Thursday travels

If I break my return trip to the States with a stopover in Paris, everything becomes much simpler. I can catch the 12:55 flight out of Warsaw. That means I can have a leisurely breakfast, like this:





... and take the time to set things in the apartment exactly right, down to smoothing out the last wrinkle on the bead spread and pulling down the shades just so. Good bye apartment.

It means that I don't have to take a taxi to the airport. I can take the public bus. (My sister, then friends write me quickly: don't use a ticket! all public transportation in Warsaw is free today! I ask -- why? It's the air quality. They want to encourage people to not use their cars.)

And so on Nowy Swiat, the street that I nearly always get to when I leave my apartment...






... I wait at the bus stop, looking for one last time at the people around me, imagining their stories...






And then I ride the easy 30 minutes to the airport (well, it's 30 minutes when, like today, there's little congestion in the city center). Ahhh, the sights of Warsaw!






And then everything works like a charm. Onto the Air France flight... (I am always moved at the sight of groups of high school girls. And there is just such a group on this flight -- traveling as a team for some athletic event. I'm thinking -- that was me, here in Warsaw. Different times, different circumstances, and yet so many similarities!)






Flight on time, arriving at exactly 3:20, and I roll my suitcase to the train station, and am lucky to catch an express into town, so that one hour ago I was disembarking and now I am alighting at the gate to the Luxembourg Gardens! How lovely is that! (It's particularly fortuitous because the park begins its closing at 4:30 in the winter. I have ten minutes of beauty before me!)






And so I have a lovely pre-dusk stroll, once again with suitcase in tow.






(Was I really here just a few days ago? It seems like such a lot of time has passed since then!)






I'm staying at the Baume hotel and the staff treats me so nicely! I pay for a wee room and get a huge space in grateful appreciation for my constant return here. For  three nights, this is just exquisitely lovely and I am grateful. I don't travel expansively in France or indeed in western Europe in the way that I did before retirement, so the few days I am here feel like a very precious vacation getaway.






I catch my breath, but not for long. Paris streets beckon. Yes, it gets dark early, yes, it can be cold in December (though it isn't this year), yes, it's tough to imagine a picnic in the park now, but Paris is still so very lovely in the weeks just before Christmas.






Eventually I make my way toward a cozy sweet place for dinner, a place I'd read about just recently. It's a minute away from the Bon Marche department store. (Les Botanistes) It definitely has the feel of a small family run place. Two sons, father chef, and a waiter:


 


It's a great meal: pumpkin soup (!), cod, a stewed pear (with raspberry compote and ice cream).





It's just perfect for tonight, though woah, I have to get used to western prices again. Poland is so light on the pocketbook by comparison!  (And I say this even as the exchange rate -- dollar to euro -- has never been more favorable for us: it's almost exactly one to one right now.)


I walk back to the hotel smiling. I'm not sure if it's because of Paris or Warsaw, but no matter. I'm smiling. The days have been grand.

(The typical street scene... even in December.)

Wednesday in Warsaw

It's very late. Maybe three? Later? I don't really know.

I finished cleaning the apartment an hour or two ago. I'm left wondering if this is really a good time to figure out how to run that darn washer/dryer, or whether I should not wash or dry anything when it is so late and I have a flight to catch tomorrow. 

Whirley thoughts. Must let go, must let go...

I can't let go. It's been a quick three (was it four?) days, but the shortness of my time here is irrelevant, no?  It's how you spend your time that matters. I feel I spent it in ways that would make a speed demon proud.

No one fully understands why it is that I come here for such a short time (ha! if you want to worry about the shortness of my trips, talk to me again in January 2017! Now there's a short (but important!) trip to spin about!). If you understand the push/pull factor, you'll know that I just cannot stay away for long.


But let's get to the basics: How does this day begin? With a look toward the living room. I smile big when I see the twinkling lights that Karolina strung for me last night. And the mistletoe!  Snowdrop would be very happy here right now!






Breakfast.






I start out being late. I'm to meet my sister down at the bank near her home and I'm late. I care about this -- really I do!  -- and yet I cannot rush here like I do back home. Even with my crazy short travel schedules, I see my time in Warsaw as having an easier pace. And so I'm late.


After the bank technicalities (yesterday I opened an account, today I closed one), we do some shopping. You'd think this is a ho hum activity, but it's in filling a list of groceries or shoes or gifts (all three are at play for me today) that you get to know what the locals are up against.  So we shop.

(I say to my sister: doesn't he look like a typical Polish male? I do now know what it is about him, but I could have picked him out from a crowd of hundred: his guy is so very Polish.)





Shops. So many shops to investigate!

(Hey, my grandma made these! Did yours? Really? I loved the ones mine made! For those who haven't a clue as to what this is -- it's poppyseed cake!)






It is, at the time of writing, nearly 4 a.m. so I am going to rush through the remaining photos. Even though the pics are of the most lovely neighborhoods of Warsaw. For example, the Old Town.






There is a skating rink on the Old Town Square. I find this interesting. They used to have a Christmas Market here in past years but someone decided (correctly, I think) that the market interfered with the visual splendidness of the Square and, too, that the city should promote fitness over consumption. So there is now an ice skating rink.





I am so tempted to rent skates and just let myself go!

No. I will be sane. I have things to do and I'm leaving Poland tomorrow. There is a time and place for insanity. It's not here. It's not now.


On my walk home today, I encounter my friend who is also my neighbor. Perhaps this is my biggest signal of belonging: I go about my business, yet boom! There's a friend, going about her own affairs. And yet our paths intersect. And one thing leads to another and now I have a house full of people again...






....  except I really do not know how to work the appliances just yet ... oh, don't fret, I'll help you! Friends to the rescue!






