arriving in Warsaw

Up early. Packed, showered and out of my room by 7. I go for a walk.

Just up to Stockholm's pretty waterfront...

... and back again. To watch a city wake up is a privilege. You see more in those few morning minutes than you might witness in a whole bunch of daytime hours. The pace of the stride as people walk from ferry stop to the tram, or directly to their workplace. Do they stop for a coffee, or is that a French thing? Bakeries seem to open at 7:30. Do they pick up a pastry for a later fiska? I wonder.

By 7:30, I'm in the little courtyard of my own hotel for breakfast.

Same: yogurt, granola, berries, sweet treats and coffee. And apple juice.

Yesterday it took me an hour to eat all that. Today? Twenty minutes and I am by the front desk, checking out, adjusting the bill and finally -- leaving Stockholm.

*     *     *

I fly Polish Airlines today. Initially, I booked with miles on a KLM connection, but in the end I did not want to waste the day flying first to Amsterdam and from there to Warsaw. The Polish Airline flight is cheap and direct.

I land in a cloudy, rainy Warsaw.

Cab to my hotel -- it's called Hotel Puro. Needless to say, it took me forever to find a hotel that would be a good bet for my nine night stay. Karolina, my architect friend helped me and so I booked a room here. 

There is a benefit and a drawback to being in such a totally central location. (And most would agree that being just a short block away from the intersection of Marszalkowska and Jerozolimskie puts me right in the epicenter of the city.) On the one hand, it's very easy to get to anywhere I would want to go to in Warsaw (and beyond, as I am close to the Central Station). On the other hand, I wouldn't call it the quietest neighborhood in town! Still, my room, on the seventh floor, looks out onto this (the photo is taken later, in the evening):

And yes, there are flowers.

(My room is large; here's a photo of some part of it)

It's altogether lovely. 

I unpack, glancing out the window as I put away clothes. I have the unmistakable feeling of being in the city of my childhood.

And at the risk of digressing too much into the topic of feelings, let me just say that it feels very strange to be back. It's a new rhythm for me. For the last half dozen visits, I'd developed a pattern: get to my apartment, shop, take a walk to my favorite spots, cook dinner for the gang, clean up, leave. In there would be some extra time with Bee, and certainly with my sister, maybe with Karolina. But basically, the pattern held. Then came the Big Pause. And now I'm trying out something new: a new hotel, a new social schedule, a new approach to this city that was for so long my home. 

So it feels strange. But why? I know Warsaw inside out! I know what people here eat, how they curse, where they shop. I know the parks, I know the streets, the buildings, the bakeries of my childhood. Why is it suddenly so disconcerting to be here?

I suppose one reason might be that I am so totally cut off from Poland when I am home, with Ed, at the farmette, in south-central Wisconsin. I think most people maintain some contact with others from their old country who have settled in the U.S., but I have never done any of that. My daily life is 100% without any markers, foods, references to Poland. Talk about assimilation! I went overboard on that one! 

And now, suddenly, here I am, in Warsaw.

Because it's drizzling a little still, I give myself permission to take it easy. To not do anything much. A quick trip to a nearby wine store to stock up on gifts. 

And then the rain stops and I go for a longer walk, to my old home blocks.

(just outside my hotel...)

(one block further)

I was a teenager here and so I find images of young people in that age group especially mind boggling: the faces are the same, the attire, mannerisms -- so different! The market economy brought a modicum of prosperity especially to the well traveled urban set. With it comes confidence. A certain stride...

 

It's 4 p.m. and I haven't had food for too long. I pause at a bakery that is one block away from my family home. I order a blueberry tartlet and then, not yet satiated -- a jagodowka. That's a yeasty blueberry bun and in the summer, they are sold all over Poland, in every small town and big city. Here, it has a crumble topping and I choose to eat it with a cup of tea. On a table with carnations. A Polish person would smile at seeing them -- carnations were the flower of choice year-round.

And now I am literally three blocks from our tiny apartment of my childhood, and one block away from our more spacious three room place, where I lived out my teen angst and dramas.

 

The buildings are as they were then, but the shops have all changed. Every last one. Where they once sold basic foods and canned goods, there is now a shop with Diptique candles from France. Where we picked up sour pickles from a barrel and loaded up on sauerkraut, there is a dress shop that has English words inviting you in. And where there was once a paper products store, there is yet another clothing store.

