Bristol Hotel in Warsaw —Walking the Memory Lane

Café entrance at the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw

The Warsaw that stayed in my memory was that of 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a drab city with broken foot paths and drunks stretched out on public benches, and the memories I carried with me encouraged me to stay away. During those years of absence, I sought colorful, cheerful places to visit. I did feel a little guilty about this because it was not Warsaw’s fault that it was so drab (by now, of course, you know that Warsaw here means the place AND its people).

I returned, after 22 years, driven by curiosity, my apprehension numbed by flow of time. In July 2011, the Bristol Hotel was offering some tempting discounts and we booked a room there. We thus found ourselves in a luxurious historic hotel, well renovated and now owned by Le Meridien. The renovation impressed me because it produced a comfortable and modern hotel without losing the Art Noveau atmosphere of its heyday.

We had a spacious room on the fourth floor which overlooked the prettiest and oldest avenue in town, Krakowskie Przedmieście (KP) street, with 17-century palaces and manor houses, all completely rebuilt after the destruction by German army during the Second World War. Its close-to-original reconstruction was possible only because an Italian painter, Bernardo Bellotto, better known in Central Europe as Canaletto, painted in meticulous detail Warsaw’s streets and buildings in the 18th century.

To me the Bristol Hotel was a special place. My mum was receptionist there in 1955 and a few times my brother and I spent a day in the hotel trying to play quietly behind the reception desk. This arrangement could not have worked because I have a vague recollection of riding up and down in the hotel lifts and being very impressed with the lift wells, which are still impressive but behind glass.

With mum at New Year Party for children of Bristol Hotel staff. 1955

I also have a photograph from a New Year party for children of Bristol Hotel employees and associated memory of a stage show, small presents and chocolate. Once mum came home with an autograph from the French actor Gérard Philipe and a small bottle of Chanel 5 with which he expressed his appreciation of her help with some additional translation. My mum knew six foreign languages, which was unusual in Poland then because so many educated people had either perished by Soviet and Natzi hands when the two latter were cleansing the nation of cultured minds, or had escaped to the West. At Christmas, mum bought from the Bristol kitchens poppy-seed strudels and large babka cakes; she brought them home in a big cardboard box which emitted delicious aromas.

 

Bristol Café now

I grew up and studied at Warsaw University, located about 400 m away from the hotel. In my student days, Bristol Hotel was the social hot spot for the elegant even though its interiors were drabbed down to suit the aesthetic requirements of a political system imposed on the nation by Big Brother over its eastern border. Being white, it was brighter that most other buildings in KP Street, which sported thin, dull colors. Bristol Café was expensive but students, myself among them, went there for a coffee and a sniff of affluence when they could afford it.

I was now in KP street as if in a dream. The buildings were colorful and looked cheery. There was a delightful brewery across the road offering their own brews, cloudy and unfiltered, of many types. Cyclists swished by and walkers occasionally engaged in animated discussions with a group of protesters outside the Presidential Palace, next to the hotel. In the evening, crowds promenaded where in my time the street was almost depopulated. All this mottled crowd, all this freedom replaced the drab, silent and sad world that I had lived in, it seemed, only yesterday and I thought about how different my life and my chances would have been were I a student now.

Inside the hotel

The Bristol Hotel was built in 1901, in the Art Noveau style. Over the years it was THE hotel to stay: statesmen, composers, geniuses of all kind, artists and the simply rich stayed there; among them were Edward Grieg & Richard Strauss, Enrico Caruso and Maria Curie-Skłodowska. Then came the First World War; the Germans requisitioned the hotel so it survived intact. After Poland regained independence in 1918, the first historic session of the Government took place there when Marshal Józef Piłsudski, statesman and leader of the Second Polish Republic, met with Ignacy Paderewski, pianist, composer, diplomat and politician, who became the second Prime Minister of the Republic. During the Second World War , Bristol Hotel was again for Germans only and again survived destruction while 84% of the city lay in ruin.

After the war, under Soviet occupation, Bristol Hotel was controlled by the State. It was THE place to stay for foreign luminaries and it was again off limits to Polish guests. That was when my mum worked there.

In the evening I looked out the window.  Above, a soft moon competed with the gloomy, despite its illuminations, silhouette of Soviet Russia’s cynical ‘gift’ to the Polish people, the Palace of Culture and Science, an unnecessary imposition for the construction of which the Poles had to pay themselves at a time when they could least afford it.

The Palace of Culture and Science seemed to threaten the city

Seen from hotel window in a distance, the Palace of Culture and Science seemed to threaten the vibrant city. I imagined how after the First World War, and three territorial wars, the Poles embarked on rebuilding with great energy. They achieved significant economic growth in the interwar period but this period of peace and growth lasted only 28 years. The Second World War broke out when Russia and Germany invaded the country in 1939. The Poles were not prepared for this just as they would not be prepared for war now. I then wondered if people would always believe that their time was special and that the NOW would continue forever. The Poles of today are not investing much in their army; they again concentrate on rebuilding their economy destroyed by the most racially vicious war in human history and then wrecked over a period of nearly 60 years by an occupant experimenting with a ruthless political system. I hoped that this is not a repeat of the mistake they made in 1921. It is true, Germany is now a western democracy and peaceful but I cannot say the same about Russia. Russia remains primitive in its political structure, uncivilized in its method of problem solving and undemocratic, and it cannot be trusted. How safe was Warsaw now, I wondered.