Poland 2: Warsaw

I wake up to a day that is sliced into two halves. There is the morning and early afternoon, and there is the late afternoon and evening. The first half I spend with my friend Bee. In the second -- I am a guest of Karolina and her family.

But first, breakfast at the hotel. Alone still. Collecting my thoughts and weighing my eating options.

The thing is, the Polish breakfast, and especially as presented in hotels, is too... healthy! Dark bread with white farmers' cheese. Tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs. Herring. Poles love meats so they'd add ham to that. Fruits are an afterthought. (Here, they have a tropical mix, straight out of a can.) And there you have it. A hotel will elaborate on all that, going in directions that I personally would not take. Here, they have loads of sauteed zucchini. Sausages. More cheeses, more breads. Yes, there's a platter of something resembling croissants, pandering to those who regard this as an essential morning thing, but my feeling is that if you aren't going to do croissants well you should skip them, because a limp croissant is no way to start your day.

So it takes me a long time to put together a plate that acknowledges the "do as the Romans do" in me: I do take dark bread, and put the white cheese on that, and drizzle it with honey. There, I'm Polish!

I add the zucchini because I eat a ton of veggies back home and have never enough when I travel. And yogurt. And then I see some person in the know has ordered a few blueberries on the side. They must hide them. I do the same! Okay. Breakfast -- check.

I take a brief stroll just around the blocks of my hotel...

(oh, my favorite selfie: in an elevator!)

(outside my hotel to the left: the old, across the street, with the new)

(the old and new theme continues for me...)

(yeah, old: the Palace of Culture, gift from Stalin, too expensive to demolish, too reminiscent of our neighbor to the east to have any fondness for it, and the newer skyscrapers that crept up all around it.)

(Speaking of older... a morning conversation)

And now here comes Bee. 

I gave her an assignment (actually, I gave her many assignments for my visit here! Too many!): find an interesting place where you and I can have a cup of coffee. We will be surrounded by people for the better part of my remaining days in Warsaw. This morning belongs to just her.

It's not easy having your close friend live across the ocean. Without the internet, I'm sure we would have faltered. You just cant keep up with details of daily life (which form the basis for your best friendships) through hand written correspondence or even phone calls. Emails, Zoom and Ocean are at the core of who we are for each other for just about all days of the year. Supported and sustained by the rare (recently -- once a year) meetups. And of course, the older we get, the more precious is this time together. And so you can call it just your normal easy peasy coffee date, but it is, by virtue of this great ocean separating us, monumentally important.

I wanted to walk around a part of Warsaw that I don't normally see when I am here. She proposed Saska Kempa. For those unfamiliar with the city -- it's on the "other side" of the river, and I put quotes around those words deliberately, because for a long time, the left bank, otherwise referred to as Praga, was a poorer working class section of Warsaw, rarely frequented by those living on the "right bank." Except for Saska Kempa. A little to the south, it has always had a reputation for being more artsy, well heeled, intimate. The Polish song and poem writer Agnieszka Osiecka lived and wrote her fantastic lyrics here.

(her monument)

And in the postwar years, many foreigners who were in the diplomatic core, had their residences here. When I was little and we were about to set out for New York (because of my father's U.N. appointment), we got invited to a birthday party for one of the daughters of an American diplomat living in Saska Kempa. Even then, at the ripe age of barely seven, I felt the gulf between their home and homes of Polish people. Night and day.

Today, Saska Kempa isn't ostentatious, it's just plain pretty. We catch the tram (public transportation is free for everyone over 70) and cross the river, getting off at the stadium where Taylor Swift just wrapped up three days' worth of music to a sold-out crowd.

Saska Kempa. Lots of greenery, lots of cafes and restaurants with tables spilling out onto the wide sidewalks. The main drag, Ulica Francuska is where Bee and I walk.

 

(there are flags all over Warsaw because a few days ago, the city celebrated an anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising during World War II; the war and its consequences are still very much in the minds of those who live here)

(colorful)

(is there a Pole who does not love ice cream?)

We stop at a cafe-restaurant called Chalka  -- which roughly translates into Challah. You may think of it as a Jewish sweet bread, but Poles have long mixed the culinary boundaries between its people and Chalka is as much Polish now as it is Jewish.

 

 

 

Chalka (the restaurant) likes to add trimmings and make dishes out of its namesake bread and Bee goes with the salty one and I go with the sweet one. Mine has mascarpone cream and forest fruits (currants, blueberries, raspberries). Delicious!

We sit and talk, we walk and talk and of course, I couldn't help but think -- why doesn't she live in Madison, damn it?!

*     *     *

In the afternoon, Karolina and her husband and two kids take me over to their neighborhood. It's not unfamiliar to me, as I went to high school just at the edge of their set of blocks and my school crush lived right there, along the main street that cuts through their part of town, and so I would always walk this area slightly light headed, wondering if, oh horror! oh joy! -- I would run into him. All that belongs to then. Karolina and Pawel, her husband, are now. They are, in fact, my most modern friends -- of another generation. Meaning way younger than me. 

You may recall that I had hired Karolina to design and decorate my Warsaw apartment. From this a friendship was born and I treasure time spent with her and her family, and not only because it gives me a real feel for a new Poland, one that I did not know in the time I lived here.

We eat dinner a ta place called Gardens by Fort. Yes, an English name. Not uncommon in modern Poland. It's in a beautiful space, built right into old fortifications that were once used by Tsarist forces occupying Poland to protect Warsaw from other foreign invaders. The restaurant is that brilliant combination of old structure and modern interpretation. And the food is fabulous.

And their special spritz drink which three of us chose (it's based on gin, apple mousse, lilac flower syrup, lime juice, fig sugar, and prosecco)? Out of this world. And potent!

And then we walk over to their house -- an unusual Warsaw home, in that it's on a very quiet, very green street... 

 

 

... and it occupies an older, but completely renovated by the two of them (Pawel is also an architect) building.

It's stunning! Really ambitiously put together with a sophistication that is impressive!

We sit in their garden (that, too, is unusual for a central Warsaw residence) and eat dessert... 

 

 

 

(all that and ice cream too!)

 

... and we could go on like this for a long time, except that I have an early morning escape tomorrow and so I need to be realistic about bedtime.

 

 

 

With total gratitude to those who made this day so incredibly special for me...

... and so much love.