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.

Destination Poland: Saturday (evening)

In the evening, two visits.

The first one, with this fellow (but the photo was taken in Warsaw, in 1926) – a very close relative of mine (okay, my father):

He sort of looks the same... 

And the other with this family (she was my closest girlfriend at the U of Warsaw, between 1969 and 1972):

Four people with four fascinating perspectives on life in Poland; some of them even overlapped, occasionally. 

How fast do you have to talk to catch up when you see someone only a few times in the course of decades? Answer: It is 3 a.m. and my mind is set on Polish, which is no way to approach the Ocean blog, but let’s just say that I am hoarse and so are they.

What topics were contentious? Here’s one: what to do with the old communist guard – throw them in jail or let them be? Answer: opinions vary. Oh, and another speculative issue: how many Poles are worse off now then, say, 20 years ago? Answer: maybe 70%. One more: so how church-inclined are people anyway? Answer: in the city – less than you’d think, but not many dare admit it. And one comment made directly to me: “you are so forthright in your questions!” My answer: I have to be. I have so little time here to learn what people are thinking and feeling.

Destination Poland: Saturday

“Let the world be at war, only leave the Polish village in peace and quiet.” – S. Wyspianski (1901)

Why have I looked forward for so to blogging from Poland? Ocean is not, after all, a journal. Not at all. NOT AT ALL! What I most wanted to do was write about the Poland that I grew up with, through my now Americanized eyes. The pictures are ones that I have had, in a sense, in my mind long before they were taken. I truly carry them with me always, even though I rarely talk about it.

Okay, this week of Poland posts cannot be complete without a trek to my grandparents’ village, where I lived the first three years of my life and visited just about yearly until I left for the States as an adult.

Village life for me is, was, all about meadows and forests and farmsteads, dead pigs wheeled from the market, narrow strips of fields (Polish farmland remained mostly privatized after the war), farm men and women, chapels on dirt roads, children watching as you go by, watching, waiting, waiting for the next big event in their lives. [See photos of all these images below.] Village life in Poland has almost nothing in common with life on a Midwestern farm, of that I am certain. Crops are grown, animals are raised, there ends the similarity. I wonder if even from this handful of photos a reader can understand this profound cultural divide.

At the bottom of the photo-roll I’ve posted a picture of the house that my grandfather built, one room at a time. Eventually it grew, then shriveled and crumbled in disrepair. My sister has only recently managed to lay claim to it again and is now trying, along with my nephew, to bring it back to life, one floorboard at a time. Fifty years ago it was surrounded by cherry and apple trees and an organic garden (my grandparents were the original naturalists!). Little of that remains. But the pond outside has frogs and fish again and the river is getting so that you can see the sandy bottom once more. Progress in this case means going back to the way I remember it from almost half a century ago.

In Poland, village life spills onto the highways. He has a dead pig in the wagon. 

One of our neighbors -- she is our age, she stayed on the farm... 

The fields and forests, in December mists 

This "chapel" was built in 1916 (note date on the bottom) when there was no Poland on the map. It stands half a kilometer from my grandparents' house, at the intersection of two dirt roads. To this day, there is no paved road within miles of the village. 

A farmer's courtyard, across the field from my grandparents' home 

watching, waiting 

the house that my Dziadek built  

Destination Poland: Friday (evening)

Marketing in a market economy

I walked over to the grocery store tonight with my sister. They sell large quantities and vast selections of everything there. For instance, they sell the game “Scrabble” – a special promotion tonight! – but with Polish letters inside the box. It is an odd thing to buy with your dumplings and pickles.

Trying out Scrabble, in Polish... 

... and load up on the pickles 

The store, Leclerc, is part of a French chain. It is not surprising that they opened in Warsaw. The government gives the foreign companies a substantial tax break for doing business here. True, it drives the small local stores completely out of business, but in return we have Abundance. Great heaps of expensive Abundance. Across the street live the people who are trying to afford Abundance. They aren’t shopping enough though. The salespeople (eg the one with the fried dumplings) have to amuse themselves by weighing their hands on the empty scales.

