looking for good things 

On the Square, fighting the clouds 

(From Warsaw): what stands out

…on the train to Warsaw: farmsteads, small strips of land, meadows. (When was the last time that I had seen a meadow in the States?)

A hand plough pulled by a horse, an orchard, a forest. Dirt roads with farm wagon tracks. No cars. Chickens let loose in a field, willows bending down, wooden fences made of brittle gray boards, unpainted.

Is this my home? Is this no longer my home?

Returning with sentimental thoughts but also returning with an understanding that because I left so long ago, I think it is no longer possible for me to live here (even as it is not possible for me to feel that home is elsewhere).

Wild lilacs blooming against the side of the tracks, a small train station – Dziadowki – passed slowly. No one there anyway, no one in sight anywhere, in fact.

looking out 

wooden fences, fruit trees 

green fields 

(From Krakow): …deck my garden walk

Lilies of the valley. Everywhere, buckets and buckets of them, in big bunches.

powerful fragrance 

I have no time to write. I realize that. My blog entries have a bare-boned feel to them. I have so many excuses. Work was today’s baby. Churches and castles and lizards were yesterday’s. Tomorrow we leave Krakow (though I will be back next week) and the day will spin into a madness that will make today and yesterday feel like a day at the spa – though one where sleep is withheld.

Poland for me demands both blogging and my attention. I want to write when I am here more than at any time or place in my days, at the same time that I want to not lock myself in my room just now.

One day at a time. Today I blogged. Tomorrow I will try very very hard. But it may be the first day where I will just have to hang up my posting mittens for a day. Understand, it will be a miracle to work through all that has to be done and no time will I be anywhere near a computer.

At least when an impatient reader clicks on Ocean, they will see the lilies of the valley. Life’s not bad if you can see all those lilies of the valley in buckets, everywhere.

(From Krakow): Kazimierz

If only 160 Jews live in Krakow now, are they dispersed, or do they concentrate in the old Jewish district of Kazimierz?

Can two cemeteries adequately commemorate those who lost their lives here?

the older Jewish Cemetary 

close together 

moving slowly, taking it all in 

a wall of grief 

in a forest, yellow flowers 

white flowers 

(From Krakow): interesting questions asked by my fellow travelers

Is there a hierarchy of nun habits? Is blue higher up than brown? Than gray?

Why do horses rest on only three feet?

horses, horses... 

Wouldn’t I be a better tour guide than Marta over at the Jagiellonian University who does the “Copernicus” tour?

Why don’t we get a tattoo?

Answers to some of the above and to random other questions buzzing around:

Not old things are worth preserving:

holding it together...

Some old things are really worth preserving:

the castle courtyard 

I don’t know about being a tour guide, but I’d consider working as a gardener at the Wawel Castle, so long as I'd have a hoe like she does:

all it takes is a rake and a hoe.. 

Polish (folk) costumes for girls, on sale at the market, reminding me of the days when I owned one, wore one, felt proud in one:

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?