Wednesday in Warsaw

I end this day with a long visit with my father.





He talks in spurts, as if there is too much that needs to be said to answer any question completely and so he must abandon any attempt to do so.

And this is a trip of questions for me. When I started work on my book on growing up in postwar Poland, I thought I knew what simple story needed to be told. But writing is not static and over the years, I saw that the better story is the one that is at least in one small part a response (or a new set of questions raised) to what others, outsiders, are writing about Poland. I don't have great scholarly wisdoms to offer about the history of that period and in fact I offer only a child's perspective (it is a story of childhood after all) but history had it that I should live in the thick of a great European drama. What I write about life then is one truth, my truth, to be thrown into the pot of truths and half truths and no truths at all that are forever simmering out there.

Thinking about this makes for a restless night. Finishing yesterday's post means, too, that much of my morning is shot. That's okay. If I can't think about it carefully (here on Ocean), isn't the value of what I see and hear lessened?


Morning. Breakfast and a pause as to what's next. But it's not a serious deliberation. I know what's to fill the remaining light hours: I have for years now wanted to walk to Praga. That's Warsaw's east bank, left bank, rough side, bohemian, edgy, up-and-coming (but definitely hasn't come yet) district. And it is also Warsaw's brick and mortar older part of town: Praga is where the Soviets stayed put as the Germans bombed Warsaw to pieces in a final confrontation during the uprising in 1944. Bombs leveled the core of the city, but Praga, the small enclave across the river was mostly spared. My father and his parents (luck would have it) found shelter in Praga in the final years of the war. It saved my father's (and his parents') life to be there. He has always said that luck in life so often placed him in the right place at the right time (even as Praga is left rather than right bank-ish and I don't use the word in any political fashion.)

The walk is lo-o-o-ong! And I don't do it right. I need to cross the Vistula River, but the lead up to the bridge is l-o-o-o-ng too and I feel for a good while that it's just me and the cars out there. And buses. And mud splattered sidewalks and a strong wish that I should get to the other side already.

And here's the thing: the weather has turned from 'oh, that is just so pretty' to 'oh, it is foggy and freezing.' The air is so heavy with cold moisture that it traps every particle of spent fuel inside. There is a perpetual whiff of something burning in the air.

Finally: the crossing over the Vistula River…





Then on to Saska Kempa,  the southern edge of Praga, where, in the back streets, the lesser embassies (of countries that don't command long visa lines) sit behind closed gates and on the main boulevards locals move around slowly, agedly, pulling grocery carts behind them.





I have some small goals. One is to see the new-ish monument to Agnieszka Osiecka. I've always liked Agnieszka Osiecka. She was a late twentieth century poet and a writer and she was part of my adolescent fabric of artistic souls who somehow (though I no longer fully remember or understand why) 'spoke to me.' So here she sits now, in the blocks where she once lived.






And here are some of the older blocks of this maybe not so edgy but definitely interesting part of the city.



'Rajstopy' means women's tights; 'cukiernia truskawka' means strawberry pastry shop






Alright.  I switch directions and walk north, through the lovely (but not anywhere near as splendid as Lazienki) park Skaryszewski…



moms and grandmothers with buggies


…where a dancer dances away under a canopy of snow.










And now I'm out of the park and searching for what is said to be the oldest building in Praga, but I find that just a shell  remains. It's being gutted and reworked into a museum of Praga history. That's alright -- there's plenty that feels old here. Old in the sense that time has passed and it has not been gentle.



the painted sign reads: carpets laundered



dried mushrooms, walnuts, garlic


And finally I am on what is reputed to be the most interesting street of Praga, but I only give it a few blocks. I'm ready to turn back. I've been out in the foggy cold for hours now and I still want to hike all the way back (though via a different bridge, more pedestrian friendly). A warming up pause is in order.  I look around for the "trendy cafes" that are "starting to appear" in Praga. I see only one cafe and it looks faded and old, which is more fitting for this part of town anyway. You can just barely see the faded letters on the building. 'Stara Praga.' The Old Praga. I go inside.









