PP: Serdecznie zachęcamy do przeczytania długiej relacji z uroczystości w Melbourne, gdzie ambasador RP Andrzej Jaroszyński wręczył pani profesor Tracey Rowland The Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Pani profesor Rowland jest dziekanem John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Melbourne Campus. Autorką relacji jest Fiona Power z Kairos Catholic Journal. W tekście znajduje się również link do galerii zdjęć z uroczystości. A oto fragment przemówienia prof. Rowland, która wspomina, jak to kilka lat temu w Hotelu Windsor zaryzykowała, aby fragment swojej mowy wygłosić po polsku.
My friend Dr Anna Golemo came to my rescue. She translated the first section of my speech into educated Polish and then read it onto a tape. After a couple of weeks of playing this tape over and over every evening both my husband and our cat had learned to say Panie Prezesie, Szanownie Państwo, and much that followed, but as the night approached I was still struggling. As we drove into the Windsor Hotel Anna corrected my pronunciation of the word “język”. She suggested that I try to meow like a cat but instead of saying meow, I should just say jow and add the zik. I thus began the speech with a script which had words like “meow” scribbled in the margins.
The end result was that 150 people in the grand ballroom of the Windsor Hotel laughed and cheered as I heroically completed each sentence. Lillian Frank graciously told me that I had managed the vowel sounds very well. So when people ask what I have done to deserve this honour, I say that I had the courage to give an after dinner speech to a room full of Poles in their own language at a formal dinner at the Windsor Hotel. Tony Macken invited me to deliver the speech because he knew that I had once been a lecturer in Soviet and Central European Politics at Monash and that I had lived in Poland in 1989, the year that the Berlin Wall came down and Communist leaders were toppled.
There are many stories I could tell about my experiences in Communist Poland but my favourite memory is of seeing a farmer pull into the Dominican Priory in Ulica Stolarska with a cart filled with rotten cabbages. As I was wondering what he was going to do with the useless cabbages a platoon of seminarians appeared. They quickly removed the cabbages which were camouflaging carcasses of fresh meat and carried the meat into the Priory. This was my introduction to the underground economy.
Today it is always a pleasure to go back to Poland and see the progress that has been made. I particularly love Kraków which is a European Oxford on the Wisła. The town is well supplied with musicians and one can sit in the cafes around Rynek Głowny and consider which of a dozen concerts to attend on any evening of the week.
Whereas Australia is famous for its beaches and life-savers [which are great!], Poland is famous for its poets and philosophers, its musicians and military heroes. Pełna relacja, przemówienia oraz fotogaleria - kliknij, czytaj, oglądaj
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