a Monday at the farmhouse

It was the coldest of the cold nights. Yes, I slept some, but I had important issues to discuss with my sister in Warsaw and of course there is the time difference: if I want to settle on a strategy before offices open for the day, I need to talk to her by 10 a.m., her time. Which, of course is 3 a.m. for me. I wont call it a sleepless night, but surely this is not what's meant by a good night's rest.

Issues to discuss? What issues? Several of you weren't sure what my next move would be with respect to the purchase of the Warsaw apartment. Well you might wonder! Deciding on the next step took up most of my thinking time in the 11 hours I spent in the air and the 10 hours I spent at airport terminals yesterday. Well, maybe I devoted just one of those hours not to thinking real estate thoughts, but to chatting to my seatmate  -- a well traveled man who makes at least three or four trips to South Africa each year. For pleasure (and because his wife is from there and she probably insists on it). Suddenly my own travels seemed very simple and uncomplicated.

To remind you: I chose to purchase an apartment that wasn't as beloved by me in terms of style and decor as one of the others, but nor was it as troubling in terms of location as the more beloved. It was a compromise: not as good, not as bad. And then I un-chose it because I felt I had been lied to and that the fundamental problems with it had been swept under the fake wooden floor.

In the end, I decide that the next step will be to make verbal offers on both of the remaining two units (that's the way it's done in Poland: negotiations are almost always verbal). It's like shaking things up a bit and seeing where the dust settles.


And now comes the time to get up and get going. I fix breakfast. It's lovely to have Ed across from me again.






I clear the dishes, wipe down the counter, tossing the paper towel into the garbage can.

What's this? The plastic garbage bag is all chewed up. In fact, the trash bin is chewed up from the inside.

Oh I know what that means. We have a farmhouse visitor. A mouse.

How the hell a mouse would get into a tightly lidded garbage pail is beyond me, but it's there. Right in the garbage bag. Moving about among scraps of trash.

Ed!

I take out the torn bag with mouse, stick the whole bit in another bag and I hand it all to him.
The mouse will chew through that in two minutes... Ed reminds me.
Then hurry!

When he returns, I ask if he released the mouse.
I don't know -- I shook the bag and didn't hear a mouse, so maybe.
It didn't escape in my car, did it?
I don't think so. I kept an eye on the bag.




By noon, Snowdrop arrives. Hi sweet sweet girl!
Ah, straight to penguin she goes.



















Where is grandpa Ed, she seems to ask and then hurries over for her welcome snuggle.






And again, in my absence, she seems to have grown into the next developmental stage, or the one after. She stomps around with confidence, but also responds with much more attention to my words. In other words, she is a terrific toddler!












When she naps, I scoot out to the car to look inside.

All is quiet.

And then I see it. The mouse had escaped the bag and is now in the car.

Ed!

I leave a trap inside, but I know this smart generation of winter mice. They can bite through anything. Our unwelcome guest had chewed hard on the garbage can in an effort to get out. (How did it get in??) What you don't want is to leave a mouse inside a car too long. It'll damage the vehicle in no time.


And the apartments? Well, of the two remaining, the central one with the great decor responded to my offer with a flat no, not that low.. They'd just listed it and wanted to wait to see if a person with fuller pockets would come along. The owners of the other place asked for a couple of days' time.

Appropriate responses, both of them. Come Wednesday, I'll know which apartment will be mine. (Ha! I had that certainty once before!)


Ah, but the day doesn't end there. I had invited the young parents to stay for dinner when they came to pick Snowdrop up.

And so there was food to prepare and a kitchen to tidy after. Oftentimes, Snowdrop helps. Here we are on a selfie, Polish bear in hand!






I'd rarely seen Snowdrop so happy as this evening. Suddenly, the world knew no limits.






She chomps down fistfuls of food and gives us winning grins all night long.












And now of course my eyes are nearly closed and tomorrow I resume my early Snowdrop sitting schedule. And you know what? That's a grand thing indeed.

