.S. The Noveltel was new and nice, and (at last!) a double bed.

Friday, March 23: We arose to find that the water was off all over Warsaw. So no shave and no bath. We cleaned up as best we could with our portable pack of Wet Ones. At the airport, the security people didn't want to let me through with my little two-wheeled cart loaded with equipment bags. They couldn't understand that I was hauling the carry-ons for three people. Louise and Paul had already gone through, but I was able to get them to come back and take some of the items. And we were off to Katowici.

I have often wondered what it was like when the water came back on and all the toilets in Warsaw flushed at the same time. I'm glad we were gone.

We were met in Katowici by Ferdinand Karel, founder and pastor of the Bethany Church of God, and two of his associates. After checking into the University Hotel we made a brief stop at the church for the first good coffee since. . .I can't remember. West Berlin, maybe? And it wasn't just good -- it was great coffee. As it turned out, we needed something to fortify us.

The church at Katowici is hidden away behind gates and

other buildings in a courtyard in an industrial section of town.

After the coffee, we drove about 25 miles to Auschwitz.

I would not have missed it, but I'm not sure I would go again. It is a monument to all the evil in the depths of our fallen human nature. How anyone could see what one of the most civilized nations on earth did to fellow human beings in an organized and systematic fashion and still believe in the perfectibility of man apart from God is beyond all sense and reason. 

Barracks blocks at Auschwitz. The electric fence wires

carried sufficient voltage to kill anyone who touched them.

Prisoners were crowded into these bunks with

only lice-ridden straw for a mattress.

The crematorium, where bodies were

burned by the hundreds of thousands.

Other photographers have done a far better job than I of showing the horror of Auschwitz, but I've included a few photos to give you a sense of the place.

After Auschwitz, we went back to the church, where we were fed a good Polish dinner by the pastor's wife Lydia, an absolute tyrant of the kitchen.

 

Ferdinand and Lydia Karel

Later, we photographed a home Bible study group in a suburban high-rise. They served cake and tea afterwards, so we took some to be polite. Then it was back to the church, where Lydia had another meal prepared.

This brings up a subject I haven't mentioned before: I call it "the Hospitality Trap." Everywhere we went, we found gracious, hospitable people who wanted to share with us the best of their food. We couldn't eat it all, but neither did we want to disappoint them. It's difficult. Fortunately, as is normal in the kind of traveling we were doing, we missed enough meals that we didn't come home 20 pounds heavier.

(Photographs made with Olympus OM and Leica M cameras and lenses, Fujichrome 100D and 400D films.) 

Eastern Europe 1990: A Meeting in Moscow

The fervent worship of Russian believers

is the expression of a faith that has been tried

in the fire of oppression and persecution.

After my return from the Arpatskaya we were met by Mrs. Ingrid Zaprometer, a lovely lady of about 70 who was a member of the secret group of Pentecostal Christians in Moscow. She took us by taxi to a high-rise apartment building somewhere out on the fringe of Moscow, where the elevator let us out at the 11th floor. Turning a corner or two and passing a young man working on a full-size Yamaha motorcycle in the narrow hall, we entered an apartment consisting of an entry hall, bathroom, small kitchen, and one room about 12 by 20 feet that was packed with about 70 people.  

Some explanation is in order here, because this is now ancient history and some of my readers may never have heard of the Russian Underground Church.

During the 70 years the Communists ruled Russia, they conducted all-out war against religion, and most especially Christianity. The Russian Orthodox Church was the only church recognized by the government, and it was thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB, with even many of the priests being on the KGB payroll. There was at the time we were there only one Roman Catholic church and one Jewish synagogue in all of Moscow. All evangelical groups were illegal, with their members subject to discrimination and persecution. Many evangelical pastors and even lay believers were sent to prison camps in Siberia.

The Russian pastor speaks to a crowd of

about 70 people in a 12x20-foot room.

Our attendance at this meeting was probably only possible because of the "Glastnost" policies of loosened restrictions instituted by Prime Minister Gorbachov. Even so, the singing and preaching were in hushed voices to avoid attracting attention or alienating the neighbors.

The service was long and the room was hot, but it was an unique experience and great privilege to photograph something few Americans had ever seen: the worship of the Underground Church.

 
Afterwards, there was quite a long time of fellowship. I drank three cups of tea and most of a plate of wafer cookies before we finally caught a bus and then a subway, arriving back at our hotel around midnight.

The next day, Thursday, March 22, was chilly with a heavy overcast all day -- more like I had expected Moscow to be, actually. Louise went shopping with Olga Zaprometer, Ingrid's daughter. I went over to photograph the U.S. Embassy and some other scenes, then back to the hotel to check out. We then went to the Zaprometer's apartment with our luggage, where we were served an elegant high tea.

Dr. Zaprometer, 71, is a noted biochemist and teacher. He is also a believer, but in secret, for fear of losing his position at the university. The Zaprometers are people of high culture. Their apartment, for which they waited 15 years, is small by American standards, but beautifully decorated, with bookshelves containing an eclectic library of books in many languages as well as many art and music books lining the walls.

The only Jewish synagogue in all of Moscow.

There is also only one Roman Catholic church.

After the tea, Louise and I caught a taxi and went out to find and photograph the Roman Catholic church and the Jewish synagogue. Dr. Zaprometer had written the addresses for our driver, but it still took a good bit of looking to find them, even after we got to the proper section of the city.

Olga Zaprometer picks out a tune on the spinet.

In the background are Dr. Zaprometer with his

back to the camera, Ingrid Zaprometer,

the pastor and his wife, and Louise.

We got back to the Zaprometer's about 5 p.m. They were amazed at our ability to catch taxis quickly. (The secret, of course, is to look like hard-currency American capitalists.)

After a very enjoyable supper with the Zaprometers, Paul Lauster, and the Russian pastor and his wife, I again exercised my taxi-catching ability, loaded in my ace travel companion (also known as my wife Louise), said goodbye to our friends, and headed off to the airport. Customs, security, and boarding were all uneventful and we were soon off to Poland on LOT, the Polish airline.

(Photographs made with Olympus OM and Leica M cameras and lenses, Fujichrome 100D and 400D films, except for the worship pictures. Blame the funky colors and large grain of those photos on 3M 640T film pushed one stop to ISO 1280 to make pictures under the low ambient light in the apartment. Today's digital cameras can do this easily, but that was then and we used what we had.)