The store has shoppers from neighborhood apartment complexes 

Look alive, the manager's watching. 

Destination Poland: Friday

If you outgrow referencing Warsaw’s recent history at every step, will there be anything left to admire?

For a Varsovian, yes. But ask what that may be – and we hesitate.

Consider these four major sights: the old wall that once surrounded the city, the buildings in the Old Town, the monument in front of the courthouse, and the Palace of Culture (all pictured below). Tell me, which one would you take a visitor to and speak only in the present, without mentioning the last sixty years? Not bring up the rubble? Or Stalinist architecture? Or the defense of Warsaw? None, of course. Is Warsaw beautiful, therefore, only if you carry her past in your pocket?

On the Old Town Square. "Old" should be in italics, no? 

It should look older than that... it should BE older than that... 

The gift from Stalin, looking twinkly and cheerful in the evening 

A monument to the Warsaw Uprising in front of the courthouse 

Food talk

I have been engaged in too many discussions about Polish sausage lately and I want to put the topic to rest. Each nation defends its sausage. The Germans stand by their bratwurst, the Italians love their pepperoni, the Poles cling to their kielbasa. I posted a photo of the grilled stuff in Krakow, but for the everyday you head to the local butcher and admire this:

pick your (poison or) gold 

You’re a fan or you’re not a fan. I’m not a fan anymore for the same reason that I’m not heavily a hotdog fan: what goes into the mystery meat is too much of a mystery. But kielbasa is a staple and no Pole will admit to preferring something from across the border, any border.

And let’s lay down the rule about poppyseeds: densely packed in between cake layers. None of this “sprinkling” into the batter. Keep it rich and keep it sweet. Here’s an example from Blikle, the premier bakery in Warsaw (ah yes, afternoon snack time for me).

poppyseeds in the middle, candied orange peel on top 

The small details of being Polish (generalizations, I know, but to me they are as real as apple pie):

- Polish men like to talk and tell stories. I mean, you can’t get a word in sometimes, they get so wrapped up in a story. They’re good at it too. Yesterday, on the train back from the mountains I listened to a highlander tell the story of last week’s earthquake – he shook his body to demonstrate, he expounded, elaborated, making it into a one-man show. Then his buddy chimed in. The three hour ride was filled with their booming voices. No one minded. Other passengers chimed in. It was fascinating to watch and listen to. I threw in a comment or two as well, but I was shot down, having had no experience with the earthquake here, loathing to admit that I was then in the States, thus too far to have felt anything.

- Women talk so fast that you, the listener, cannot drift off for even a second or an entire chapter of a life may have been offered and you will have missed it.

- If they don’t shut off the background music everywhere, I will seriously injure someone. Frank Sinatra, loudly, for breakfast. Light pop in the judge’s chambers during my meeting with her. Some odd instrumental twangy twang in the psychologist’s office when I discussed abuse and neglect issues with her. It doesn’t stop the conversation, no, not at all, but why is it there in the first place?

- We need to introduce the slob factor into the dress code in Poland. Coming from Wisconsin, I do not have the habit of dressing up for, say, a train ride. Here I am right now, in a train compartment (speeding back to Warsaw) with three women, all dressed and made up as if they were going to a fine dining place. Me, I am in my trusty comfy cords. At least I don’t have my jogging shoes on. No one here, male or female, wears jogging shoes ever.

- Poles have the endearing habit (shared by those in other countries in Europe) of greeting each other often. You enter a store, it is absolutely obligatory to say “good day” to the sales staff, and then “thank you” and “good bye” as you are leaving. It is rude rude rude not to exchange such greetings. In the States, if the salesperson is obsequious, she or he will say “can I help you find something?” setting up a negative exchange as you are most often forced to say “no thanks, just looking.” If they aren’t helping you find things, you are nothing to them nor they to you.

- Poles are physically initmate with each other in public. Maybe it’s because there’s not much privacy at home, what with all these generations living together, but still – men kiss and embrace the women in public, clap each other on the back, hold hands with their sons, women walk arm in arm together, people greet each other with kisses, they touch! It’s nice.