Warsaw: the essentials

Well, I'm getting closer to a full night's sleep. Not there yet, but working on it. I suppose part of my still too late night came about because I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn on the lights in my room, or the bathroom, or anywhere at all. Hint for future travelers: learn to do this before it's dark and definitely before you turn OFF the lights with the master switch. In the end I had to call down to the reception and they sent a guy up to show me that there is a screen in the room that has all the controls. To my credit, he was still getting the hang of it himself. This is a very new hotel (it even smells brand new!) and not all rooms are created equal.

 But it is a lovely hotel. Quiet today. They say they were at full capacity over the weekend, because there was a concert next door and many people were in for that. Well that tumult has passed. I wake up to quiet. 

And I wake up to a beautiful day. It will be like this the full five days I am here. Absolutely perfect weather. Mostly sunny, not too hot by my standards. Just stunning. (You can't count on this in Poland. Summers can be messy and cold and wet. But this week is exceptionally splendid.)

Outside on my balcony I survey the landscape from all sides.

Warsaw, the city of spires. Church spires... or am I misleading you? The building with the scaffolding still in front is actually the newly renovated Citi Bank. But I'm counting seven other spires in the photo and those are indeed churches. Just a handful in a city that does not lack churches.

And still other spires:

 

Yes, that's the Palace of Culture. (More on that tomorrow.)

Oh, do I know this place well!

I go down to breakfast. It's a menu meal with a bread buffet. I order granola and an egg. I thought I'd rein in the multitude, but then the cinnamon roll looked so good... And they have a bakery on the premises so you can get additional sweet rolls and pastries. Breakfasts will not turn small here!

A couple of seats away, an English speaking guy comes in and orders a quadruple espresso. "If you knew what my day has been like, you'd understand why I need it badly." The waiter politely smiles and goes off to get the super drink. The guest, in my view, was throwing out a line. Asking to be asked. So I step in and ask (after some thought given to the possibility that his night might have had a lot of sex, hence a "wild night" -- something I did not want to hear about): so what did you do to warrant the quad coffee? 

Turns out he is an Irish man, freshly divorced, living in England and doing something he'd always wanted to do (he himself doesn't know why): bike from Krakow to the Baltic Sea along the Vistula River. Sleeping in a hammock along the way. 

We talked for a long while. The guy works with bottom-rung kids in some sort of social service capacity. He had a lot to say about the treatment of immigrants, especially by politicians who want to score points by turning people against them. You can see where this was going to go. Surprisingly, he was empathetic toward Americans, claiming that the politicians in the UK are doing the exact same thing. I suppose we could disagree as to who is winning the race to the bottom. He did admit that we're scoring a lot of points on cruelty.

It was interesting for me to listen to him speak about his experiences in Poland. He maintains a generous stance toward everyone -- your ideal traveler! -- and when asked about where I'd recently traveled and where I'm heading after Poland, he repeatedly commented -- oh, I like that (city or region)! Not a place did I mention that he did not approve of. What a cup-half-full guy! We wished each other an open mind toward our future travels and I quickly went up to get ready of my social life here in Warsaw.

Though, is it really "social" to meet up with your sister? And later your nephew? These two were the focus of my day.

I leave the hotel and snap a photo of it -- a totally new eight story building.

 

 

And I walk to the metro stop -- a convenient 6 minutes away.

The Warsaw metro is neat. It's comfortable, especially on the off hour. And it's free for people my age. I've used it countless times. I sometimes think I do my deepest thinking about Poland when I'm riding it down to where my sister and also my nephew live. It's a chance to look at people, to feel their Polishness, to recognize the walk, the dress, the facial expressions -- all uniquely Polish. Something that I do not see in my everyday back home.

This time, I was watching the expressions of the woman sitting across from me. So, so Polish! I imagine her name to be Asia. She looks like an Asia. But it is the woman to the right, boarding the train in the photo, that grabbed all my attention for the rest of the 25 minute ride. Let me call her Zofia -- somehow it suits her I think. 

 

 

Zofia comes in, sees the empty seat next to me, which has the backpack of a young woman sitting in the place on the other side of it. Zofia stands suggestively and waits. The young woman tsk tsks,  picks up her backpack, moves it to her other side and explodes: this backpack is heavy! There are seats scattered throughout the car and yet you come to this one and stand there, expecting me to move it for you!  

Zofia becomes agitated. She sits down. The young woman wont let go of it: look at that seat, or that one! But no, I had to lift the pack and give you this seat! Zofia answers, meekly: but I can't see well. I just came here because my eyesight isn't very good. A man on the other side of the car joins in: here's a seat next to me and here's another one. You cant see those? Why pick the one with the pack? 

This continues for a couple of minutes. Everyone else in the car is dead silent.

And I wonder why? This is not the Poland I know. Men here will still get up to give a seat to an older woman, as will young people. What just happened here?

