brisk, intircate, exquisite. 

(From Krakow): the many stages of getting from one place to another

Before taking to the roads, skies and tracks, a morning walk in the Tuilleris, just to have a one last look...

the greening of Paris 

So then you depart: you take the train from Jardin Luxembourg to Charles de Gaulle airport. Then you do a period of obligatory airport waiting.

airport minutes, plus more minutes 

Then you board the plane to Chopin airport (somehow the name seems oddly out of place: like the composer should not be associated with suitcases and guards and the roar of moving aircraft) in Warsaw. Then you spot your sister, who is waiting to take you to her apartment.

Well no, not so fast. We are held up. The leaders of EU nations are congregating in Warsaw this week and they have chosen to land at the same time that we did. And the roads close to allow for their passage.

odd way they have of driving in this place... 

[I feel by now that Jeremy and Madeline are dazed beyond belief; the airport, the road tie up, the old buildings, the new, where are we and what are we doing here?????]

Okay, eventually we make it to the train station. We’re not talking about some fancy train station in the style of the renovated Grand Central. We are talking about the Central Station in Warsaw, where trains come and pick up additional passengers before heading out to wherever. In my case, Krakow. It’s a gray, somber building and if the country were under a different political system at the moment, people would shake their heads and say: it would not be so gray if only we had a different political system going.

Put two bloggers and Madeline in an old-fashioned compartment with two Poles and you have a remarkable combination of the friendly and the tired and wired.

Out in Krakow: wheeling the suitcases across cobbled streets that I last slipped on in a frozen drizzle last December.

It’s late. Dinner’s late. Hungry, tired. Hit the bread before the pierogi. What’s that in the dish beside the bread? Farmers’ cheese and chives? And in the other? Did you say lard??

dinner accompaniments 

(From Paris): promises, promises

This really truly will be the last Paris post.

It’s morning. The city obviously has been sprayed with some toxic chemical that has a different impact on different people. It makes my cotraveler, Madeline, sleep more. It makes me sleep even less than my usual four hours. It makes my other cotraveler, Jeremy, take on a mellow and relaxed manner (not something that I am used to seeing in him back in Madison). It makes some Parisians sing with reckless abandon outside hotel windows late at night. It makes waiters wink and umbrellas disappear. It makes women (and men, but especially women) wear (protective?) scarves all year long. It makes (Madeline’s point) normally sane parents pluck their ugly children off the streets and hide them in the closet, so that only the beautiful are ever seen in public. It makes frugal people spend money on yellow-polka-dotted skirts and chocolate laced with strong spices. It makes adult people with good, strong limbs give up “le promenade” in favor of this:

yes, but are they happier this way? 

(From Paris): and this will be the last one from Paris

It rained today. Why post about the weather? Is there a soul on earth who cares about yesterday’s weather in a place where they are not?

No, probably not. Of course, they can always set up their own blog, with the promise that weather will never be mentioned. I am not such a person.

Today’s weather was crucial to the progression of the day. It lead to lost umbrellas, borrowed umbrellas, purchased umbrellas, and broken umbrellas. It meant that you lingered less, entered sheltered paces more, ate more.

The rain stopped. The clouds stayed solidly together, though to me, Paris has the ability to transcend wetness, taking on a buoyancy and depth that defies images of grayness. Not unlike a Matisse painting, full of yellows and blues.

I want to post photos. I should go to sleep. Does anyone ever want to sleep in Paris? I don't, especially with the dwindling hours left here.

certainty in food ...and beverages 

Is the city that sure? 

In line, in the rain, incredible. (place: Centre Pompidou with collections of modern art; in the background, a golden flower pot.)

The sidewalk was that wet after a downpour at the sculpture fountain 

Art in the park or Madeline and Jeremy hiding in their own favorite bubbles? 

Q: who had what? 