Decisions

The final quest, deliberation and decision concerning the acquisition of a Warsaw apartment happened soon after my sister and I left Lazienki Park -- that place of tremendous beauty, enhanced even more by the snowfall of the previous day. We were on Pulawska Street -- a broad boulevard that slopes down to the south of the city. The third apartment that I had wanted to see was at the corner of this street, but about four kilometers away from the park. The question for me was this: has the neighborhood changed here in the past decade? Has it improved? Is there a sense of community? Would I enjoy walking these blocks in the future, or would I just want to hop on the metro and get away?

As we neared the apartment building, we came across this cafe. It's part of a bakery with very traditional Polish cakes. We had some time before the appointment with the agent and the owner (in Poland, you tour the place with both) and so we sat down for a coffee. I couldn't resist a poppyseed cake.






I let out a deep sigh of relief. Maybe it was the poppyseed cake, but for whatever reason, it felt good to be there. The neighborhood passed the inspection. If the apartment lives up to its description, it will be the place of choice and my future home for travels to Poland.

And now we come to the block with the building that houses the one bedroom apartment. The listing refers to it as a building of historic interest and I think that is quite correct. It's one of the not too many prewar buildings in the city (and in Poland, "prewar" refers to only one war -- the war, the one that toward its conclusion left most of Warsaw in rubble) -- date of construction: 1934.

(Here, you see the corner. By allowing an ad agency to place an advertisement on its facade, the housing coop brings in extra money to the coop pool for repairs and improvements.)






The entrance is around the corner and by American standards, it's very bleak. In Poland, most people would not give it a second thought. They'd merely look to see what's beyond the gate (there'll be a second entrance inside).






This particular building privatized quite recently -- five years ago I'm told. The coop that formed is invested in its future and they have improvement project lined up, one of which is revamping the stairwell. I am used to very rundown stairwells in this city and so I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was quite adequate. The mosaic tiles at the landing appear to be again "of historic interest" and they will be preserved after the renovation.







The unit I'm to view is on the top floor -- fourth by American standards -- and the building has no elevator. Again, this is not unusual. One of my Polish friends commented that not having an elevator probably added ten years to his aging parents' lives.

Because it's a high floor (with higher than average ceilings), the noise from the streets is barely perceptible.

The windows face south and on a day like this, the sunshine overwhelms the spaces. Here's a view of the open plan living room, leading back into a kitchen nook and forward toward the bedroom.






The apartment, I'm told, was gutted and redone a year ago and since then, the young owners have used it as an investment: they operate an AirBnB out of it.

And this was an eye opener for me: The photo doesn't show it, but parts of the spaces, the walls, the bathroom are already looking warn. What's with people?! The shower leaks, the cabinets are chipped, the door frame is rotting, there are smudges and stains on the wall. Cosmetic, but still. I mentally calculate to deduct costs of repair from my offer.

I consult with my sister. She's willing to oversee the work. And so I enter into negotiations with the owner and agent.

The bargaining continues throughout the rest of the afternoon. By phone on the street. Quickly ducking into a tea shop to warm up and continue (by phone) from there. (I thought it was opportune to stare at the sign on the well about, effectively, taking it all in stride.)






On and on, back and forth, but by the time I have to leave for my friends' house for a dinner party, we have a deal! Negotiations switched to how and when we should enter into a preliminary and then final agreement. Everyone is in a rush: if I am to let go of the other apartments, I dont want to lose this one to a more moneyed buyer. The agent obviously doesnt want to lose the sale. The owners badly want the cash, as their other investment -- the sale of green teas (yes, Poland is changing!) needs a capital boost. And so we work quickly toward the deal, to be notarized, deposits made, etc etc on Monday. (My sister, sweet person that she is, will do all this for me.)

We ride the metro to my friends' place now for dinner. [My sister is invited as well -- my Warsaw friends were like family to me once and perhaps they still are. My real family -- sister, daughter, granddaughter, partner -- is always of concern to them and it is always welcome.]  I reflected how, in the end, my warm feelings toward the apartment come not only from the sunshine that pours into the rooms, but also from knowing that this spot survived a tumultuous period of war and reconstruction and now, more recently, it proudly holds its own in Warsaw's complicated real estate market.

On a more practical level, I love that at the side of the entrance, there is retail space that has been taken over, I'm told, by someone who wants to put a restaurant-cafe-bar at the ground level. Talk about having a neighborhood bistro right at your doorstep!


