from Warsaw: the beasts and the children

We take the morning train back to Warsaw. It is a quiet ride, a pensive time. Outside, the countryside is gentle, the colors -- a hazy gold.



My sister, who has lived in Warsaw all the years that I have been away, is waiting at the train station. She is protective of my movements here, in the city of my childhood. I know she thinks that I am too trusting, still stuck in the safer world of post-war Poland, when street crime was something we associated with America. Poland was tame then. Adults worried, but children felt safe.

I am stuck, alright, in seeing Warsaw as she was then. She is constant, she is a rock.

In the early afternoon, Ed and I set off for a walk. It is colder now, but the sun is still there, darting out just when I need it most. It is Ed’s first walk through Warsaw.




My first Warsaw walk took place when I was maybe one, or two. There was still the smell of rubble then. Ed, in New York, was exploring Central Park and exchanging baseball cards. Or, knowing him – reading comic books on the floor of his room. I was staring at candles burning on street corners, commemorating the losses of the past decade.

We walk to Lazienki, the most beautiful urban park in the world. Bias again? No. Really, not.



It is almost empty – unusual, at any time of the year. On a week-end, there is hardly an alley that is not taken up by the lovers, the children, the old friends walking arm in arm. Every bench is well worn, much used. But on this afternoon, it is too cold to sit. The few of us that are here walk briskly.

Though of course, we are not really alone. My sister has stuffed our pockets with stale bread and nuts for the inhabitants of Lazienki and these lovely creatures run to us, searching our coats, asking for a winter treat.


bird and Ocean author



bird and Ed

We are utterly charmed by this. I tell Ed that nothing has changed. I fed these same squirrels and birds when I was five years old. I am feeding them now, still grinning at their brazenness.


squirrel reaches for a nut



peacock jumps for bread



may we please have more?



and what about me?



...while others look on

And suddenly the light fades. The trees, towering and bare, no longer throw shadows. We are in the larger shadow of the night.


evening: empty benches, empty park


...almost empty

I steer Ed toward the streets and squares that were my childhood paths. Look Ed, this is a planned housing development that went up after the war. With courtyards for children to play in. Nice, isn’t it?




And here, see this square? Another housing development. People refer to this as Stalinist architecture – but we kind of learned to like it. And it still has appeal to us, in a retro sort of way.





I was born the year Stalin died. I have read enough since to know that there is nothing pretty about the politics of that era. But my childhood memories are not about politics. They are about neighborhoods and parks and feeding squirrels and getting an ice cream cone under the arcades of these buildings.

It is cold enough to take a pause. I guide Ed to one of the many many bakeries, so familiar, still putting out the pastries that I grew up with. A vanilla babka, a poppyseed cake, and the more ornate tortes that women and men stood in line for. There were shortages then – not enough meat, not enough toilet paper, too few cars, not many washers, no clothes you would be proud to wash or wear. But I never recall a shortage of cakes. Let them eat cakes, there would always be cakes.




At night, I eat dinner with my family. Poland is, to me, a country with baggage that is over the limit. If airlines charge $50 for too much weight in your bags, then Poland, were she traveling, would owe the equivalent of a small country’s GNP. And my family fits in here. Maybe it is a given that a nation of baggage would have individuals pulling in their share and then some.
But we eat together anyway. The younger ones keep looking forward, the older ones keep looking back, some of us no longer eat meat, some of us grew up without meat in stores, some of us push for organic meat. The wheels of change.

It is so late that I cannot write when I finally come back to the hotel and sit down at my computer. I’m in Warsaw, and incapable of saying a sensible word about her. Even though I feel I must. Someone once wrote that we are the generation of story tellers. Being post-war children, we did not write the history, yet we are burdened now with recording it.

And so I will. I do. But not until the next morning.

six hours

If I, here at Ocean, could only have six hours (for sleep), I would come back swinging so hard afterwards! Okay? Thank you. See you in about six.

from Rynias, Poland: hiking the muddy paths

I am in Krakow. Most anyone would find this a destination in and of itself. And it is. But after a day, I say:
I want to go to the mountains.
And how is it that we get from here to there?