It's lovely! Old, yes, but with a startling display of  modernity in the art. Most importantly, it's comfortable and warm and I order their specialty -- hot spiced wine and though I can't quite finish it (too sweet!) it still does the trick: my insides are heating up!





Okay, past the onion domes of the old Orthodox Church of St Mary Magdalene…





…and past another park and home to our city zoo.


 


The zoo.  My memories are suddenly so vivid: the zoo had a bear pit that looked out over the busy street. How busy is the street? It is the main artery connecting Warsaw with the northeast. I know it well. When we were teens and my dad finally had a car, we drove this way to get to my grandparents' house in the village (in the northeast of Poland). We would look with great curiosity to see if we could spot those poor brown bears that were on full display for all people heading out to the villages and cities on the eastern border or even beyond, to the Soviet Union.

Thankfully, I see no bears today and perhaps some animal rights groups have pushed the bears further inside, away from the fumes, the klaxons, the stares of curious travelers. I saw instead lovely scenes of mothers -- one with a very young child, and then another, with a somewhat older child.








And now I cross the bridge again, the kinder bridge, the one that looks out on Warsaw's best skyline -- which would look a lot better had there not been this soupy, freezing fog…





But I'm on my familiar bank now, the bank where I spent 99.9% of my Warsaw days (and that may be an understatement).



The Castle Square, coming at it from the river


Familiar everything. Including the bakeries. (If you're a Pole, you'll know what every one of those cakes is. From the gingerbread, to the poppy seed and walnut rolls.)






And then it's dark and time for a supper and I have a friend meet me right here at the B&B, where I eat a delicious pumpkin soup followed by a fresh and honest salad. The salad is with beets, the soup is with slivers of cucumber. Because we are in Poland.





As you know, my evening ends with my father.

Late at night I leave his home, his street, which was once also my home and my street and I always thought I liked it then, but now I'm not so sure, because I have to admit this -- it was when I was living here that I decided to leave Poland and move in as au pair with a family in New York.

Tuesday in Warsaw

[Warning: this will be the longest post of the trip. I cannot write it with few words and I apologize for that.]

Sometime in the middle of that first night, I skyped Ed and proclaimed -- I can't sleep. It's not the jet lag. It's the being in Warsaw thing. When I am here, I slowly forget all those adaptive mechanisms that have allowed me to feel, in Madison, more American than Polish. I can't do that for long when I'm back home (in Poland). The tug is strong to slip back into Polishness and it leaves me confused and, at night, restless.

But at some point the tension eased and sleep came (this is a reality that the tossers and turners forget sometimes -- eventually we all do sleep). Maybe it's the lesson of yoga: I focus on the stretching and twisting in class, but I do know that it teaches me to let go of anxiety.

Morning. I look out the window at a Warsaw courtyard.





Lovely and cold, all at the same time. I put on something warm: orange pants, matching the color accents in the room (the specs are in the mirror not in your eyes!)





The breakfast at my B&B is downstairs in the cafe bar. And it is a lovely meal of egg, muesli, yogurts, fruits. I am forever, back home (I mean now back at the farmhouse), photographing breakfast. So here's breakfast.





Outside, the snow is again coming down lightly, prettily. It's in the low twenties. I put on an extra sweater, tie up my scarf and head out.