And now we come to the social part of the evening. I wont spend many words on it. My friend is a great cook and so the food is fantastic... (Here: a fish pate on arugula for starters.)






In a corner, a female subset reflects on the difficulties of the year gone by. It was a great year for me, but a terrible year for some of the others. There is a lot to talk about.






Someone finds a laptop and these guys examine photos of my new apartment.






Below,  a photo of our whole group. Oh, there are a handful of others who are missing, but these guys are the essentials. They are my closest and beloved Warsaw friends.






It's terrible to watch the clock tick down the hours. My flight back home leaves at 6 and so by 4 a.m., I'll have to leave for the airport. I haven't had a decent night's sleep since I left Madison on Wednesday. And yet we stay and talk until someone realizes that her dog needs to be let out and so we slowly allow the evening to come to an end.

I return to my sister's and use the remaining hours of the night to draw up lists of things that need to be done with respect to the apartment. It's not a short list. We talk about what should happen when. We talk about where I can buy a bed -- the one essential piece of furniture before I can stay there. And I catch up with email, with blogging, with packing, with reaching Ed back home and making up additional lists of things to do after reviewing the apartment purchase with him.

By the time I'm done, it's pretty much time for me to leave.

The taxi takes me to the airport, I catch the flight to Amsterdam. I eat my breakfast at the airport. Same one as last time! I relax. I am counting on sleeping on the plane. I am absolutely exhausted.

The Amsterdam layover is long, but I'm okay with that. I stretch out and having done all that needs to be done, I surf the Net.

It strikes me that I could look at how the Airbnb unit fared -- remember, the apartment I am buying was, for the past year, hosting paid guests.

I read the reviews. 4.5 stars out of 5. You think that's good? I'm not at all convinced. AirBnB reviews are, for whatever reason, terribly inflated. I read on. There are dozens of reviews. For once I dont care about the ones that grouse about the occasional lack of neatness. But I do care about the ones that talk about the flooded shower. Again and again.  About the scars -- nicks, cracks, unhinged that, broken that -- which come from a hard use.

Have I been lied to? About the active co-op? About the restoration itself? About the quality of workmanship? In the end, what's true and what's fiction?


I call my sister and tell her to call the deal off.


I'm back to agonizing in a state of no sleep and not insignificant time pressures over the virtues of primarily residential versus primarily commercial neighborhoods. Over beautiful interiors as opposed to beautiful neighborhoods.

I get on the plane from Amsterdam to Detroit in a daze. My real estate venture has blown up in my face. I am such a bad capitalist.



Detroit now. A five hour layover. Soon I'll be boarding for Madison where the air is as cold as its been this year. Ed will be waiting in the car. I'll exhale once more.

But I'll leave you with another Warsaw winter photo -- from yesterday's walk in the park. Decisions about apartments are insignificant as compared to the beauty of that walk through Lazienki and the prospect of many more such walks in the years to come. One must remember that.

Saturday in Warsaw

I go to bed completely unsettled. I'm tired, so I fall asleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night and spend hours wrestling with what the next step should be in my apartment hunt. I call Ed. I fire off emails. I read everything about apartments, about neighborhoods, I study maps. Finally, at dawn, I go back to sleep and log in an hour or so more of rest.

Breakfast.






I tell my sister I have decided to downgrade in my heart the beautiful apartment on the ugly, busy, noisy street. (Location, location!). My sister agrees. She tells me Poles don't like to buy places on streets that spell chaos. Resale will be affected.

But I'm not convinced I will be happy with the interior of the second place we saw last night. And so I tell my sister -- lets hope for a love affair with candidate number 3! We're to view it toward the late morning.


In the meantime, winter has come to Warsaw. The temperatures fall below freezing and last night's snow still lingers on the tree branches. The sun is coming out. It's beautiful!

We decide to go for a long walk (bundle up -- it's cold!) in the area of Warsaw's beautiful parks and from there, make our way to the old neighborhood of Mokotow, home to the third apartment.

I leave you with photos from our walk. From there, events move so fast in very unpredictable directions and there are not minutes left for me to describe them tonight. I will post Part II of the story tomorrow, after my travels back home.

Our walk then.