Ed and I are reviewing Sunday options. I know what I want. What I do not know is how to explain to an American that what I want is entirely reasonable.

Well, you can take the bus, then a cab, really not too bad… One hundred kilometers (60 miles) and you are there.
How long is the travel time? Ed is beginning to understand that with me, you need to ask the right question.
Seven hours. Round trip!
It is dark for 23 hours of the day here (an exaggeration, but I get the point). Is this a reasonable plan?
Yes.

But the bus and train schedules will not permit this and so, like helpless tourists that do not know which way is north or south, we turn to the sweet young women at the hotel front desk. Help us, help us…
We can offer you a car, with driver.
How can a car with driver be cheaper than a rental car, without driver? Please, do not ask me to unravel the deep mysteries of Polish life. Reality is a confusing thing.

We accept the offer.

It’s Sunday morning and the weather has turned…awful. Rain, mist, dark clouds, sharp winds. Ahhhh, central Europe in December. Hi there, I am home again.

Ed waffles (oh how the mighty crumble when the weather turns bad).
Maybe we could pay our driver not to take us to the mountains.
I say nothing, which says a lot.

We climb into the car and head south.

It gets worse the closer we get to the village from which I want to hike to Rynias.

Rynias… A longtime reader of Ocean would know this place.

In the middle of an Alpine valley, three homesteads cluster together. It is a place of unexpected quiet. The nearest paved road is nearly an hour by foot. Okay, it is not a total silence. The mad stream pounding the rocks just to the south is loud as anything. Cross the waters and you are in Slovakia. The high peaks of the Tatra mountains frame the entire meadow. There is no place like Rynias. I say this because, of course, I am biased.

I had first gone to Rynias, with friends, as a young university student. We stayed in the home of highlanders, who farmed the land and grazed their sheep in that pristine valley in the middle of nowhere. Soon after, I became a statistic: one of those who moved to the States and was never heard from again. Except, some five years ago, I came back to Poland and again made my way back to the mountains and the hidden cluster of homes by the Slovakian border.


The driver, a young Krakovian whose motto has to be “I speed because I am” follows my directions to the village nearest Rynias.
Leave us here and come back in several hours.
Really? Thank you!
He tells us we are a very undemanding pair of Americans.

Am I an American? I speak Polish to him. Still, he calls it as he sees it. I am a Pole who has neglected her roots. Worse, I am a Pole who is traveling with an American. One of those. A Polish woman seeking a way out. A Polish woman who (bingo!) has found her entry card to the great America. God, I hate the inscriptions and attributions that come with being seen around town with an American.

Ed and I leave the warm, dry shelter of the car and set out deep into the forest. I use an umbrella. Ed gets wet (he does not believe in umbrellas). But we persevere.



The clouds hide the mountains. There are no jagged peaks framing the Alpine valley this time. There is the forest, there are meadows and there are the fat drops that so want to be snow flakes, but for the one degree that keeps them in the state of rain.



And then, magically, there is Rynias.



Pan Stas (83) and Pani Anna (75), the highlanders who are happier to see me than my own mother would be...



... usher us into their tiny kitchen hut. They had been setting out to church, but are now insistant that we come in and sit for a while on small stools, warming up with glasses of tea.

This glass of Lipton is as familiar to me as the cup that I make for myself back at the Law School, thousands of miles away, every day before class. And now Pani Anna is boiling water. [Ed smiles as she places the pot of water on top of her wood burning stove, still hot from the morning fire and sticks an electrical coil into it to speed up the boil.] She cuts wafer bars to eat and she searches for strings of dried mushrooms to stuff into an old plastic bag for me to take back home. Think of us when you cook with them, she tells me.






We talk, intensely. About my daughters, about their nephew. Never about the son they lost in a motorcycle accident. Never about all that can go wrong between now and the next time that I will see them. But when I leave, the strength of the kisses says it all. Good bye. Who knows what stories will be laid down the next time we meet. Good bye.




Ed and I take the short cut back to the village: we follow the steep path up the mountain, through the forest, until it crests…



... then shoots down, on the other side, into the village of Brzegi.