(From Paris): catching up on the blogs of others

After reading Ann’s “10 things I’ve never done,” I decided to do my own, from Paris, limiting it to five items, because it is almost time to “wake up” and “get going”:

1. I have never smoked cigarettes while in Paris. I just smoke everyone else’s secondhand smoke. Actually, it’s not unenjoyable in a short-term “live dangerously” sort of way.

2. As Paris is en route to Poland for me (and I would willingly make it en route to just about every other destination in the world, including, I am sure, Cincinnati, were time and money not an issue), I come here often. But I have never stayed on the Right Bank.

3. I have never stepped on dog poop on the sidewalk, missing it by a hair sometimes, but still, I have clean soles thus far.

4. I have never taken a boat ride along the river Seine.

5. I have never gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

(From Paris): reasonable or … not so much?

1. Is it even fair to compare other Europe-bound airlines to Air France? No. A toast to the continued pleasures of (endless) fine wine with every meal.

It was a very good year. They all seemed fantastic, especially after sampling the first one or two... 

2. How long is it “reasonable” to wait for a suitcase to come off the plane? Is one hour reasonable?

3. How long is it reasonable to wait in line to purchase a city-bound metro ticket? Is one hour reasonable?

the waiting game 

4. What is the first thing you do when you set out to see Paris? Stop sightseeing minutes into the walk and sit down over a protracted lunch. Just like the French.

Langoustines over baby epinards 

5. What is the second thing you really need to do? Stand under the Eiffel Tower and wait for the bottom to fall out.

JFW author, puzzling over the construction of the E.T. 

6. What is the reasonable thing to do when you take your first-of the-day walk through Paris? Ignore the monument to the Statue of Liberty and ignore the splendid view of the Eiffel Tower, and act mesmerized by the graffiti honoring Princess Di in the spot where she was killed?

a commemorative moment... 

7. How likely is it that Jeremy will not allow his dark chocolate ice-cream to drip into his flavorful apricot? Into the cone? Onto his clothes? The sidewalk? The world??

a chocolate drip is forming... 

Ocean authour's cone: cassis and dark chocolate 

8. Is it reasonable to be posting from Paris at 3:30 a.m.? No, but what if you really do not have any other time for it? (Thank you, tiny little Hotel Delavigne, for having high speed Internet in the lobby. The night clerk and I are bonding.)

UPDATE: Oh, look what other insomniac-blogger joins me in the lobby for a computer marathon at 4 a.m.!

(From Paris): wait, where is everyone?

Did anyone doubt that a trip where you’re traveling companions are a blogger and a non-blogger would wind up having high drama even before anyone reached the airport?

Traveling with me on this leg of the journey are Jeremy and Madeline (one of these is identified by their true name the other is not). Madeline was to meet me at Memorial Union to catch the bus to O’Hare. Jeremy was to meet us at O’Hare to catch our flight to Paris. I come to the Union, get on the bus – no Madeline. She missed the bus (for good reasons but who cares, Air France doesn’t reimburse for good reasons unless it’s a death or dismemberment and there was no death or dismemberment in this case).

I am at the airport now and I have no idea what’s going on. No Madeline, no Jeremy. Okay. DO I REALLY HAVE THE WRONG DATE??

No wrong date. Jeremy shows up. Madeline is en route, he tells me. There was confusion as to the departure time. She is now speeding with a co-opted friend. She may get here on time. Or not.

Meantime, Jeremy and I are given business lounge privileges and I am handed a dilemma. The AirFrance agent leans over and whispers: Madame, I can upgrade you up to business; you are our most favored customer [this is an artifact, btw, of this year where I have used AF for everything, including travel from Chicago to Tokyo: it earned me super brownie points, though only for 2005.]

What would the ethicist say? Abandon Jeremy and move to Business?? Here, I am proud to say that I did the honorable thing. And the more fun thing: I sat back with the sardines so that we could repeatedly beat each other in chess, checkers and hangman. [Jeremy will undoubtedly blog that he beat me at all these games but if you only knew how I set him up for a win you’d realize that I was the true victor.]