Park Ujazdowski:





 The snow-covered avenue that abuts Lazienki Park:






Inside Lazienki Park, a gust of wind sends the snow flying off the branches:






Mother and daughter -- a winter portrait:






And I'll leave you with this one -- still in Lazienki Park: a grandma and her grandchild.

Warsaw

Aside from this past year, most of my trips to Poland in recent times have been in December. That is one mean month to visit northern Europe! Warsaw calls for lots of walking (at least it does so for me) and I have vivid memories of returning here and feeling cold.

I was amused, therefore, when the Royal Dutch Airlines plane came in for a landing at Chopin Airport and the captain announced -- it's a cold 2C (35F) in Warsaw right now.

Honestly? I call that balmy.

On the first night, my sister and I drew up a game plan for my two full days here. Two apartments for me to see, papers to file, friends to visit.

But the first night, we do just the smallest of small errands. And after, we sit down and consolidate information. Over a bowl of red beet borscht.






Followed by herring with dark bread and Polish slaw. Mmmm.


There isn't a chance that I'll catch up on sleep on this trip. I'm happy to log in a handful of hours with my eyes closed, but I'm up early.

My sister has the same breakfast foods that keep me running back home and we start the day right with that wonderful meal of oats and honey and fruits and kefir.







And then we're off. A few bureaucratic details first and then a pause so that I can take the metro downtown and have coffee with my goodest of good friends there.

This, of course, is one of the things I miss back home - the coffee pause in the middle of a busy life with a friend who can listen well and respond with heart.






On the metro again. I people watch. And I feel especially warm toward the young girls -- high school, university -- they remind me so much of myself here!






Conversely, the women who are really my age feel as if they live in a world that's very different from my own.






And now my sister has found one other apartment that we can view and we hurry to meet the agent. It's a newly gutted place with lovely spaces -- a 1960s building, quite unattractive on the outside, on a busy, uninteresting but very central street (hmmmm, do I even want to go inside?)...






But the interiors are lovely!





Oh, how do I decide?!

No matter. We have more paper work and even more paper work. Do you know how hard it is to do something in a country in which you do not live?

And in the middle of all that paper work (What? What do you mean you do not have my ID number in my name?? We have to go where? And do what?) we step outside and it's snowing.






A beautiful, delicate snow. I haven't seen one like this here since my childhood! It's romantic, it's heavenly!






And because it's Poland, young parents take out the runner sleds and do errands with the kids behind them.






Okay, dinner break at home. Beet soup and then -- here's a treat! My friend picked up some blintzes on the way to our coffee this morning and while she was at it, she threw in some for us. Stuffed with spinach. If you have some Polish in you, you'll recognize that generous impulse toward a friend.


I look at the clock. Time to set out for the viewing of apartment number 2. This one is toward the edge of Warsaw. Last stop on the main metro line in the city. Newer construction. Forest is just a block or two away.

So quiet here! And look! So many restaurants and cafes and small shops, small apartment buildings beautifully maintained -- all looking mighty fine under a cover of delicate snow.






And the apartment? Well, not as fresh and cool as the morning one, but good, really good.


 



And the neighborhood! The young families, pulling their kids on sleds through the quiet streets of Warsaw's most southern edge.






I'm entranced by it all.


We have one more apartment to consider tomorrow. Then comes the decision. Which one???

when you want a boring set of hours

Oh, I know people like adventure in travel. And I know you have to patient when things do not turn out the way you would have liked. I try to be that person who does not wince, groan or grumble when the weather turns bad or when flights are delayed for some reason beyond the airline's control.

But there is a time when you just hope things will be very smooth: it's when you travel great distances for a very brief visit and you really want to get some business accomplished in the short few days or even hours you're there.

I had one other such brief hop over to Poland some twenty years ago: someone in my family needed my signature for one thing or another and I just could not spare much time for it and so I left Madison on a Thursday, to return on Saturday. The signature was to be handed over Friday. And then there was a snowstorm in Chicago and my flight was cancelled and all hell broke loose.

You don't want that.

I didn't get that this time.

But it was close. Out of nowhere, snow materialized in Detroit. Oh, but that airport is no Chicago. It can cope! De-iced, a little late taking off, but ready to pound those snow filled clouds!


Since I am a great fan of sunrises, I'll give you the one I witnessed in flying over Ireland. We were obviously flying due east, so unless you're the pilot, you don't really see the sun, but that makes it that much prettier, don't you think?