 

 

 So I give up the idea of meditating about life and specifically life in Poland, and I turn to Zofia to normalize the situation for her as best as I can. She tells me she wont go out today again. She just wants to get to her apartment and sit there and not venture out anymore. But no! going out is good for you! Dont give up on it. The young woman probably had a bad day. Ignore her. It's not important. Can you go for a walk? It's so lovely outside! You're young still. What, my age maybe? (I'm thinking old people like to be told that they look young.) 

I'm 88. And no more walks. I pat her arm and say some more stuff that to me sounds a little trite, but perhaps to her it doesn't. 

At the next stop, the young woman with the back pack gets ready to exit the train. As she leaves, she throws out a "do widzenia!" to us. A good bye.

So maybe Poland hasn't changed? She obviously was feeling remorseful. I'm hoping that Poles still look out for one another. That they wont stand for bullying. But maybe we've all changed over the decades of a heaving political landscape. Maybe we all want to hide in our own safe worlds like never before. I hope not.

 

I meet my sister at the subway stop close to the office of something or other -- where they issue and update personal identity cards. Mine is expiring in a year. I need to apply for a new one. We take care of that very quickly and move on to my next essential: I have a small bank account here that I use when I have to move money or pay someone for something in Poland. I cant access it because I have the wrong phone number attached with it for online verification. So we change that. Efficiently, quickly. And then we find a coffee shop and sit down for cake and coffee.

 

 

 

And my nephew, who lives not too far from there joins us.

 

 

 

And it is wonderful to see them, to catch up. I spend quite a long time nursing a coffee. But of course, cafes are notoriously open-minded about the length of your stay.

Eventually, we catch the metro to the city center.

To my childhood neighborhood. 

For a person who claims not to want to reach back into her past, I have to admit it that when in Warsaw, I always want to see again (and again) the two apartment buildings where I grew up. The first is in a building right by a tram stop (I write about this in Like a Swallow). Listening to the ring of the departing bell is so ingrained in my memory that I swear that when I have total dementia I will still recognize the noise for what it is.

I moved to this apartment from my grandparents' house in the village when I was three. (It's in the photo's farther building, without the fancy renovated balconies.) It was the place that had the first toilet I ever sat on, the first elevator I ever rode.  The first taste of city life for me.

 

 

The apartment was tiny -- just two rooms, the elevator often smelled of piss, the gas water heater in the bathroom was terrifying, but the four of us felt it to be home. 

From there, it's just a short walk to our second Warsaw home, where I lived out my teen years. To walk to it, you pass through blocks that have not changed at all from the time I was a child. Oh sure, the stores are completely different now that the market economy has exploded here. But the buildings, the tram routes -- they are exactly as they were. When I look around me, I feel all the angst of my childhood and adolescence all over again.

Stalinist architecture, here we come:

 

 

 

One man holds a mining  tool, the other a farming tool, and in between, there is this guy with a golf club? Funny.

 

 

This building (which I include it in so many Ocean posts from Warsaw) is where I lived as a teen. My father had risen in the diplomatic ranks, my mother knew who to cozy up to for personal gain, and so we were granted the use of an apartment in this building (the one with the big balcony, though that wasn't ours):

 

 

 No more piss in the elevator, and we now had three rooms. And yet, it's not a happy memories place. And who knows what the future of it will be. My parents are dead, my father's girlfriend is in a nursing home. Maybe in its next incarnation, the place will have a happy family there, loving their good fortune of having a home just steps away from Warsaw's nicest parks.

And we head to one of those parks now. This one:

 

 

 

 

We were to catch a bus or tram to my hotel from here, but instead, we walk. Because it's an iconic walk, along the Royal Way. With nothing but stories and memories. 

 (Plac of Three Crosses, where my paternal grandparents got married)

 

 

(we keep going) 

 

 

(the newly repaved and replanted Chmielna that now looks a thousand times better for the work done here in the last years) 

 

 

Approaching the Old Town now... 

 

 

With this iconic square (Castle Square) and the Column of King Zygmunt. It is the oldest statue in Warsaw, but like everything here -- it's been through a lot, including a near total destruction during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

 

 

This next one is a somewhat controversial monument -- to commemorate the heroism of  children during the Second World War.

 

 

 Why would that be controversial? Well, the heroism is undisputed. But a very young child with a gun, fighting the enemy? No, children were not recruited to fight with guns in the war.

 

It is after 7 before we sit down in a restaurant recommended by my hotel (Otto Pompieri -- an Italian place). I was so very perfect. Not Polish, to be sure, but if I am inviting those two out to dinner, why would I want to emphasize Polish food? It's whatever feels right for the moment and sitting at an outside table tonight with them felt so very right!

 

 

I feel like my first 24 hours in Warsaw have been as good as it gets. Three people that I deeply love, filling my hours with stories and listening to mine as well, all in the beautiful summer light of Warsaw in August.

with so much love...