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27 Chapter 2 ‫ﱜ‬ A Political and Economic History of the Z • wiec Region My very first visit to Z • ywiec occurred while I was a student at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, when a group of friends and I drove down to see the town. The group included myself, three other English and American women of Polish descent, and Jan, the young Polish boyfriend of one of the women. For the rest of the group, the point of the trip was to take a Saturday break from studies and see the famous Z • ywiec Brewery; for me, it would be a chance to see the community in which I was planning to live for at least a year. We pulled into the town square, hungry for lunch, and decided to try the first restaurant we found. Entering the dimly lit space, we discovered that it was furnished entirely in Góral-style carved wooden furniture. Because we had previously visited the town of Zakopane to the east, another Góral community, we expected that the waitstaff would be Góral-speakers. The women who worked there, however, did not seem to speak in the Góral dialect. After lunch, we investigated the national park and castles, which were part of the former Habsurg estate. Eventually we asked for directions to the brewery and drove out to see it. As we got closer to the brewery, the distinctive aroma of fermenting beer grew stronger and stronger until it filled the air. We approached the gatehouse and asked if they gave tours, and the guards 28 Being Góral laughed and joked with us about tourists who always wanted to see the inside of the brewery. We walked over to the brewpub, which was attached to the brewery property and open to the public, to see if Z • ywiec beer tasted different at the source. There were a number of people socializing in the brewpub, all men, who grew silent as four women walked in, accompanied only by one young man. We walked up to the bar and ordered beers, asking the barmaid about the souvenir Z • ywiec glasses, mugs, posters, and other items for sale, all eyes in the bar trained on us. When we finally settled at a table, conversation picked up again. Gazing around at the decor, I saw that all of the tables and chairs were carved in the same patterns as those in the restaurant where we had eaten lunch. Among the carved wooden plaques hanging on the walls was one that depicted a scene of three men: one of them was drinking beer, and another had what appeared to be horns on his head and was fighting with the third. These last two had blood on their faces and bodies. Puzzled, I asked Jan if the scene represented some sort of myth about the Devil. He laughed and told me that it was a Góral party—that there was a Góral saying that if there was no blood at a party, there was no party. Just how important was the Góral identity in Z • ywiec, I wondered? And why would the brewery, newly privatized and looking for a modern image, continue to hang such traditional plaques on the walls of its brewpub? This chapter explores the unique history of the town of Z • ywiec and the Z • ywiec region, attending to the problem of how shifting relations to nation-states have affected local identity and how the Góral identity has mediated the community’s relation to various polities. Historical investigation shows that the Z • ywiec community has belonged to the Czech monarchy, Silesian nobility, various Polish noble families (including the royal family at one point), the Habsburgs, the Nazis under the World War II occupation, and the modern Polish nation-state. Because this is an area of Europe that has passed back and forth between several states in the course of its long history, the political and economic impacts of various nationalist projects have been met with resistance from the community. I contend that because the relationship between the community and these various nationstates has been shifting, and the relationship between local identity and national identity is unclear, the community has developed an insular political and economic view that is distinct from national identity both historically and contemporarily. Thus, in the present era, as the Polish nation-state withdraws funding and infrastructural support from Z • ywiec as part of the “shock therapy...

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