No more mishaps on at least getting to this side of the ocean. Unless you count the fact that, out of nowhere, lightening struck the wing of the plane upon landing in Amsterdam. I haven't had that happen in many a year. In any case, it was quite inconsequential. No one seemed too concerned and we landed without incident.

I have a huge layover in Amsterdam, in part because I just don't ever do tight connections on long haul air travel and in part because I like the food at the airport. A first breakfast across the ocean is always exciting for me -- I haven't yet become jaded to the sight of that pain au chocolat and, because it's Holland -- dark bread with a thin slice of Edam. The solidly boiled egg seems quite Dutch as well, as does the napkin with the windmills on it. I am very easy to please when I travel.






I'll post now, even though I still have my final flight before me. Once I disembark in Warsaw, I'll have plenty to think about and I do not want to include in that pile of thoughts worries about getting a good WiFi connection. Whatever mysteries travel brings with it, we are still in the era of "you never know" as far as solid internet connections are concerned.

The next post surely will be from Warsaw.

back to the beginning

Part I

The morning:

Out at sunrise to open the coop.







Oh, but we do have a beautiful sky here in Wisconsin!






And a beautiful breakfast.






A morning with Snowdrop.







Penguin, this book is about a goose that sort of looks like you.






But I love you more...






Sleepy before her nap. Goodnight, rest well. I'll see you on Monday. I love you, Snowdrop!






And then I'm off.


Part II


My family history is full of the typical twists and turns, knots and tangles that you'll find in an extended family of anyone else. And the fact is, those twists and knots retain their convoluted shapes and consequences 'til the day you die. (That's right, Ed, we will forever be reaping the benefits and suffering the consequences of our positions within a family unit!) (Ed would like to think otherwise.)

The next three or four days for me are a classic example of this. My father died now almost three years ago. He had a small but very complicated estate (look back at my opening sentence here and you'll understand why). My sister and I (mostly my sister, with my passenger seat intrusions) have been trying to straighten things out and the last piece of it fell into place just this month, as his small country cottage (actually also my mother's, but she let go of her rights to it a while back, for complicated reasons -- see first sentence again) was sold to a lovely young family who, one hopes, will find the happiness that eluded my family there.

My sister and I have split the proceeds. If you think that this is tremendous, well yes, but in Poland, nearly everything is rather modestly priced. For example, with said sum of money, if I bargained well, I could purchase a garage spot on the fringes of the left bank of Paris (and Paris real estate is still undervalued as compared to other big cities of the world). I know because curiosity lead me to check. In Warsaw, you could buy a simple but pretty one bedroom apartment.

The deal is this: if I reinvest in Polish real estate (perhaps even European real estate, but my legal research need not go there because, for one thing, I have no need for a garage space on the left bank of Paris), I am spared a significant tax bite. But I must keep it for my own residential use, for at least five years.

And so I am buying an apartment in Warsaw.

Knowing that this was coming, I have been looking at Warsaw apartments for a long time. I do the search, my sister does the inspection. It's time to do a thumbs up or down on the final contender and so I am flying out to Warsaw to inspect the place that, if all goes well, henceforth will be my Polish residence.

I fly today, through Detroit and Amsterdam and I make no stops going there or coming back. I'll be in Warsaw until Sunday.

They say Polish people don't know how to leave their country. Maybe. But I think it's not just a Polish thing. I smiled when I read one of the many interviews with people standing in line to buy a lottery ticket in the latest lottery craziness. The man said -- if I win, I will hand out some twenty dollar bills to people and then I'll take the rest and go back to my home country -- Senegal, where I will be king!

I have more modest ambitions. Yes, it is likely that I'll travel to Warsaw more often than I have in the past. (And yes, I do know Poland is entering a difficult, politically charged period right now. It will pass.) But I wont give up on my ramblings to other parts of the world. Patrizia, I will come back to Parma this year! And whisky from the Isle of Islay will warm my soul come summertime. And most importantly, I wont forget that my heart rests with my home here, in the place of that beautiful sky and with the beloveds who are forever on this side of the ocean.

Anyway, that's the back story. Next post -- from Amsterdam. Or Poland.