Brzegi has two tiny grocers, one volunteer fire station, an elementary school and a church. Half the village is at a mass right now. The church bells peel. What does that mean? I don’t know. I am ignorant in the ways of my home country.



Ed and I hike down to find our driver. Where to now? --he asks. I shrug. Me, I am finished. My day is done.

Still, we have one or two daylight hours left. You do not throw away daylight hours when there are so few and far between. And so we head higher up, toward the mountains that have yet to reveal themselves from behind the dense clouds.

But the further up we go, the foggier it gets. Only here, the rain is changing to snow. Wet and cold snow. Hiding reality, soothing the agitated girl, no, woman now, here from Wisconsin, here only for a minute, before her face turns back to what is now home, so far, so far, from this place.







Enough. I ache from the cold, from the fullness of the day. We drive to Krakow, the road terror boy at the wheel, passing six, seven cars at a stretch, because maybe if he gets us there, to the main square before too long, his woman will take him into her arms again?

Good bye peculiar Americans, he is thinking. Good bye mad but ultimately sympathetic driver.

I find comfort in the grilled sheep’s milk cheese at the holiday bazaar.



Children are singing Polish Christmas carols and I sing with them, even without the aid of hot spiced wine.

a Krakow saturday

Can a Pole get a fresh perspective on her homeland by staying away for a while? You think you can, but it’s a myth. You get off the train, you see X, Y and that’s it. Say no more, you, dear country, are as good (or as quirky) as I remember you.

But when something hits you ever so forcefully, well then, you’d have to be rock iron steady not to falter.

Take the weather (but anything can be considered here). I come here with my warmest woolies in the winter. That wetness, hovering just below freezing gets to me every time. I expect this: I will be cold here in the winter in ways that I am not cold elsewhere. Not indoors, mind you. Wisconsinites with their bravado take the reigns there. Poles crank their furnaces to a toasty high. But outside, you are on your own. No toasty interior can ever take away the chill of a Polish December evening.

Except, today, when I step out for my first full Polish day and see this:



Off with the coat, off with the scarf, man, it is warm here! I talk to a waiter later in the day, he shares my confusion. We go outside and it’s warm. We don’t know what to do. What do you wear on days like this?

Not much of anything. No problem bringing out the accordion today. You don’t need the woolies or the mitts.



And the sky! The mist is gone, the heavens are pure cornflower. Look at the detail from the castle (just up the hill from where I am staying), against a template of blue.




I walk with Ed to Kazimierz, the Jewish section of Krakow. It’s not as if Ed is insisting on this (even though his roots are very much in the Eastern European Jewish culture, or at least as it was relived on the streets of New York City, post immigration), but I feel most people from the States are interested in what happened to the Jews of Krakow. I’m not sure a walk to Kazimierz answers all their questions (though I am able to say that this indeed is where Schindler’s List was filmed), but it’s a start. If you keep your eyes open, there are triggers for a conversation: the tiny proliferation of Jewish stores and eateries and an empty Square that once was the epicenter of local Jewish culture.




It is rather stupid to visit Kazimierz on a Saturday. Or maybe it’s not. The cemeteries are closed. I am spared the heavy weight of having to read the inscriptions on the tombstones, of seeing the wall of mourning, of reeling back to a Krakow of sixty-five years back.


Just at the periphery of Kazimierz proper (mind you, we are within a half hour stroll of downtown Krakow), we come across a market. Foods, yes, of course. A woman sits and waits for someone to buy her eggs. Her pears aren’t a draw, even though they are the only fruit at the market.




There is more interest in the pots of cooked cabbage and pickled cucumbers. At the core, Poland is as I remember her from my childhood.




The flee market next door causes a greater stir. The sellers insist their items are absolutely authentic. And why would you want to question this anyway? You can make a killing here. Imagine the real value of some of these treasures. Had I spare coins, I would have definitely put up the cash for the smirking woman in the portrait below. A steal at any price.





Walking back to Krakow’s main square, I pass a most familiar sight. I am a young kid, in post war Poland again! This is my world, the world of lines spilling onto the sidewalk. The lines you join first and ask why they have formed later!