Madeline showed up as we were boarding. She showed up. On time. To board the plane.

Can this trip not be a success? No it cannot.

Damn it, in four hours I AM GOING TO BE IN FRANCE!!

Weather issues

I do get obsessive about looking at weather sites when I have many “outdoor” days before me. At http://www.wunderground.com/ you can get a motherload of information about the weather in the location of your choice. And so I’ve been curiously checking in: for Paris, Krakow and Warsaw – my destinations for the week to come.

One reason why I like this site is because they are more optimistic than, say, cnn.com. Where the latter has been predicting “rain” for Paris consistently for the past several days, Weather Underground has been scoffing at that with a “scattered clouds” icon neatly in place: a little picture of a smiling sun in a circle of puffy clouds. I like that. (Okay, Saturday, I may have to take an umbrella, but at least Friday remains solidly dry.)

It’s the temps that puzzle me though. Each of my cities will have one day next week (a different one) where inexplicably, the temps are to dip by some 15 degrees (for a high of 51). And it’s not like it’ll be tomorrow or the next day. We’re talking about something like Tuesday.

In Europe, there are not these continental drifts where you can see something heading toward you like in Madison. Or, at least I have never figured out what the meteorological relationships between regions are. All I know is that storms in Spain have little to do with the weather in the Polish mountains.

So what’s with the Tuesday dip and where is it coming from? Weird.

Weather on the continent is beastly unpredictable at this time of the year. One has to go with the flow and not mind, but I have to say that if the sun barely comes out in the next days, I will be good and mad. And cold, since I refuse to pack warm stuff on the theory that if I don’t want it to be cold, my suitcase should reflect these weather hopes and not weather resignations.

Right now my suitcase reflects great emptiness. The bus for O'Hare leaves in a few hours. I am behind schedule already. Time to surrender the blog until tomorrow. From Paris. Under scattered clouds.

And what will I take with me on this trip?

Okay, everyone has their own essentials of travel: toothbrush, pills, underwear, books, passport, whatever. For me they would have to include these two photos (of daughters), taken just hours ago. They’ll be the first thing that I’ll show my old friends back in Poland.

[It was fantastic having the daughters in Madison these past few days. Such total pleasure to have them accompany me on my daily ramblings...]

Ca., the little one

S., the older one 

Reservations

It’s a special moment when I get to pick up the phone here in Madison and say Est-ce que je peux faire une reservation? It means that within a short period of time I will actually be using said reservation in a place where English is not the primary language.

Tomorrow morning I am heading out to Paris and by Sunday, I'll be in Warsaw and Krakow.

There are blogging challenges ahead: Obviously tomorrow's posting will be light as I will be traveling. However, there's more: out of the 18 days in Europe, only during the last 3 will I not be in the company of friends from Madison. This is a first for me. With the exception of an interlude some decades back, I have been going back to Poland at least once a year. Never ever has anyone volunteered to either travel with me there, nor to meet up in Poland. To France? Oh sure, many candidates, many trips with friends and strangers. But Poland has always brought forth this reaction:

So, you're going back to Poland! I really would love to go there someday!

And there it would end.

This Spring, I do not know what winds were blowing through Madison and messing with people's heads, but here I am now, setting out to Poland, with four Madisonians joining me for various portions of the trip.

I am still dizzy at the thought.

And -- weirder still, during the first week, one blogger will be tagging along and during the second week another blogger will be there to pick up any blogger slack.

Basically this will mean that you may well have more than one commentary on the places talked of (somewhat reverently, I admit) in Ocean. Sort of like point - counter point, where I write, for example: we just walked through the most beautiful park on the planet, and the other person notes: we just avoided being eaten alive by some vicious swans who thought they deserved a handout just because we're tourists passing through. Different perspectives.

Should be fun. And a writing nightmare! Poland has decent but not great Internet options and oftentimes I wind up posting from a hotel dial-up. But in addition, this time I will feel that my absolutely top priority is making sure that my cotravelers are happily experiencing Poland, to the max. That means I will probably blog between 2:30 and 4 am. When else will there be time? But post I will, for sure.

