Puy's paintings of nudes are so sensual that they are said to be never vulgar. This one dates back to 1910. 

"La Terrasse." Jean Puy, 1920 

- Finally, let me list a favorite little distraction: put away my camera and notebook and go shop. What the hell, it’s Christmas and I need to buy things. I mean, can anyone resist a pair of the beautiful French beige rose corduroys? I’m all about corduroys. Or, the cropped green pair? Yeah!

On my list of shops to visit is the tights store where Monsieur asked me a year ago what I thought of the war in Iraq. He had said then that he was willing to fight at the first sign that there were any WMDs. He didn’t remember our conversation when I went there today, but I nudged him to it. Afterwards, he sneaked a little toy doggie into the bag. What’s that? – I asked. Un petit cadeau. Hmm. Either a sign of “I don’t hold grudges toward Americans for the french fry thing,” or a sign of how much business I do in a Parisian tights store.

What was the last thing that I bought? Minutes ago, before all stores closed, I did what I seem to always have to do (fifth time this has happened): go out and buy another suitcase. It’s not the Paris shopping actually that puts me over the top, it’s the Polish gifts I take home. When family and friends load you with honey, candies, cakes, creams, jams, etc etc and when I want to take home the quintessential highland treasures because I think life is incomplete without them, well, it gets kind of crowded in my little Samsonite.

Destination: France (Tuesday evening)

It’s all about the right place and the right waiters.

Well now, here’s a surprise. Since my last visit here in spring, this has popped up on the Boulevard St Germain:

Say, what is this, and in the epicenter of left bank Paris no less?

Is it really the case that anyone would prefer the Seattle mega-chain to this?

A favorite spot with book shelves and café tables. 

I have no profound objection to Starbucks. I’d say that I split my latte business evenly between the various providers in Madison. But here?? Starbucks was born out of one person’s travels to Italy and his inspired insight that the Italian coffee culture could burgeon in the US, but the coffee chain never did set up shop in Italy. [Nor in Poland for that matter, but there, I think the rejection came from Starbucks rather than from the imitate-all-things-American nouveau-riche of Poland.] To find Starbucks in Paris, though, is a shocker. And it doesn't help that my search on the Net revealed three other Starbucks coffee shops in the French capital. Can we just let it stop right there, please?

As midnight approaches

I’m eating dinner late, at my same old place. I like it here. Why? It’s all about the waiters. No no, don’t get me wrong, they’re not hot or anything, they’re just so fast and professional. They make the entire dining experience a tour de force indeed. I choose the smoking section which has 100% French customers, as opposed to the ugly upstairs non-smoking rooms which are filled with 100% foreigners. The waiters (therefore) assume I am French. Everyone else does as well.

Madame et monsieur are at the table next to mine (oh so close – you know how it is: one big comfy couch for the ladies, then chairs opposite small tables for the men). Madame is eyeing my dessert. She throws one glance, then another, then another. Finally she can’t stand it and asks what I am eating. You know what she really can’t stand? Monsieur’s monologue about the reasons behind the falling dollar. We talk about the loveliness of serving warm winter fruits with a delicate sorbet. Monsieur does not like this. He has lost Madame’s attention. He coaxes her to try a more intricate chocolate dessert. She hesitates. The waiter comes. She gives a wisp of a smile and says: I will have what madame is having at the table next to mine. I leave before Monsieur shoots me or slashes my throat with a bread knife. But damn, I feel French! Stripped of Polishness & Americanisms for a brief minute, I am stateless, nationless, I am nothing. I may as well be French.

Destination: Poland, France (Tuesday)

Transitioning

I’m riding with my sister to the airport in Warsaw and we get stuck in traffic. The road is partly under construction, but that doesn’t explain the complete impasse. It’s the trucks, she tells me. There is no highway that circumvents the city center and so every piece of machinery heading north or south ends up passing through the city itself. The cars no longer pollute in the way that they did ten or twenty years ago, nevertheless there certainly are a lot of them.

We pass the dzialki, little plots of land once given over to city residents who wanted to cultivate gardens. My sister reflects, sadly, that it’s hard to maintain them now. Vandalism and theft make it difficult to leave anything behind. Things disappear.

In Paris, I take the RER train to downtown Paris. I have always liked the ads they have posted at the airport: bus to Paris: delayed; taxi to Paris: delayed; car to Paris: delayed; RER to Paris: 29 minutes. I always arrive here from Warsaw at the same time: during rush hour traffic. It is unthinkable to take the bus then – it takes too long. Rush hour on the metro with a suitcase and a computer poses interesting challenges nonetheless.

