‘As Far Away from Easter Boredom as Possible!’: Where People Spent Their Holidays in the Interwar Period

gdynia_-_statek_oceaniczny_22polonia22_wchodzi_do_portu._1930-1939_69593716-wiki.jpg, default, The oceanic ship ‘Polonia’ docks at the port, 1930-39, photo: Wikimedia Commons, center, #000000

#heritage

‘The holidays will ruin your household budget’ – that was the slogan of the 1934 issue of 'Dziennik Poznański', advertising... a trip to Copenhagen. In interwar Poland, mass tourism was blooming, and Easter travels were an essential part of it.

In the years that followed Poland's regaining of independence, domestic tourism faced significant hurdles. As the researcher Katarzyna Tałuć of the University of Silesia wrote, these applied:

Not only to the continuation of the beautiful ideas of the countryside movement spreading patriotism with the slogan of love for one's native land, but also to the improvement of the standard of living among the inhabitants of regions that are particularly economically underdeveloped, such as the provinces of south-eastern Poland [...].

However, excursions to foreign lands were seen both as an opportunity for individual development (for one could be enriched by new memories and step outside of his or her daily routine), but also as a practice empowering Poland’s reborn statehood. In 1934, a brochure entitled On the Sun-lit Trail, advertising Middle Eastern destinations for Easter trips, contained the following: ‘The breeze of the southern seas, the sunshine, the exotica, the thousands of enchanting emotions – these shall be yours, dear Tourist, but the knowledge of new paths – that will be the true worth of our Republic’.

The Living Promise of Joy

Thumbnail — Orbis travel agency, Paris branch, 1934, photo: NAC

‘To stay at home is no economy at all. To spend our money on parties and celebrations, is to deprive ourselves of the pleasures of healthy rest and refreshing sensations,’ wrote the daily newspaper Czas (Time) in 1937, inviting us to travel during the festive season. A small article relating the most popular destinations was entitled Where We Go for Easter. The issue, then, was not whether to go at all, but where to go (which indicates that travel, far from being a luxury accessible only to the rich, was an entirely common custom). The article in Czas praises the tours organised by the Polish Travel Agency Orbis, founded in 1920 in Lviv, and which would eight years later be elevated to the status of a national travel agency, and at the outbreak of the Second World War had 136 domestic and 19 foreign branches. Among the many Easter destinations Orbis offered we could find excursions to Riga via Vilnius (‘We will be visiting the landmarks of the Latvian capital as well as the wonderfully developed Baltic coast’), to Chernivtsi via Lviv (‘it is a lively city and you can spend the holidays there very pleasantly’), as well as Berlin, Bucharest, or Budapest.

Those who preferred to spend Easter in the homeland could opt for an agency-organised holiday trip to Zakopane, Krynica or [the town of] Wisła – typically in order to ski (although we currently associate this form of holiday with Christmas festivities rather than with spring celebrations). Even in the 1934 issue of Polska Zbrojna we may find information about an Easter expedition to the mountains: a trip to the Chochołowska Valley combined with a ski course and camp. The interwar period also saw the emergence of the wellness resort, which is why – economic advantages aside – the health benefits of Easter trips were appreciated:

The skiers descending from the mountaintops look splendidly tanned, even bronzed in the hot sun, healthy and cheerful. They are a living promise of the pleasures and joys that await our tourists in the mountain spas & resorts.

The article in Czas does, by the way, read like a sponsored text, as it quite explicitly urges people to quickly buy their tickets (‘Why fret and struggle to find the last seats on a trip?’). The 1936 Orbis brochure contained an equally abundant Easter offer: the agency offered domestic trips, for instance to Jurata (‘5 days at the luxurious Lido Hotel. Excellent company, dancing, bridge, splendid walks’ for the amount of 45 contemporary złotys). A trip to Zakopane and a three-day stay in a ‘first-class guesthouse’ constituted another proposal. Foreign destinations included Yugoslavia (Split, Dubrovnik, Zagreb), and the programme also entailed stops and visits in Vienna and Budapest.

Far from the Pancakes

Already before the Great War, the writer, poet and translator Zuzanna Rabska wrote a column entitled Aboard Thalia following an Easter sea voyage to Trieste, extolling the virtues of retreating from the mundanity of the festivities:

Tradition says that Easter holidays should be spent with family. [...] Years ago, it would have been considered outright sacrilege for anyone to seek tourist experiences in the wide world on the anniversary of the Resurrection. But the times are changing. Today, it is increasingly common for people to get away from home for the holidays. Away, as far away as possible from the pancakes, the gossips, the boredom of Easter!

And so, we see that, although it was the interwar period that saw the heyday of mass tourism, holiday 'escapes' had also been popular earlier. Already back then, sea travel operators were making getaways possible for those who, as Rabska wrote, 'did not want to bake mazurek (shortcakes traditionally made for Easter in Poland, translator’s note) and break eggs at home'. In the inter-war period, getting 'as far away as possible' was in fact actively advertised not only as an entertaining form of avoiding the ordinariness of Easter preparations, but also as an extraordinary aesthetic and spiritual experience.

In the aforementioned brochure On the Sun-lit Trail, published in 1934 by the Polish Transatlantic Shipbuilding Society Linja Polsko-Palestyńska (Poland-Palestine Lines), it was asserted that following the southern trail 'perfectly connotes our hunger for the sun, love of the exotic and religious pietism'. Easter voyages to the Holy Land on the ship Polonia were to satisfy the climatic yearnings of ‘Northern country dwellers’ and allow them to stand ‘at the threshold of the biblical world’. A trip to the Middle East was also identified as a particular 'sentimental journey' with the power to transport people not only to biblical times....

