Destination Poland: Sunday (evening)

You know you’re writing like an old person when genealogy and roots-tracing blogs start linking to you.

For the record, I don’t do roots. I can tell you for sure that no one in my family ever traveled on the Mayflower. Indeed, no one in my extended family even knew what the Mayflower was until about a generation (or so) ago. I know this much: my ancestors appeared to be scattered all over Poland. How’s that for precision?

Am I wedded to my past? Well naturally, on these trips to Poland I am a bit overwhelmed with memories. I walk to Lazienki and see this:

The Chopin monument in Lazienki today. 

…and I remember this:

My sister and I at the unveiling of the Chopin monument back in the mid-fifties. 

Now, you could accuse me of being rather stuck on Chopin (absurd! I hardly ever listen to his music… maybe once every other week…sometimes more… okay, sometimes lots more). But isn’t everyone? Nah… I was driving home tonight with one of my university-days friends and he was telling me that his daughter refuses to ever listen to classical music. You know what she likes instead? he asks. Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Cobain? Can I admit to not knowing who that is?

I don’t want any expressions of shock and disbelief. I really did not know (I’ve since sent my research team at my sister’s home to work and I’ve got some answers). I’m stuck on Chopin alright. Or, I’m just plain stuck. Maybe sometime during my crossing of the ocean in one direction or another my internal calendar-clock lost its battery and quit functioning, so that I am perpetually set on the hour five, or the age five and cannot move beyond that.

Things I did not know about myself

1. Speaking weirdly

I tell one of my high-school friends tonight: you know, I think I am beginning to speak Polish with a slight American accent. My “sz” sounds are too soft, they’re beginning to sound like “sh” (this is an unthinkable enunciation atrocity for a Pole). He looks at me and hesitates before saying anything. What? You agree, don’t you? I am beginning to sound American? Um, even in high school you spoke…not exactly like the rest of us, he tells me. Endearing. But different.

Great, I sounded like an outsider at the age of fifteen. And in Wisconsin I am always told I speak with a slight (kind people add this adjective) accent. Basically I can conclude from this that I do not know how to speak any language well. I can just imagine the French laughing as I mess around with their vocabulary.

2. Overcome with emotion

I asked my sister today: do your (grown) sons ever cry? No, not really, she said. But then neither do I. I mean, if there was a tragedy or something, but otherwise no... I answer - oh. She looks at me and comments – you know that you always were the emotional one in the family. I mean, you were always laughing or crying…

Good thing we have these reunions so that I can get a sense of who I was.

Destination Poland: Sunday (afternoon)

It's Sunday. Any ideas on how to fill a Sunday in Warsaw?

A gray day. A cold day. The kind of day I think chills me more than any other: damp, freezing, windy.

(Dreadfully bleak, isn’t it? Isn’t it?)

When I was very little and then again, as a teen, I’d head for the park on Sundays. First with my sister and father, later with my boyfriends or girlfriends. That is what one did.

(Sounds miserable in a month such as December.)

The thing is, it was always wonderful. I have said this to anyone who’ll listen: Warsaw has the most beautiful park in the entire world: a park with wide alleys and curving paths, a summer palace (rebuilt, naturally – remember, we are in the capital of war rubble) and a lake, an orangerie with peacocks wandering freely, a rose garden surrounding Chopin’s statue…

(Lovely. Did you smell the roses?)

No roses in December.
And people. The park is always full of people. Strolling people, older younger, people feeding birds, squirrels, ducks, swans, peacocks (it’s the primary activity for little kids). And it has an open terrace where you can sip coffee and eat sweets.

(You sat in an open terrace? How exciting. How cold.)

Naturally the terrace is closed for the winter, but the café still sells rurki z kremem (a rolled wafer stuffed with fresh whipped cream) to strollers.

Lazineki park is where you exhale before Monday places demands on you all over again. You take it slowly, it’s meant to be savored. It is, for me, Warsaw’s greatest treasure. It doesn’t carry any history with it, you make up your own personal one and in a city like Warsaw, that is so refreshing, it hurts.

A rolled wafer with whipped cream, even in December. 

A peacock in search of his mate 

Brothers, scaling fences, feeding birds and swans. 

The Lazienki Palace. Does Warsaw have a "soul?" If it does, it's here, in the park. 

Destination Poland: Sunday (morning)

Instead of the NYTimes, I have been reading the local paper and listening to Polish radio. That, interspersed with conversations I have had here, lead me to note the following:

To accuse the Polish Catholic Church of shielding perpetrators of violence (against women and children) by its constant reinforcement of the notion that the family is sacred and untouchable, will get you into a lot of trouble.

Attitude about the war in Iraq was marked by indifference and mild support – until the first Polish soldiers were killed in the conflict. Now public opinion has shifted, arguably for the wrong reasons.

I am hereby stating that “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” just does not work when translated into Polish.

For the common person, the greatest problem with the last decade under communism was the absence of favorite foods in grocery stores. You could say that rationing kielbasa was the last straw, the trigger behind the silent revolution. My sister, who has been a vegetarian for the past twenty years or so, was less affected by the long lines forming during that time to buy meat.

Poland has more women in leading government positions than even countries such as the US. Nonetheless, discrimination based on gender and age (including asking pre-hire questions about pregnancy plans) is common in the workplace.

Stories about people dying from eating poisonous mushrooms are greatly exaggerated.

If the Americans do not change their policies on granting visitor visas to Poles, they may experience the first waning of enthusiasm toward their government, Bush or no Bush.

A Polish university student commented that he was glad to learn (from listening to the American presidential debates) that his knowledge of the English language surpassed that of the leader of the free world.

It’s interesting to immerse myself in stories and news originating solely from this side of the ocean. Nonetheless, I remain extremely grateful to those of you in the States who have written and commented on Ocean posts. By far, the post that has generated the warmest, nicest emails ever is the one on Rynias. I hereby admit that it, too, is my favorite and it may remain so for the rest of Ocean’s time on the Net.