The Main Square is perhaps the largest medieval square in Europe. Even in December, the flower stalls stay open under their yellow umbrellas.  

Wawel Castle and Cathedral: each king added his own thing and so you have Medieval, Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque styles, all rolled into one fantastic complex at the top of a hill overlooking Krakow 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday night)

Fine already, show your stuff, Krakow!

There is a travel book on the bestseller list in the States. It lists all the top sights in the world – the ones you should definitely see before you die. Three of them are in Poland -- two in Krakow alone (the castle and the main square). Okay, so the cynic will ask – what’s wrong with the rest of Poland? Wrong question obviously.

I am tired (and wired! My hotel room has a hook up!). But I go out to take a look at the holiday market on the main square (see photos below). I hear someone say in English “damn, that’s good!” They mean the hot red wine with spices that you can pick up at one of the stands. You can sip it while eating, what else – roasted meats, sausages and cooked cabbage stew. Now come on, stay open minded. Imagine: it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s late and you come across the smoky stand where someone is turning sausages. Better than brats, I’m sure.

But I pass on it. I’m aiming tonight for the Peasants' Kitchen, where they serve good old pierogi, stuffed with cabbage and mushrooms. What's this though? The old Peasant Kitchen isn’t full of Poles anymore. I hear German, or English with a German accent. Okay, okay, the Polish hosts were not ALL pandering to their western neighbors with disparaging comments about women , Warsaw and who knows what else. But I do hear one Pole tell his German guest: “Warsaw? There are lots of nice things about Warsaw, I just can’t think of what they might be.” Politeness forces me to keep quiet and concentrate on my peirogi.

Polish sausage: it's the real thing. 

Hey, do NOT neglect the cabbage and mushroom stew... 

Glass-blown ornaments from Poland. We're known for these. 

sheep's wool everything: slippers, sweaters, coats, toys 

smoked highland sheep's milk cheeses 

what else? ... pierogi. 

The Main Square at night 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday evening)

So do I introduce myself or stay quiet?

On the train to Krakow I sit compartment style. Everyone is shaking hands: they know each other. Enter me, the outlier, the one in the pink shirt and black pants amidst a sea of tweed. They are academics it seems, profs from the Academy of Agriculture. Slightly older than me. In Poland, everyone is lightly older or younger than me. What happened to my generation?

Everyone is reading, I’m writing. I’m “Polish” on this run, I already spoke it to them in Polish and so there’s no going back, I’m committed. But please don’t ask me about my work. I have been traveling all day, I am too tired to think lucidly about the law in Polish.

Central Station in Warsaw. All those people are waiting for the Krakow train. Popular run at a popular hour. 

My compartment-mates. Staid. Dignified. Bookish. 

Destination: Poland (Tuesday)

In flight from Paris to Warsaw: you can always spot a Pole…

It’s a skill, but we can do it. If I had to split the plane in two parts, one for the Poles and one for the French, I bet I could guess who would belong in which group with an error of no more than 1 or 2. My father, proud of his worldliness, used to say that he’d be indistinguishable, that is --within the error group. I humored him and answered-- yeah, sure.

It's in the mannerisms, the hairstyle, the movement... Poles. For sure. 

Ahhhh Warszawa!

I have to say this at the outset. I love Warsaw and I am fiercely protective of her. Krakow, the beauty queen, did not suffer in the way Warsaw did in the twentieth century. Warsaw has scars like the kid who once had a bad case of acne. Scars that are difficult for others to understand. Scars of destruction followed by poverty. Warsaw has grit and determination to make something of herself and I just love her to death for it.

Once when colleagues traveled here and later showed me photos they took – I remember vividly one of a decrepit park bench – I cried. Is this the way you see her? --I asked.

Loving her as much as I do allows me to look critically as well. Driving in from the airport is revealing. These are the streets I remember: blocks of apartments that westerners regard as quaintly decrepit in their ugliness. I think—oh how happy are the inhabitants! They have their own apartment in Warsaw and they have their neighborhood and I bet they feel at home there.

It is the new that appears to me more garish, more unsightly. Unregulated advertising. Big signs. Big towers of modern church spires. BIG, it has to be BIG. Aggh! Get me out of here! Thankfully, the city center is spared. It remains as I remember it.

Arrival in Warsaw, but then straight to Krakow

These days I do not initially stop in the capital for more than a few hours (I am in Warsaw now, unloading suitcases and presents). I head straight for Krakow (3 hours by train). My work connections are at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and it’s best to get work done first, before I forget that there is work to be done.

My sister acts as chauffeur. But for our childhood six years in NY and then a brief stint at an American grad school, she has always lived in Warsaw and she is street-smart, keeping up with the new ways that you have to pay attention to. I’m stuck in the old ways of safe streets and low crime rates. She is my protector. Don’t flash cash! Don’t drink tap water! Keep your purse to the front of you! Do not use unmarked cabs. Mafia!

Dilemma

Would you buy yourself some easy love and worship by speaking English in stores/restaurants/hotels even though you were fluent in Polish? I’m always torn on this and I cut it 50 – 50, depending on what I am after and how important it is that I get it.

[I do it for them too! If you are a Pole and the door opens to your store and the person says “dzien dobry” – ho hum, just another customer. But you hear a foreign sounding “hello” and you perk up. God, Americans have currency here. The dollar can plummet to negative numbers and it’ll still buy you a hero’s welcome.]

Off to the train station now.