I pass suburban stations and I note the graffiti on the platform walls. Vandalism: a theft of clean public spaces. As I look at it, I am remembering the worst graffiti I’ve seen in a long time: my sister and I had been walking through Warsaw’s Old Town and we saw it there, on a wall of one of the pretty, blue buildings. I thought then –how could some jerk with spray-paint deface something that was built out of the rubble, by the bare hands of those who had the vision of a new “Old Town?”

Paris always serves as the connecting city, the city that transitions me to the US and so I make a point of stopping here for a couple of nights. Because I know that once I step off the plane on the other side of the ocean, it will be as if I never had my week in Poland. That’s the way it always is: my Polishness remains nearly invisible to everyone but myself, even as my Americanisms are so obvious to all my Polish friends and family. One country (Poland) is a scanner and a sponge for all that comes from the other (the US). And that other? Oblivious, unaware. It’s just the way it is.

Okay, one last look at Warsaw: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season, then a quick switch to Paris: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season.

On the Old Town Square in Warsaw 

"Les Editeurs," around the corner from my tiny left bank hotel.

The tramcar rings a bell every time it stops and starts. I can tell you *exactly* how that sounds. Our window is marked by the red circle.

Destination Poland: Monday

I don’t want anyone laughing at how ugly I am

I bought garlic from a street peddler today. Better that she have the cash than the large grocery chain. Her braids of garlic where quite pretty and I asked if I could also take a photo (having almost been arrested for improper photographing earlier in the day, I thought I better be careful). She said -- go ahead and take a picture, but without her in it. Then she said what I made to be the title of this post subsection.

I try not to do that – to photograph something ridiculously ugly. But she was not even a tiny bit ugly. She was just plain and ordinary. Yet, I knew what she was talking about: to me, something is normal and ordinary. To another (a blog reader?), some of the posts and photos of the ordinary may be something to smirk at. Should I avoid posting them?

Today I am not avoiding them. I am not giving a tour of Warsaw now, I am on my last day in Poland, and I want to give a run through the ordinary, the everyday.

I’ll avoid too many words because it would take too many words to say anything right.

I walked around my childhood neighborhood today – right in the city center. I moved here (from the village) when I was three. It’s amazing how little has changed. The room that I shared with my sister looked out on the tram stop. The only other room in our apartment looked out back, directly into an older woman’s rooms. We waved to her all the time.

At the side, there was a courtyard for kids to play in. Most apartment houses in Poland had those back then. The playground equipment was as sophisticated then as it is now. The apartment house, the entrance to it, the courtyard:

Entryway to "Nowowiejska 4;" I refuse to show you the stairwell... 

A playground of sorts 

In all my years in Warsaw, as a kid and later as a teen, I lived within two blocks of this square. Ugly? Not to us. Kind of grand-looking once upon a time. It was built immediately after the war, to provide a much-needed planned apartment community. Now the lamp posts are regarded as kind of retro-nice.

MDM Square: we watched it go up and replace rubble. 

I went to this elementary school, left my coat and shoes each day (kids in Poland wear slippers in school – how else do you keep the wood floors so clean?) in these cloak rooms (all schools have them), and went to first grade in this classroom (back then, each desk had two seats, same as now):

Regional elementary school 

Always a downstairs cloakroom for shoes and coats. 

A classsroom that looks remarkably similar 45 years later (note clean harwood floors). 

During my university years, my orbit grew. Every day I walked past this “Square of Three Crosses,” then past this building (then – Communist Party headquarters, now – bank), finally heading up this “New Town” street, stopping at Blikle to have this doughnut (regarded by most as the perfect Polish doughnut, with rose jam inside and glaze and orange peel on the outside):

The "Square of the three Crosses;" there really are three corsses. 

From Communist Party headquarters, to Polish Stock Exchange, to bank: one building, many uses. 

"New World" Street, lined now with Christmas trees 

A Blikle moment 

So ends the week in Poland. I take the subway to my sister’s (note an earlier post on Poles being bookish: so many people read on the subway – look, even in the second car). My nephew lets me take a photo of him with his saxophone. I want to learn to play it too, just for the kick of playing alongside him.

Tomorrow I am in Paris.

a bookish nation

Chris, inspired.

Destination Poland: Sunday (evening)

You know you’re writing like an old person when genealogy and roots-tracing blogs start linking to you.

For the record, I don’t do roots. I can tell you for sure that no one in my family ever traveled on the Mayflower. Indeed, no one in my extended family even knew what the Mayflower was until about a generation (or so) ago. I know this much: my ancestors appeared to be scattered all over Poland. How’s that for precision?

Am I wedded to my past? Well naturally, on these trips to Poland I am a bit overwhelmed with memories. I walk to Lazienki and see this:

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.