Right away I can tell that it's going to be a splendid walk. I can feel it in the bounce I bring to the enterprise. Again and again I tell myself -- this is beautiful! You could say that it is because I chose to do the gloriously regal walk up Krakowskie Przedmiescie -- the grand avenue that links the old new town with the old old town (at the foundation level anyway, since I must remind you, Warsaw was 90% rubble after World War II). But it isn't just that. The snow is delicate, gentle. My memories are that too today.



the gates to the University of Warsaw where I studied for 2.5 years




a snow covered cardinal and St Joseph's church





I could spot a Pole a mile away




in winter, it can appear to be almost always lightly snowing; streets aren't shoveled, they're swept




one of the many Christmas markets: note the highlander sheeps milk cheeses -- eaten warm, and at the forefront, a slice of bread with smalec (pig fat) with pickles




the Royal Castle Square


I'm switching to Polish now, in stores and elsewhere. But I find that I have that American softness to my speech. The Polish melodic inflection is gone too. I hear its absence, but I do nothing to force it back. I'm kind of enjoying the reaction. At several points, people think that I am an American who has learned Polish very very well. Nearly perfectly! The accent isn't perfect, but so what!

Which brings me to this question that I come back to again and again: why do so many Poles love America so much? Even as that love is not at all reciprocated. I mean, America let them down. Again and again. Thinking back to the war (and I do, every time that I am here), I tick off the numerous ways the United States looked the other way when Hitler attacked Poland. And after? This country of mine, which was the first in Europe to stand up to Hitler, only to find itself invaded from the east as well -- this country was then handed over to the Soviets as a spoil of war: you take this we'll take that. We were part of the package that became Eastern Europe, meaning the Europe that Stalin could call his own. And no one even raised a word of regret. Not then, not for all the years that the Soviet Union exerted its control over what happened within the boundaries of my homeland. Indifference: we (I speak as an American now) are good at demonstrating our indifference to this poor battered nation.

Poles are not too keen on their neighbors to the east. But they love Americans! (Even as they do not really understand them and in that, we are all tied, because Americans don't understand Poles either.) The same Americans that are to this day refusing entry to my countrymen unless they apply for a visa -- a prolonged, odious process that requires a physical standing in line at the American Embassy, a process we (I speak as an American now) force onto every Pole who wishes to travel overseas.

You don't believe me that Poles are forgiving toward America? Among the statutes that line the boulevards of Warsaw, I come across this one (forgive the dimness -- I took it later in the day):



Ronald Reagan: the only US sitting president in the last fifty years who did not visit Poland; Nixon was first to come here, George W. Bush came three times and Obama was here in 2011, though happy thoughts of that were probably erased a year later, when Poles were stunned to hear that in honoring a Resistance fighter, he referred in his speech to Polish death camps. How could he! (Poland was the rare country on the continent where Hitler could not find collaborators, nor did my country at any point surrender and the camps were run entirely by Germans.)



Monument to the Heroes who died fighting for Poland between 1939 and 1945




Monument to those who died in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944


I push thoughts of Polish - American relations aside for a while. Let me indulge my Polishness thoroughly now. Did I mention how glorious this day is? I don't even notice the cold. I walk endlessly, for miles and miles. Through the old old town…





















On and on until I notice on my watch that I'm late for a tea date with a friend. In Poland, I do as I have always done, all my life here -- drink tea with lemon.





And then I walk some more. I am away from the old town now -- closer to the hub, the center, and as it turns out, close tot he route I sometimes took on my walks home from high school. So often I stopped here, to buy bread (exactly like these rolls!)  for home.






Nostalgia. Not everyone has it for their high school years, but I do. And wouldn't you know it, I am near my high school now. After moving back from the States (my dad worked for the UN and so we spent my elementary school years in New York) I attended this Lycée. I see that students leaving for the day.





So the classrooms must be empty. On the spur of the moment, I decide to go inside.

The door guard sits and monitors who comes and goes and I ask him for permission to enter. Go up and speak to the director, he ushers me in. After many conversations of the type-- I don't live here any more, I'm visiting, I used to go to school here, I am passed on from one office to the next, but with smiles from everyone, until finally someone with a key opens my classroom for me.





Nothing has changed! Even the desks are lined up exactly in the same way -- three rows, two students per desk. Same bare walls -- none of this American penchant for ornamentation -- same parquet floors… My God, could it be that time stands still inside the high school gates?

