The power of the zebra, at least in in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland is strong. Amazingly so. Also known as the crosswalk in the the U.S., I was stunned at how absolutely compliant people in those two cities were when it came to crossing the street. There are zebras with stop lights and zebras that exist in the wild, without lights. I was out for a walk one morning and the pedestrian light at the zebra was red. There were no cars in sight. No cars or trams coming on the left, and nothing approaching on the right. But nobody crossed the street. No one moved. They waited for the pedestrian sign to turn green. Then we crossed. And at any zebra without a light, all you have to do is put your big toe out in the road and cars will stop. So much power! I had no idea what was going on, but I went with the zebra flow of things. Gwyne and I were walking along the sidewalk on the left hand side of the road towards a museum and my navigation told me to go straight. But I didn’t. I turned right, then turned left, then left again. We could have crossed the road once and stayed on the left hand side of the street. Gwyne turned her head back, noticed that we had crossed the street three times to stay in the same side of the sidewalk we were originally on and raised her eyebrows in question. I said, “The zebra. You cross at the zebra. That appears to be the law in Poland.” Later on, the same day, two young kids crossed the street. The green pedestrian sign blinks more rapidly to indicate it’s going to turn red shortly, so chop chop when it’s blinking. The young woman ran, the guy with her continued to stroll across the street as the pedestrian sign turned red. She turned, pointed at him and yelled, “Criminal! Criminal!” We laughed and laughed and laughed at that exchange. The next day, we took a train from Krakow to Berlin. Towards the end of the trip, we met a young woman (35) who was originally from Poland. I asked her about the power of the zebra and she said, “It wasn’t always that way. But now, there are unmarked police around and cameras. It’s 50 or 100 euro if you don’t follow the zebra.”     

                                                                Smile if you follow the zebra