A Sunday in Warsaw. Everything triggers a recollection! At the farmette, I live very much in the present. If anything, my kids would accuse me for being too eager to embrace the moment rather than dig back to sentimental remembrances. But I'm too busy constructing something out of the present to roll back in time and worry about the past! However, when I am in Warsaw, it all changes. Warsaw is my past. I come here, I cannot escape it.
Sundays here were park days in my childhood. When my father and us two, the little girls from Nowowjejska Street, were not in the country with my grandparents, he would invariably take us on Sunday morning to Lazienki -- Warsaw's grandest park, one that has royal roots, a summer palace, magnificent ancient trees, a Chopin monument, a pond with swans, and a cafe where you could pick up an ice cream. It was probably the only time he ever spoke to us -- we rarely saw him during the week and he was gone for months on end when fulfilling his diplomatic work obligations. After a walk to the park, he'd hustle us to his friend's house nearby and he would sip tea, talk, and smoke endless cigarettes while my sister and I fidgeted. So yes, Sundays recall my father for me.
I don't have time to go to the park today -- besides, I'm saving that for when my sister is next in the city. But as it is Sunday, a morning walk is de rigeur. Well, I get a mini walk out of the deal. To the post office and back. After breakfast of course!
Why to the post office? Well it's the weirdest thing: they don't have mailboxes in the city any more. Want to mail a post card from here? Go to the post office. On the upside, the Warsaw post office is open 24/7. No kidding.
(On the way there, I pass someone else with a camera...)
In the late morning, four of us convene once again at my hotel to drive over for a Sunday at another działka, this one being a little further from central Warsaw, and thus having more of an appearance of a weekend retreat. It belongs to Bee and her husband and they've built a lovely three season house there, where they like to go when the city has just proven to be too much for them. Na zielona trawke (for the green grass), as they like to say here. I've been there once before, but now everything has changed (the trees have grown very tall, for one thing) and Bee and I know each other so much better than we did in years when she was young and I was young.
(Arriving, with food of course! As if our hosts didn't already prepare a three course lunch!)
We chat outside because the weather is just so splendid! Breezy and just the right amount of warm.
(It's an Aperol Spritz moment!)
(Group photo time!)
Eventually we all move to the grape trelliced porch, even as some conversations cant be put to rest so quickly...
Okay, everyone is here. Someone commented that our beautiful dining space makes us look like we just sat down to a Tuscan meal.
It may well be the last time our Group gathers in its entirety.You think about such stuff when you're retired. Who will get sick? Who will be away traveling? And honestly, it took me so many years to return to Warsaw this time. Will I wait such a long spell again?
It's been a very intense set of days.
As for the lunch itself? Just magnificent. There were little sandwiches with Polish pate and with salmon. There were pierogi with blueberries and with raspberries. There was a pot of turkey meats with prunes and apricots. And there was a mirabelle plum cake to die for! So good!
I have a day trip out of Warsaw tomorrow with Bee and her husband. The rest? The next meeting is forever a question mark. So let me post just one last photo of the Group, as it appeared this afternoon, for the few hours that we had together at the table. With gratitude to all those who made me feel so good about being back.
In the evening, I have a dinner date with my nephew and his partner and I can only cross my fingers that I wont be late.
And I'm not! Well, just two minutes late. Not bad, given that I wasn't driving and therefore it wasn't entirely up to me as to when we should get moving. I walked briskly from my hotel, it is true, and I am somewhat hampered by the fact that my knee, the old one, not the replaced one, has decided to act up big time during this entire trip. And still, by 7:02, I am at the restaurant door.
We eat dinner at the place recommended by the person who is best able to critique Vietnamese cuisine -- my nephew's guy, who is, himself, Vietnamese. It's called Vietnamka and though I may be a poor judge of Vietnamese restaurants (I've come across Vietnamese food so rarely in my life), I can tell you that the food in this one is in fact very excellent! (Though I have to say, after a Polish lunch, one should go easy on dinner.)
It's so wonderful to have this chance to sit back with these two.
My nephew has visited me in Wisconsin, but otherwise I have spent far too little time with him for my liking and every hour I can eek out with him, with his close one here in Warsaw, is special.
So ends my Sunday in Poland. With elements of the traditional, of the new and fresh, of provocative and sometimes heated conversations, of singing (yes, we sang Polish songs, just to say we did!), of sublime encounters and exquisite foods.
I walk back to my hotel, glance up at this familiar landmark...
... and smile.
