(From Krakow): a second glance

I asked my friend Basia yesterday – “if your family, your friends, your work could be placed anywhere, would you have preferred to be located in Krakow?” [translate into American: would you choose Krakow over Warsaw to live in?]

She cannot answer. It’s a nonquestion for her. She tells me what I already know. She says “I was born in Warsaw, so that is my home, my city. I don’t know how it would be to be from elsewhere.”

I think you cannot understand this feeling of belonging unless you live in a place like this, where you would no more switch towns than families.

Driving back from the country yesterday, my friends took shortcuts through remote neighborhoods. As markers of where to go, they used homes of relatives. “And now you should turn into this street, as if you were going to Aunt Eva’s house.”

This morning I’m coming back to Krakow, with the confusion of just having been there under different circumstances. People, sights, sounds, walks, foods, everything swimming in one big caldron of events. But of this I am certain: I approach the city as a tourist. My Polishness gives me a jump-start, but I know Krakow not from its core – merely its tourist shell.

A lovely shell it is though. And its magic, so palpable just days ago as I walked its evenly spaced blocks, is still there, now with an added layer of memories, ingrained permanently, much like a tattoo would be, for those audacious enough to succumb to it all.