Religious images are awakened that echo some secretly hidden sentiment of the earliest childhood memories. And all that illuminated by the radiance of a powerful, mighty sun [...].

A Real Revelation

Palestine was, of course, one of the more popular destinations for Easter tours. In the March 1936 issue of the Nowy Dziennik, a holiday trip there was advertised as follows:

It is at this time that oranges blossom all over the country, and their dizzying fragrance becomes wonderfully overwhelming. With greenery and flowers, an eternally blue sky and mild warm weather, the lovely land of Palestine welcomes the visitor in the springtime.

In 1938, a Polish-Danish company, the carrier ‘Gdynia-America Shipping Lines’, reported that the ship Polonia would depart from the port of Constanta in Romania. The entire trip was to take place between the 7th and 25th April, half of which would be spent on the journey there and back (with longer stops in Istanbul, Tel Aviv or – on the way home – Piraeus).

The cloudless and sapphire sky, the smooth surface of the sea, the dazzling brightness of the sun, the blossoming oranges, and almond groves – all of this is a true REVELATION for the northern resident. The feast of Easter, the feast of the southern spring – a spur of invigorating sensations, a health bath for body and spirit.

– tempted the carrier, adding that the 'Easter Voyage' would come at the same price as the regular three-day stays organised over the non-holiday period. The trip to Palestine was to cost 375 złotys in the economy class and 575 in the highest class (the złoty at the time was worth approximately ten złotys today). The price included a foreign passport, visas, round-trip boat travel and subsistence on board. ‘Eight and a half days in Palestine is an uncommon opportunity that should be seized without delay,’ they enticed.

About Poland in Palestine

Two years earlier, in 1936, the ‘Gdynia-America Shipping Lines’ offered Easter departures on board the Polonia and the Kościuszko – and the ‘Palestine Line’ was described as the shortest and most comfortable connection from Poland to Palestine (the operator boasted that it had ‘the most comfortable ships on the route’). To make the journey more convenient, special trains departed from Warsaw via Lublin, Lviv, Stanislawow and stopped at the port, right next to the ships. ‘The courteous service on board both ships, the comfortable cabins, the tasty and plentiful cuisine make the stay on the S/S "Polonia" and S/S "Kościuszko" one of the most pleasant sea journeys,’ wrote the Easter guide.

In his book At the Source of the Holy River. Sketches from a Journey in Palestine, published in 1934 (and illustrated by the painter and traveller Aleksander Laszenko), Wacław Kneblewski, a Catholic clergyman and chaplain on the ship Kościuszko, recalled an Easter meeting at the local Polish House as the 'most heart-warming moment' of his stay ('We sat and chatted about Poland in Palestine').

The Land of Sunshine

It was also possible to travel to Palestine and Egypt on the ‘southern line’ with the Polish travel agency Francopol. The agency offered an Easter pilgrimage to Rome for 149 zlotys too – in 1938, the trip included participation in the canonisation of Jesuit priest Andrzej Bobola. Francopol also offered Easter trips to Spain and Romania. A literary account of one of the trips organised by this company was written by Olga Tarnawska in her book Easter on the Adriatic: in the Glare of the Midday Sun, published in 1937. Tarnawska boarded the train on 7 April 1935, and wrote about the trip that it took her ‘away from the daily drudgery and work, and transported her to a sunny and colourful land, to a carefree life’. Describing the day of the trip, she praised the reliability of the office: ‘All our needs are, thanks to the excellent organisation of Francopol, anticipated and everything is at our disposal’. The train setting off from Warsaw was, in her recollections, ‘refreshed, shiny’, and was bid farewell by the crowd on the platforms (‘The hustle and bustle, well-wishes, goodbye hugs, waving handkerchiefs, hands, hats... We depart at five o'clock’). ‘It's comfortable, clean, and elegant,’ she wrote.

Tarnawska spent Easter with the rest of the expedition members in Dubrovnik (the trip participants stayed at the Grand Hotel Lapad). Indeed, the colourful, lyrical descriptions of the landscape in Tarnawska's narrative created a picture of an extraordinary trip combining aesthetic and spiritual experiences:

The aquamarine sky was turning a bright flush in the east, heralding the swift appearance of the sun [...]. All around reigned such a solemn silence, as if nature itself wanted to announce that this was the greatest day of supernatural life in the year.

The Easter dinner, according to the author's account, was held at the hotel with tables

arranged in a horseshoe on the terrace, decorated with coils of ivy and sprigs of pink leuconia. Stacks of painted Easter eggs cheerfully poked at the eyes, plentiful garnishes and batteries of wine glasses promising quite a feast [...].

Strange Spaniards

Orbis also encouraged people to go to Spain and ‘spend Easter in Palma de Mallorca’ (with visits to Strasbourg, Barcelona, Nice, Milan and Berlin on the way).

A few years earlier, Ferdynand Hoesick, a Polish publisher, writer, historian, and editor-in-chief of the Kurjer Warszawski, had travelled to Spain. In his book Wanderer: Impressions from a Journey, published at his own expense in 1925, he wrote, among other things, about his Easter trip to Granada in Andalusia.

He described the city as 'marvellous, situated as if in paradise, with the snow-capped Sierra Nevada range as its backdrop'. The Spanish Easter celebrations themselves, however, led him to criticise local Catholicism: ‘Spanish Catholicism in the popular strata is very superficial’. He was astonished, for example, to see... workers on the scaffolding of a building next to the cathedral, who – despite an important holiday for Christians – worked as if nothing much was going on. He was also surprised by the emptiness he witnessed in the local cathedral on Easter Sunday: ‘Peculiar indeed, this Spanish Catholicism!’.

Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski, 4 April 2023

Language English