at the market 

If the sun comes out suddenly, brilliantly, you think differently about desserts, about life, about tatoos:

sunshine, desserts, ideas. 

as Polish as apple pie... 

And the musicians played on: in this case, Vivaldi, the Four Seasons.

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.