At least the posts will be shorter (especially as compared to this obscenely long one).

Okay, a few more parting words tomorrow a.m. and then Ocean does what it loves best: it transports itself across the ocean and takes up the story there.

Is the pope Polish?

Not any more. But this does not prevent him from addressing Poles on St.Peter's Square in their native language.

Yesterday, he said this to the crowd: Pozdrawiam obecnych tu Polaków. W tych dniach razem z wami oddaję cześć świętemu Stanisławowi i polecam jego opiece cały Kościół w Polsce. Z serca wam błogosławię. Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus!*

A mouthful for a non-Pole, wouldn't you say?

* translation: oh, it's just the usual religious stuff, with a focus on St. Stanislaw and the Polish church.

Mermaids and things

My sister, who lives in Warsaw, today sent me some notes on legends surrounding mermaids. Why? Because the mermaid is the mascot of Warsaw, and she knows that days prior to my arrival I especially get interested in things surrounding my home town.




But you have to ask yourself why a mermaid would be the city’s mascot. As someone pointed out, Warsaw is some 300 kilometers away from the sea. What sense does it make to give a mermaid a shield and a couple of good looking breasts and place her on every moving piece of public transportation, to say nothing of stamps and municipal buildings, supplemented by a couple of monuments honoring her?



And mermaid legends are a little bit unreal. Typically they go something like this: a fisherman finds her, falls in love, rescues her or she him and then either he is forever satisfied with a mermaid in his chambers or she turns out to be, in real life, a lovely, wealthy princess, with her lower body then suddenly transformed as she becomes readily available for marital consumption in all ways – as opposed to the mermaid who has to satisfy and be satisfied basically with her top torso, with perhaps a smack of the tail thrown in for those who love a little pain on the side.

Warsaw’s mermaid has been around for centuries. Currently, her monument resides in the center of the Old Town Square, and there is another, bigger version by the river. I grew up in her shadow. I liked her sword raised high, I liked that she was a woman, I liked that she belonged to Warsaw, and not, say, to inferior Krakow (there is great rivalry between the two cities: it has been an ongoing sibling thing for some 1000 years; I don’t know if Americans can appreciate that, given the baby status of all urban centers here).

So, a mermaid it is: right there, in the center of the Old Town of Warsaw, with her bottom covered but her top exposed. She’s awesome, even if a little out of place. Warsaw’s protector in some spiritual sense. Triumphant and …mermaid-like.

I'm okay, I'm okay!

A reader, concerned that my my recent days demonstrate a pace that has more elements of frantic than of either rational or calm, forwarded a super nice message which included his wishes for more restful days and a photo to put me in the mood for a nice moment of repose. I am passing it on, wishing the same for my readers, who have patiently endured my frenetic and overly wordy posts:

slow down, you're going too fast... 

Another one of those evenings where I fall asleep at the computer with a half-written post

It's midnight, I’m sitting here thinking: keep it short, keep it short.

My attempt at short:

Today (Monday) I get up worrying that maybe I have the beginnings of a tooth ache. I just had had everything checked several weeks ago, but I am having an acute attack of teeth hypochondria. So I go to the dentist.

Many people worry about being lost in a foreign country without knowing the language. That is never a concern for me. Instead, I have a hidden terror of being stuck in a country with a strange and frightening network of dentists incompetently playing with their instruments of torture. Like it’s a power trip or something to grind away at the exposed nerve endings of a person helplessly strapped to a chair.

Perhaps I remember too well what it was like going to the dentist as a kid in Poland. No pain killers. Just pain. Endless, horrible pain. I know much has changed since the fall of communism. I am sure market economy dentists are of a different breed and inflicting pain is not longer the top priority it once was. Still, I am left with an irrational fear of them and so I often find myself just hours before a flight sitting in a dentist’s chair here in Madison, attempting to convince my tooth doctor that there surely is a problem and could he please detect it and fix it before I take off.

