Sometimes my tourists ask the question - 'what do you [Poles] think about black people ?'.
Only few years ago I would say: - but there are no black people in Poland.

About ten years ago when I had a black tourist in a group, I've seen that someone on the street shook the hand with her,'checking if the skin is not painted'.

During communism time it was hard to travel outside Poland.
You need to apply for a passport to the local authorities, and getting an obligatory visa from Western Europe embassy was almost impossible.You also needed a visa to travel within Eastern Block countries, and officially you were able to exchange sum of say 10 $ for the whole trip.
But living in a cage had its positives.With heavily protected borders there were definitely no foreign spies,as there were almost no foreigners, then no contact with diseases, most significant almost no AIDS cases in Communist countries, and at that time 'happy cow disease' would have no possibility to spread here.
( Still 'mad cow' doesn't affect our country.)

In say UK, or France there were a lot of emigrants from other countries in the past and now,and there are a lot of people with different colour of the skin already born there.
In Poland there were no strangers.It was even hard to find a person from neighboring eastern country staying for longer.Mixed country marriages were very rare. If you've heard a foreign language - that must've been the tourist that would be out of Poland soon.
One of the first well known black person was the student (Brian Scott) who became popular in the local radio station at the beginning of 90's. The we had a soccer player.One.
After 1989 the visas for foreigner were gradually lifted, three years ago Poland joined EU - the borders are wide open and more and more people are settling in here.
Now in Krakow you can see young children with different skin colour, and - surprisingly they speak Polish.

And the present answer to the tourist question ?
We [Poles] like black people,
we like different nations,
we are eager to meet different cultures,
and we travel a lot all over the world now.

[ on the photo: Emanuel Olisadebe in Polish National Soccer Team ]

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