Destination Poland: Monday

I don’t want anyone laughing at how ugly I am

I bought garlic from a street peddler today. Better that she have the cash than the large grocery chain. Her braids of garlic where quite pretty and I asked if I could also take a photo (having almost been arrested for improper photographing earlier in the day, I thought I better be careful). She said -- go ahead and take a picture, but without her in it. Then she said what I made to be the title of this post subsection.

I try not to do that – to photograph something ridiculously ugly. But she was not even a tiny bit ugly. She was just plain and ordinary. Yet, I knew what she was talking about: to me, something is normal and ordinary. To another (a blog reader?), some of the posts and photos of the ordinary may be something to smirk at. Should I avoid posting them?

Today I am not avoiding them. I am not giving a tour of Warsaw now, I am on my last day in Poland, and I want to give a run through the ordinary, the everyday.

I’ll avoid too many words because it would take too many words to say anything right.

I walked around my childhood neighborhood today – right in the city center. I moved here (from the village) when I was three. It’s amazing how little has changed. The room that I shared with my sister looked out on the tram stop. The only other room in our apartment looked out back, directly into an older woman’s rooms. We waved to her all the time.

At the side, there was a courtyard for kids to play in. Most apartment houses in Poland had those back then. The playground equipment was as sophisticated then as it is now. The apartment house, the entrance to it, the courtyard: