Travel Blog

Two Surfside police cars sat outside the entrance to the Surf Club yesterday morning, and inside, an elderly couple made their way down the elegant loggia. A large photograph of Winston Churchill, painting watercolors at the club, hung on the wall. I turned left into the ballroom, through a gauntlet of mariachis and senoritas in frilly dresses. "Dzien dobry," one of the young women greeted me. It was one of those only-in-Miami moments.

I had missed, as I always do, the Polonaise Ball, but decided to make the brunch since the honored guest this year was Lech Walesa. I saw him at the buffet table, his famous moustache a powdery white, a patriotic pin still stuck in his lapel.

A Polish journalist waited in line in front of me. He said Walesa's popularity in Poland today is a bit like George W. Bush's here. That seemed a bit harsh, though I know he's seen as a man whose time has passed.

I took my salmon, sausage, ham, mashed potatoes and omelet (hey, the tickets were $60) to a table near the stage, where a trio played old American standards. Two feathery white palm trees framed a feathery white eagle.

"Are you Polish?" I asked the man sitting next to me. "No," he said. "My mother is. Are you?" "No," I said. "My wife is." He had brought his mother from Mexico City, where she had settled after World War II, to receive a medal at the previous night's ball. Her name was Anna Zarnecki de Santos Burgoa and she was a writer and painter. One of her books, he said, was about the differences between Poles and Mexicans. His son also wrote, but mostly for film. He was the founder of the Woody Allen Institute in Mexico City.

The senoritas, from the Polish American Folk Dance Company in New York, joined the mariachis on the dance floor. Each year, I was told, there is a different national theme to the ball, and the dancers come down from New York and learn a few of the dances.

Walesa gave a short speech. His style had not changed, still breathless and blustery. He made a case for Poland - that it had told the world about war, and about Communism, and that perhaps now it could help the world solve its current crisis. Then the dancers returned, in Polish costumes, and did Polish dances.

About 20 minutes later, walking through the loggia, I saw Walesa sitting by the pool, a bright yellow towel wrapped around his waist. It was not a picture that would go well with Churchill's.

"Do you know who that is?" I asked the waiter who was taking in the scene.

"Lech Walesa," he said, in a Spanish accent. "Everybody knows Lech Walesa. He fought for workers. And he fought against Communism."

I told him that some friends, academics in their early '30s, had never heard of him.

"Americans don't learn history," the man said sadly. "In Colombia, when you graduate from high school, you know world history."

I took one last look at the Nobel laureate, and reflected on the remarkable journey that had taken him from the Gdansk shipyards to the Miami Surf Club.