My chart must have the following note scribbled in it: “this is one of those pre-departure emergency visits. If indulged, she will go away and leave us alone until the next planned crossing of the ocean." So this morning I am indulged. The dentist even took out some "special paint" and brushed it over the tooth in question with a “special formula” that would keep it from giving me trouble in the weeks to come. Even though, as he pointed out, there is nothing wrong with the tooth. (I think he just missed the emergent problem, that’s all. Still, I feel that I will survive the three weeks I am away.)

After my early trip to the dentist (I was there at 8:01, just as they were opening up), I deal with the suitcase issue (see post below).

Then I have a meeting at the Law School during which I feel like basically my entire professional life is being quickly, conspiratorily set for me as I am struggling to give coherent responses. I survive, but I come out sweating, being especially appreciative of Tom’s Natural Scent, because believe me, without it, I would have been too naturally scented for words.

Then, quickly in succession: a coffee meeting to talk about Poland, special dinner for a daughter, burgers with a couple of bloggers, a cosmo at Opus lounge with said daughter, and then, finally, a minute with the computer, with HENIEK blasting away in the background.

[HENIEK is a spirited Polish folk song that my pals in Poland presented me with (on a CD) a few years back. I listen to it more than I will EVER admit to (just about) anyone. ]

And before I know it, I wake up, find the half-written post, along with a toy bird perched at the side of the keyboard and a pair of sunglasses casually folded next to it. What was I doing? Could it be that I was singing HENIEK with sunglasses on? To a toy bird? I do not remember. Sleep took over. This morning (Tuesday), I am only cleaning up the pieces of an abrupt ending to a long day.

The suitcase

I am to transport a suitcase from here to Chicago for a friend later this week. I picked up the suitcase from a prearranged place where it was left earlier this morning. It’s packed and ready to go.

However, as I lifted it into my truck, I noticed that one of the zippers was broken: it was one of those situations where you think you’ve pulled the zipper shut, but it leaves a trail of unconnected little zipper teeth in its wake. It was not a crucial zipper, not the foundation that holds the whole bag together, but it does expand and contract the suitcase and so it does serve a function.

Dilemma: should I fix it before handing it over to the friend in Chicago? I mean, Cecil over at shoe repair is a magician with these things. But if I fix it, shouldn’t I unpack it first? [The friend cannot be consulted with on this one – he’s up in the air somewhere, flying around the States.]

I could unpack it and no one would ever know. Unless my friend put one of those crucial hairs or threads in a particular place to see if any person would poke around his personal belongings. But the ethics of such an intrusion notwithstanding, I do not really want to poke around someone’s stuff. There are things that one doesn’t really want to know, even about very very good friends. Like how many mismatched socks they have or if they fold shirts neatly.

Handing a filled suitcase to Cecil is also unfair. Do you know Cecil? He is old, stooped, frail. He should not have to muck around with packed suitcases.

What would the ethicist say?

Answer: for every ethical dilemma there is an innovative solution. Cecil solved this one for me by fixing it on the spot while I lifted and moved the bag around for him. The guy is a repair genius – always has been. My kids were raised to show great reverence and respect for the man, as he has bailed us out of many shoe and suitcase problems over the decades.

Cecil understood the dilemma. Of course! He’s the kind of guy who may have himself packed an odd little private something in his day. He’s a man of strange habits after all – the same man who kept cats in his store and got chased out of the strip mall because the cats peed on the hallway carpets. Cecil didn’t seem to mind. He loved his cats and proclaimed: if the cats go, I go. And so out he went, to a different strip mall, one without any carpeted hallway to pee on and mess with.

It says something about my days that this was by far the most interesting thing that happened to me all morning.

We are the young, the children of the world…

I knew it. My trust in Peter was well-founded. I came home at dusk and found him thus, proud keeper of my yard: (thanks, nine-year-old pal! you rule!)

The yard's yours, Peter. You earned it.