It does not. No one wears uniforms anymore (from the administrators: we tried to preserve that rule -- it was good for the kids to wear cloaks over their daily clothes -- but there was too much resistance, so we gave up). But they do shed their street shoes. Not for slippers -- that custom's gone too -- but for sneakers. And gone are the chain link fenced cloakrooms downstairs. These days, they have very American looking lockers!





One of the administrators asks me about my school days here and I tell him quite honestly that I loved my time in school. My home was my classroom (we stayed in the same room, with the same 36 kids for the duration of high school), my friends were my family. I was a young high schooler (I had skipped grades) and I wasn't especially studious, but this place was the epicenter of my life during what I still regard as the formative years.

I leave with a smile at the memory of it all.

And the smile continues as I turn the corner and follow the long block toward Belweder -- the palace that is now again the seat of government for our president. So you could say we have our own small White House!






I am near Lazienki -- the most beautiful park in the world.

I hadn't intended to go there: I love it, but I have to remind you -- it's really cold now, not exactly park strolling weather. It's almost dusk and I know the park closes at dusk. I step inside anyway. It's magical!





I walk the grand avenues, take the snow covered paths that crisscross this glorious place…










… and as I lose myself in the heart of this nearly empty place of winter loveliness, I begin to wonder if it's possible to get locked in. Dusk is certainly upon us…





I run into an old man who appears to be here for his daily stroll (you can tell in the way he walks the place, knowingly, without hurry) and I ask -- are they closing yet? Don't worry, he tells me. They push dusk a little in the winter time.

And so I persevere. To the summer palace…





and around again. Up the hill to the gate… Oh oh, closed. It is almost dark.





But I see people inside still, so I know that I am not to spend the night here after all. (A guard tells me that at the southernmost gate there is someone there round the clock, so for future reference -- you cannot trap yourself inside.)

And so I head toward the open gate, past a snow-covered Chopin…






Out onto the boulevard. Daylight here is replaced by night light. Beautiful, holiday night light.





And I just can't help grinning to myself.

Turning back in the direction of my B&B, I go through one more park (this one closes at 9). I call it the beautiful lesser park in Warsaw because it would be grand but it stands like a poor cousin a stone's throw from the grander Lazienki. It's also much, much smaller, but I know it well, because this is the place where (in the daytime) very young kids are brought for walks and a bit of playtime.









I turn back toward the old new town (you have to know Warsaw to understand that the new town isn't really new, well no, it's new in that it was reconstructed, but it's rebuilt in the neoclassical style so it's newer than the old town)… passing the old Communist Headquarters. Funny to see a restaurant now just exactly below the windows where, for a while, my father worked (it's a complicated story as to how and why he wound up there for a handful of years, but it's his story, so I'll let it go for now).





And now I'm just a block away from my B&B...


 


 ...where I quickly change (but staying with the orange pants!) and leave again, to spend an evening with a handful of my very best high school and university friends. It is joyous and wonderful to see them! By now, we have nothing in common except our past and that is one mighty fierce platform because it's as if we have a shared everything. We are intensely close even as we are not close at all. We do not track each others lives anymore when I am away, but when I am here, it's as if we are who we were back then.



the hosts and (in the center) the wife of a high school pal




the feast


The next day is a work day for them all and so at midnight, I force myself to get going. I'm spent, but not spent. I'm energized, but tired. I'm a whole bevy of feelings and thoughts. To be sorted out tomorrow, or the next day or the next, or the next...

Monday in Warsaw

I'm sitting at a hip (and therefore by definition young) cafe-bakery ("Charlotte") right smack on the austere Plac Zbawiciela ( a church square that is anything but hip or even particularly pretty). I'm wishing I had found a seat even further from the door because when it opens, a gust of cold air sneaks in and comes close enough to remind me what it's like out there. Beata, my B&B host, suggested I try the Charlotte for a light meal when I had asked where I should eat. I'm always curious where people are going to tell Americans to go for food. Beata thinks I'm American. Wait, I am American! Well no, not here. To people here, I'm Polish. So long as I talk Polish at them. (At the B&B, I wrote the first email in English and so that language just stuck).