Destination: Poland

If you’re attempting to make multiple connections in the course of a journey, the most crucial one is, of course, the first. Miss that and you miss the boat entirely. So why is it that I am found running up Park Street at 11:29 a.m. with a heavy suitcase (it’s the gifts) when the bus for O’Hare leaves promptly at 11:30?

It’s because of the Christmas treats. I had to mail a box of goodies to daughters who are far away and (I am thinking) in desperate need of chocolate-covered gingerbread. But oh, the line at the post office! When it became clear that waiting it out would cost me my bus and therefore flights and therefore Poland and all my meetings, I considered two alternatives: toss the box into the car and forget about it, or give it to someone in line with a $10 bill and the following plea: “mail it for me please; I am desperately late. If it’s more, forget it, throw it away, eat it, pocket the money, whatever. But I don’t think it’s more; I will appreciate it so much. And so will the little ones at the other end.”

So which would you have done? *

That I made the bus is nothing short of a miracle. Now, at the airport, I am finding innovative ways to blog. Of course. A day cannot pass…

* We live in troubled times. I took one look at the people in line, all over the age of 80, it seemed (who else has time to stand at the post office at 11:20 a.m.), and I thought – they’re going to have me arrested. Sigh. The goodies got tossed to the back seat.

Thanks for an inspired Sunday full of comfort and joy

We’re trying to keep the spirits high here, despite the bleak, wintry weather and the dark days, despite the crowded stores and the excessive shopping syndrome that characterizes this month, despite listening to stories about preparations for the inaugural ceremonies (it could have been so different), despite it all, we click on the Net and look to blogs to cheer us up and we come across yours and whammo! Right in our face. Pictures of atrocities that the imagination cannot even begin to comprehend. And then no posting all day. Nothing to pick us up. Thanks a lot!
I can’t help the news that I hear about every waking hour. Ocean is only as happy as the world around it.

So you could not find anything to balance the morning post? No one, including you, is doing anything happy-happy?
I ran around in the bleak wintry weather and dark days to crowded stores where people were excessively shopping. I am in a mad dash to Get It All Done before tomorrow’s departure.

Departure? So where are you going and why?
In this one month I am privileged to be spending time in four cities and two villages that have easily been the most important places in my life. I have work to do, yes, but I also have time to spend with my Polish family and pals, and then with my residing-on-the-East Coast family.

So you wont be blogging much?
Who are you kidding? I have already told my sister (who lives in Warsaw) that I will basically not leave her apartment because I have too much blogging to do and so she may as well not coax me into any other activities.
Seriously, ever since I started blogging in January, I have wanted to post from Poland. I am traveling with my computer and my camera and my tested trusty world Internet access (dial-up, but oh well), so I should be fine. Ocean is crossing the ocean and she and I can’t wait to plunge right into my homeland with vignettes of life as I know it, remember it, miss it. The next 24 hours may be thin on writing as I am on a bus, then in the air, then in the air again, then on a train. But after that, if you are curious about life Over There, tune in.

A blog that is not for the faint-at-heart depicting a war that is also not for the faint-at-heart

Departing for a moment from the light-and-airy posts, I want to signal a WashPost article from today discussing the emergent prominence of one part-time blogger. He lives in New York, apparently works for an Internet company and in his spare time, he posts photos of the human cost of war, photos that are deliberately left out of the presentations put forth by official government and news sources. [He has issued a statement saying that he is not intending to make an antiwar statement. He asserts that the American soldiers are also victims. He does feel anger at the American people for supporting the war without a hard look at the costs involved.]

His blog has generated enough attention to be of concern to the US government. In response to the disconcerting images, the US military has taken the time to put together a website with its own slide show, intended to generate support for the military intervention in Iraq.

Still, the authors of the news article interviewed a number of military experts who claimed that the blogger’s site is the more compelling of the two.

"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. … An Army soldier who fought in the Sunni Triangle last year and maintains a blog himself agreed. "The winner has to be the blog," he said. "There's something all too visceral about seeing the pictures of the dead and wounded, on both sides, which overwhelms static displays of weaponry" in the military presentation.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraqi affairs … came to a similar but broader conclusion: "What the two presentations show us is that the U.S. military is full of brave and skilled warriors who can defeat their foes, but is still no good at counterinsurgency operations, and is wretched at winning hearts and minds."

I’ll list the two sites, with a note that the blogger’s site is indeed very graphic. Here’s what the WashPost says about it:

In the version of the Web site that was up last week, the first image on the site showed a malnourished Iraqi baby, wide-eyed and screaming in pain, under the sarcastic headline, "another grateful Iraqi civilian."

Many of the photographs are far more graphic than are usually carried in newspapers, showing headless bodies, bloodied troops, wounded women, and bandaged babies missing limbs. One added recently shows a U.S. soldier with part of his face blown away by a bomb.

The “Soldiers for the Truth” site, supported by the US military can be reached here: http://www.sftt.org

The private blogger’s site can be viewed at: http://www.fallujahinpictures.com

Accusations unwarranted

Some East Coast readers are suggesting that I am not attending to my holiday duties. Since I am going to be away from Madison for the next several weeks, they say that my attentions are elsewhere. How wrong, how wrong. And yes, I think for fewer than a handful of people, ten bags of chocolate-covered gingerbread stars moons and hearts, plus ten chocolate-covered gingerbread men and trees are enough. When Tommy Thompson said today that he worries nightly about the safety of American food supply (as well he might, for any number of reasons), he did not mean that I should buy out Clasen’s entire supply of Christmas cookies just in case.