Day Twelve - Back to Warsaw

Today is June 4th - the 20th anniversary of free elections in Poland. We left Kazimierz Dolny to get back to Warsaw to celebrate this amazing day in the country's capital. It was great to get back to Warsaw and see all of our friends at the museum office. After settling into our apartment Kasia took us to the Modern Art Museum to see a special exhibit to commemorate the day. It featured photography representing the past 20 years - a wall containing the image on the front page of a major newspaper every day for the last 20 years as well as photographs taken by 20 year olds - people who had grown up in a Poland free from communism. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting some work done in the museum office.
We spent the rest of the day/night celebrating, along with the entire country. We, along with practically every other person in Warsaw, went to a free concert in one of the cities major squares. The concert was a collection of Polish music from the 90s and was very entertaining. We really enjoyed this night of celebration. The majority of the people there can remember life under communism and therefore this day holds so much significance to them. As Americans this is a difficult concept to understand, we celebrate July 4th every year, but there is no one alive today who can remember what it was like before 1776. However, in Poland every person above our age and older lived under communist rule. This was truly a wonderful experience.