Only this is different. This line is born of a lightbulb going off that there is a week-end ahead, with guests coming for supper and not much time to bake and so here we all are, standing at our local bakery to pick up a cheesecake or a fruit square, or those rose-jelly doughnuts covered with orange glaze. They’ll do, more than that, it is what we like, it is familiar and good, baked fresh and honest on the same way, for decades now.







Such a day. Did any Krakovian not walk through the main square, slowly, purposelessly, indulgently today?




I stop at a favorite café to get my pretend latte (or, is it that I get my pretend cappuccino back in Madison?).

I want to show off Krakow in its rosiest tones because if you, Ed, the visitor, cannot understand it at its best, then you may think us inadequate or somehow lacking (which is only slightly worse than the indifference that the outside world has otherwise shown us) and our complex runs way deep (can’t you tell from this paragraph alone?) and so here, take a look, we are doing it right. Believe it.


mirror mirror on the wall, who is the rosiest of them al?

The holiday fair is at its peak on this afternoon, but really dusk already, because it’s 3:30, December, in northern Europe, for God’s sake, the sun is done with. Thank goodness we have food.

The grills can’t keep up with the demand. Lines, jovial lines of people looking forward to that plateful.



We ask for the sides without the meat. We are not trying to be odd. But I had just sipped a cappuccino and eaten pear cake with almonds. A dish of cooked bigos (sauerkraut with hams, sausage, etc etc) seems wrong.



Yet, the smells are irresistible. We take another bite of the melty smoked cheese, a sip of the hot spiced wine and we want more. Can we please have the sides without the meat? Sure, sure, have it all, you Americans always ask for odd things, but you pay for it and so here you are – a dish of sides.



…and to take back home, a sack of cows. Because they are the candy of my childhood. Krowki. Cows. Little candies, wrapped in paper with a picture of a cow. A forerunner to my eventual move to Wisconsin.



A walk around the square, once more, covering all angles, all sides...



And finally, the sun has set. Completely.

So is there room for dinner after this? Sure. I have a salad. Oh, and a whole trout filet. You can’t be in Poland and not have a local trout filet.

And late in the evening, we stop at a small bakery that does small cookies. Sweet endings to a very warm and rosy day.

from Warsaw, fleetingly, then from Krakow, chasing down peasant roots

The airport is expanding, the traffic is worsening, and there is the inevitable construction. [Come to think of it, this would describe Madison as well.]

My sister is waiting at the Warsaw airport. She has made the mental calculation that we could stop at her place on the way from the terminals, eat borscht and gingerbread and quickly scoot to the train station in time for my connection to Krakow.

So my first taste of Polish food comes from her kitchen. Fitting, and entirely memorable and wonderful, except I am so tired that I erase an entire card of photos documenting my earliest minutes rubbing shoulders with my people, so to speak.


A three hour train ride and Ed and I are in Krakow, red-eyed, weary. Still, we push my suitcase and carry my computer and camera bag (Ed travels with no such encumbrances) all the way across the main square…



…to the hotel, where I open the window to a view:



The air is warm – upper forties. Can’t complain. I hardly notice the slight misty undertones that have draped the streets with a thin sheath of wetness.

I take Ed to a place that serves Polish peasant food. I’m Polish peasant stock. This is my food!

The place is crowded and so we go for a walk, hoping that eventually a table will open up, preferably before midnight. We pace the main square taking in the crowds – the place is one foot into Christmas and another into the week-end. People, everywhere people, walking through, stopping for a snack. This is street food for the holidays: huts with burly men (mostly men) grilling meats -- food to sustain you between regular meals.



It’s intense out there under the moonlit sky: the grills are churning out roasted kielbasas and chunks of who knows what, I’m taking in the smells and sounds – yes, I can see myself piling a plate with slabs of meats and sausages and still, I resist. I make do with smoked cheese from the nearby highlands, grilled and smothered with wild cranberries...



…just so I can make room for the peasant foods back at the restaurant: the potatoes, the mushrooms, pan-fried and drenched in two kilos of melted butter, the herring heaped with sour cream and onion and the pierogi, sprinkled with lardons, oh and don’t let me forget the pickles and cabbage slaw and bread at the side and the tall jug of beer.