The young people around me (university age, some as young as high school) are children of postwar parents. For these kids, Poland isn't intensely trying to rebuild, it's trying to catch up to, say, Berlin or Vienna (other central European giants).

Everyone at the tables is very carefully dressed. That hasn't changed. Poles are all about appearance: how you present yourself inside and out matters. Everyone is animated. Loud talk and laughter come at me from all sides.





Earlier, my plane pierced the layers of haze and cloud and even though it was the lunch hour, it felt like dusk. It gets that way here in December. I took the new train to the city center. It just opened in June! (Making Madison perhaps the only capital without a decent public transport link to the airport. Good goin', Madison.)





In 25 minutes the little train spits me out right at the foot of the Palace of Culture (Stalin's gift, remember? I mention it now and then when I write from here).





From here I walk the fifteen minutes or so to my B&B. The Between Us B&B is sort of curious. On the ground level, there is an artsy cafe-club.





If you exit it in the back, you're out on the building stairwell and if you mount that, you'll find apartments and the occasional lawyer office. One apartment door on the third level opens up to a three guest room B&B. Of a fresh and modern type.





I dump all my travel packs and go out in search of food and, too, in search of my feelings for this great and complicated city and I do so quickly, before the light totally disappeared on me.





And now at the Charlotte, I have a chance to look around. At the table next to mine, a young thing is pouting and complaining to her dad (via smart phone) that she needs a new pair of shoes. He tells her  to ask mom, but the young pouting thing informs him she's not speaking to the mother. (For the record, she does not appear to need new shoes. Want and need are not the same thing.)

I eat a small slice of quiche. Good, but it neither fills me up nor warms me from the inside. And now, as I step outside again, it all catches up with me -- the tiredness from the sleepless night, from the weeks of work, from struggling to stay warm. So maybe I should go to the second place Beata recommended and get more substantial food? The kind that warms you to the core.

Curiously, Beata's two eating suggestions are right next to my childhood homes. Charlotte is just around the corner from our tiny apartment overlooking a tram stop (yes, it's windy and lightly snowing now)...


 


... and the second place -- Dyspensa -- is just a block away from where I lived in my teens and where my father still lives. I don't drop in on him. He doesn't like that. He prefers an announced, planned visit. That'll happen in a day or so.

The Dyspensa Restaurant is nice, if a tad formal. It has a bourgeois feel to it. Funny, I never use that word in the States. In Poland, it was a common way to distinguish moneyed people, even though none of us knew any moneyed people. Moneyed people were in places like the States. The bourgeois habits of the rich. We didn't aspire to those habits, even though we, none of us, would have minded being slightly more rich.

The staff is young and energetic and within minutes I am eating a delicious mushroom soup and a smoked trout salad and, though it's early, I'm done eating for the day. I walk back to the B&B where I fight falling asleep for a while, just long enough to put up this post.

still traveling

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, only not for me. I write this from Amsterdam, so you know I'm on the other side of the ocean. And I have a few minutes before my Warsaw flight takes off. But I had a plane load of unhappy people who were on the Saturday flight from Chicago to Amsterdam, except that after ten hours of waiting, it never took off. And now they're a day late. I know the feeling of plans disturbed, schedules disrupted...

So this plane…



… took us all, but there were quite a few unhappy campers among me.

And they were made more unhappy when we couldn't disembark because of some electrical failure causing something or other the stop working. Another hour. For me -- peanuts. I won't miss my flight to Warsaw. I am once more reminded that smooth travel depends mostly on luck and this time I have it and others do not and so I feel like the rich person who was handed fortunes while others just scraped by, if that.

I do have to say that weather-wise, I'm entering the gloom of northern Europe in December. So there's that. But, I'm saturated with the big skies of the Midwest. I can take a touch of the somber.

Alright. I'll continue, if luck holds -- from Warsaw.