Stranger from a strange land

Undisturbed by anyone for thousands of years, it lay deep underground below where the city centre was later to grow. Who could have suspected that this unassuming rock (with a 3.5m girth) was to become a local media star and give the local authorities a bit of a headache? Its five minutes of fame began during an exceptionally warm March in 2011 after construction workers digging the second metro line came across it. The stone was excavated and for the first few months it didn’t raise much interest among the locals. But things were a little different at city hall. A commission was held to determine the fate of this ice age relict and our erratic even got its own separate file in which all the documentation about it could be collected. Meanwhile the boulder was enjoying the sun that it hadn’t seen for thousands of years – except that it didn’t get much sunbathing in because that year the weather was exceptionally capricious. However, all was about to change. The story was picked up by the media during the summer doldrums when there was nothing else to write about and it turned out that a rock could be a hot political issue. There were even those who came forward offering to take care of the wanderer– This initiative as befits activists, was proposed by a youth party. It didn’t come to anything because officials argued that in order to get rid of the rock the city had to follow the appropriate procedures, evaluate the stone, conduct the necessary research and invite tenders. If this natural feature turned out to be of historic importance, the value of the find might even be comparable to da Vinci’s ‘Lady with an Ermine’. It seemed that the stone’s importance was even greater than its proportions although in the end the authorities, tired of fielding journalist’s questions began to argue that it was nothing more than a bit of newspaper gossip.

It’s hard to say what opinion the rock itself had about all of this because, as is widely known travellers from the North do not make great conversationalists. And anyway, so much more was now beginning to happen in the world that the care that journalists had once had for its fate waned.

The erratic just lay motionless, slightly hidden away and forgotten about next to the construction site office on Plac Defilad. Its five minutes of fame had ended.

Now, it’s the spring of 2017 six years since the stone’s excavation. What has happened to the find that was supposedly worth as much as a da Vinci? Well, as is the case with most rocks, it’s not about to embark upon any long-distance travelling of its own accord. The building site office has disappeared from the square. No tender was held and there was no auction. But the erratic’s doing quite well – it lies where it was left by its friends from the construction industry, soaking up the rays of the spring sun. You have to admit, though, that it could have been much worse. At least it didn’t share the fate of its larger companion which was discovered more or less at the same time at the building site of an office building on ul. Próżna. This colossus weighing in at twenty or thirty tonnes with a girth of around 11m had journeyed all the way down from Uppsala. It had to be blasted out as it was not possible to dig it out in one piece. Also our rock was not “disappeared” like six of its friends who had been named natural features of historic importance and made to ornament Warsaw’s streets and squares. In 2013 it was discovered that they had vanished and they were never heard of again – perhaps they’d been crushed up into gravel and ended up on someone’s driveway?

Perhaps I’m carping on a bit. Indeed I probably am. After all this rock had lain underground for thousands of years and nothing had happened to it. It’s not about to crumble into dust sitting in Defilad square, that’s for sure. However, if – over a period of six years – the fate of a humble stone couldn’t be decided, is there any chance of the city centre being developed before the coming of the next ice age? Our erratic is probably in no hurry and it probably doesn’t mind this neglect. So there’s every likelihood it’ll see through another great freeze at its site next to the Palace of Culture. Well that is unless some devious stoneworker takes an interest in it and our traveller from distant lands ends up surfacing the yard of someone’s suburban home.