No one ever said peasant stock is raised on light food.

phone call

Early this morning, I call Krakow, Poland to confirm a hotel reservation. Finding a good room had been difficult (I want downtown. I want squeaky clean. I want the Internet) and so I do not want to lose this one.

Do you speak English? – I ask. Normally, it is a complicated decision for me when I deal with service providers – whether to proceed in English or Polish (if I speak English with an accent, it's not one Poles can detect). But this one is obvious. English.
Yes. How may I help you?
I want to confirm a booking.
She asks me my name, I give it to her: Nina Camic
She repeats it back: Gnee-nah, right?
Yes, Gnee-nah.

Only Poles pronounce it that way. In that brief exchange, I know I am talking to a Pole and she knows she is talking to a Pole.

Off I go, to catch my bus to catch my plane to catch my next plane to catch my train to Krakow.

oh clock

early

I zip out the door, not wanting to be late for student appointments. I pause and look at the birds, assembled, huddled, social, connected in space if not in words. I snap a photo. It may be the only interesting thing that I see all day.




middle

Last day of class. My torts students do something that touches me no end. It is always hard to let go of the first semester group, but this semester it is harder than ever. I look at them: the funny, the artists, the engineers, the quiet but ready in tough times, the ever-questioning, the ones with families, all with visions and I had this very brief foot into the door of their lives. Who should be thanking whom? (I thank them in the last sentence of the exam, which I write into the wee hours of the evening.)

late

I walk home tired and hungry. It is late and I haven’t finished all that needs to be completed tonight. But I have made progress. Should there ever be a n expectation of more than progress?
The wind is so cold now! My walk home is slightly under a half hour but it seems twice that. Yet, when I look up and see the lights of the bike shop, so enticing, inviting, as if anyone would, on this day, want to enter and buy a bike! – I pause and take a photo. I’m minutes from home, hours from Poland.

hoarding minutes

Why am I foraging minutes now, like a squirrel, thinking ahead to the long winter?




Why are my posts short, my stories inconsequential, my interactions with commenters minimal?

It’s time that I went back to Poland for a while. After an 18 month break, I’m ready for it again.

I used to do some work at the courthouse in Krakow during my most recent trips there, but this time, I may do none of it. I want some hours with family (an aging father and a close in age and in shared experiences sister are there, in Warsaw) and with old friends.

I want to show Ed, my occasional traveling companion, who this time did not say “no” to the proposed trip, I want to show him the store where my mother once bought me a hazelnut birthday cake, back in 1959. I want to participate in the Polish language. I want to study the faces of the women who come in to the cities to sell stuff. Cheeses, slippers, anything. Not flowers. This isn’t the season for lilies of the valley, or for bunches of violets.

Ed and I are taking off the day after tomorrow. We’ll be in Poland for a week and then elsewhere in Europe for a handful of days. This week has been, as a result, packed with work. I need to wrap up the semester before I fly back, home.

in the light of the moon

Teach, grade, read, respond to emails, write exams. My days.

But when I take just a minute to drive into the countryside once the night has set in, I am able to put it all aside and watch the Rudolph herd all over again. Fleetingly.

And then suddenly, the deer retreat and the field is moonlit and bare. All in the space of seconds. All lovely.

nina-long-legs

I am not even going to try to put a label to this day. Work. Much of it against the backdrop of a splendidly cold day.

Until finally, as the sun almost put an end to any warmth, I set out to see what it was like out there in the great outdoors.

Madison’s lakes are starting to freeze over. How long does it take? A day? A week?




In the last rays, I am enthralled with the colors. Or, maybe with seeing myself shadowed against them. Nina-long-legs. Lean and tall. Towering. On a field covered with snow.




Over the river (brook, actually) and through the woods and … a pond, this one frozen, it appears. Imagine skating here, as a kid, or as a young adult.




Maybe it’s not totally frozen. Maybe it would not be so very romantic and cool to fall through it and suffer the cold? (Aren’t there great movies that follow this sequence of events?)




The sun sets, I return home. By way of fields where Rudolph and his pals do their thing.