I'm not liking these new shops. Too much attention to clothing at inflated prices. Too much unnecessary stuff. But then, this is what progress is all about: to have that choice, so that you can decide if you want more stuff or not. Me, I miss the paper store, which I so loved!  Colored pencils, notebooks -- heaven. But of course, clothes were only marginally relevant to us kids growing up in postwar Poland. We wanted a pair of blue jeans.We wanted warm leather boots for winter. Our cravings pretty much stopped there. Now, Polish city kids look like American kids and French kids. I see make up on young faces. Progress?

Our second apartment had four windows: two to the south -- one was my mother's bedroom, one was from the room shared by my sister and me, and then two windows to the north -- one was the living room but really my father's bedroom, and one was the kitchen. By Polish standards it was an exquisite apartment because the rooms were not small and the building stairwell was clean. That apartment got passed on to my father's girlfriend of long duration when he died. She must be home, because I see one of the windows -- what would have been my mother's bedroom window -- is open. I toy with the idea of ringing the doorbell and surprising her -- she is a mere ten years older than me -- but I don't. I'm keeping this day to myself.

I'm half a block away from Park Ujazdowki, where I went so often as a kid and where I worked one summer on cleaning it up -- as part of a work requirement for all university freshmen. The park is pretty, though I see that the chestnuts have all succumbed to the disease that is weakening all the chestnuts in Europe.

You come out of the park and you face the American Embassy. Weird to read a sign on the gate informing you to vote if you are an American by casting an absentee ballot.

Two more blocks and I am at Alewino (which I suppose translates to "what a wine!" -- understandable, as it once was a wine bar. Now it's an eatery). It's well hidden: you pass into a courtyard and eventually come across this entryway.

I think it's fairly new. Very casual, but with really, really good food! (I found it on a quick online search yesterday.) I order chantarelles once again and I get the real deal! Many tiny orange mushrooms!

Fish and zucchini and a stuffed zucchini flower for a second...

 

And an exquisite dessert of blueberries, ice cream, cream and meringue.

 

I came early -- just as the place opened at 5 -- and so the dining room was still on the empty side, except for this one couple that came in. I hardly noticed. I was on the phone, first getting a report on my granddaughter's Shakespeare performance back home, then getting a worried report from Ed on a cat that's been missing for several days. So clearly I was speaking English. Which is why I was then engaged by the couple -- he's from Brooklyn, she's a Pole, living in New York for two decades now. They were curious how my own Polish-American story unfolded, so we talked. Even though this is not my favorite subject because I haven't pat answers that I can just put out there. If I did, I wouldn't have written a book about it! My relationship to Poland is complicated and unresolved. Even as I no longer feel Poland to be my home. I come here for the people and then I get sucked into my past. As I did this afternoon.

It's unavoidable. I walk past this building (below) and I am just so aware that this is where my father worked when he quit the Foreign Ministry. The building then housed the headquarters of the Communist Party and that story, too, is so complicated! Why did he work there, knowing what he did about the leadership of the party and who it was beholden to? What choices did he have in the end? To leave? He did leave, as soon as he could. Only to return. To  finish his life in Warsaw, surrounded by many bottles of alcohol and not a single friend from the past.

Neither of my parents ended their lives happily. (I write this as the phone rings and I let it go to voicemail... Yes, it's my mother.)

Across the street from the former Party headquarters, there used to be a store selling newspapers and records from around the world. I see that it stands empty now, but the exterior is still as it was in my childhood: with a slogan that's straight out of the country's postwar reputed commitment to collective socialism: CALY NAROD BUDUJE SWOJA STOLICE -- the whole nation is building our capital!

 

Indeed.

I look up the street of Nowy Swiat. Close to where my apartment was just six years ago. Here, too, some shops have closed, even in this brief period of my absence. There aren't flowers in hanging baskets. I hear languages all around me that are not Polish. Summer tourists? And where are the flowers?

How is Warsaw changing now? Is it for the better? I don't know...

Tomorrow, I begin my eight days of intense socializing. With all my friends, with my sister, nephew. Tonight, I do take it easy. And once again, catch up on sleep.

with love...