And now here we are,  relaxed and happy all over again.







If it wasn't for the fact that sunrise comes late here in December, I'd say it is nearly dawn. I need to go to sleep so that I can get up soon. My next post will be from Paris. I love Paris, but I never forget that Paris is like a vacation.  Warsaw is like home.

Tuesday in Warsaw

I'm going to start you off with a commercial. A Polish commercial that an Ocean  commenter brought to my attention (I don't know you -- or do I?? -- but thank you!). In a way it's a sweet but unimportant clip. Yet in another sense, it perhaps allows you to think differently about Poland. I loved it -- see if you like it too:

Now onto the day. Oh, what a day! First of all, it's cold, but oh so sunny! I'm thrilled with that!

Breakfast. As you can see, I'm growing into my new environment. There are flowers. There are also tomatoes, but that's because I plan to cook tomorrow and so there must be tomatoes.






And then I set out for a walk. 45 minutes, google tells me. Damn that google. I walk faster than most people I know, but it takes me way more than 45 minutes to reach my destination. Oh! Perhaps it's because I pause along the way? To take this photo:

(Just up the hill from my apartment)






And this one too:






I'd heard that Warsaw had a particularly lovely holiday peacock display just by the "lesser" park. It does. Here it is:






And then I am in that park and I am lost in memories and thoughts and all things that emerge only when I walk the great parks of my life. Most (though not all) of which are in Warsaw.






(A little girl studies a red squirrel... her mom reassures her that the squirrel only wants food...)






I hurry now and I pass the Foreign Ministry where my dad once worked and I think -- you know, I had such a good life in this country. My parents, each in their own way, created that for me. I am so grateful for it.


I have a goal this morning: I'm to meet a friend. Well, of sorts. He and I went to school together some 55 years ago (the UN International School in New York). He was in my sister's class, but classes were small (what New Yorker would send their kid to a decrepit building for their schooling, where half  the kids were from suspect countries?). We knew of each other. (My sister orchestrated the meeting and was with us for the extended coffee hour.)

He's from Denmark, but married to a Swedish diplomat and it's all very complicated but so very straightforward too. Because of her diplomatic appointment, he is  now in Poland (sort of like the First Lady of Sweden in Poland except that he's neither a woman nor from Sweden).






We review our lives (of course we do! It's been some 55 years!) and we talk politics and of course, it's always, especially in trying political times,  so good to be in a conversation with someone who shares with you some things and then offers a new, refreshingly new way of looking at the world.

My sister and I walk back to my place then, stopping for lunch/or is it dinner/or is it just a big meal with no name/ -- at the new market place (Koszyki, for the few Warsaw cognoscenti here). We want nalesniki. Blintzes. Crepes. Call them whatever you want: mine are made with beet dough and they are stuffed with spinach and salmon and blue cheese and they are excellent!






Twilight. Yes, it grows dark fast in northern Europe...

(The main commercial drag...)






But we have a spark here! Many sparks! The obvious -- the proliferation of holiday lights...






... and too of cakes and sweets things to satisfy our stomach...

(Picking up pastries for the evening...)






(These make the cut...)






And perhaps this is the most important: we know that the social encounter is important.  As important as anything else that we have going for us in life.



My huge evening spark comes from a meeting with my architect extraordinaire -- pani Karolina, except we've dispensed with the "pani" by now -- and her husband, and her young daughter (I'd not met her family before).

It is a grand evening. Karolina brings lights for the apartment that expertly match the lamps over my table (of course they do... she is that careful in her design ideas)...






We open champagne to celebrate (the end of a trying autumn for them, and the complete success of the apartment work). Her husband takes this photo of Karolina and me.





And now the clock is racing toward midnight again (oh! Did it pass it?) and that's okay. I'm rested. I've walked for hours, but I feel strong. Mistletoe (from Karolina) reminds me that we're in the thick of a holiday season. My apartment is quiet. The old residents above and below are long asleep I'm sure. Time to turn on some music and let it all sink in. 

Monday in Warsaw

Nearly midnight here now. Tired after a very full day. My eyes wont close even though the lids are so very heavy. I'll tell you a little about what it's like to cover Warsaw from one end to the next and back again on a cold wintry Monday and then I'll crawl into that bed again and maybe this time I can get a whole night of deep sleep. Good surprises do happen!

Breakfast. Alone, at home. Quiet. Calm. Lovely.






And then I am out and hurrying. It feels windy and there is a faint hint of something falling from those gray clouds.  (Ah, but the streets have added their own color...)












And in fact, I have a bit of subway riding to do today and so I can hide from the elements in the comfort of the metro system, where I study the faces of people around me.






A group of young school girls passes...






... and I smile at how on the surface, they seem so similar to girls back home. And yet, as we know, they're not really the same. Here, they speak animatedly as they make their way through the subway tunnels. I've always known that kids in countries such as Poland are significantly more independent than kids the same age back home (who rely so heavily on their parents' cars to get them places).

I visit my sister first and admire some changes she made to her home and then we set out to do the mundane chore of switching banks for me (for practical reasons). As usual, I rely on her to tie up many of my loose ends.

And then we go shopping. We wanted to do this in October, but there wasn't time. There is a big mall that she especially likes and we make our way there (on the other side of town!) ,and we try on clothes, and in the end wind up buying the exact same skirt. A very unorthodox almost ballerina like skirt that I'll save for the holidays back home. (At the checkout...)






In the afternoon, the sun comes out. A blue sky in winter is not that typical in central Europe and I am incredibly pleased that we can walk in its glow, even if the wind is brisk enough to make me bundle up good and hard. In any case, we don't spend that much time outside because at two, I have an appointment that every woman in Poland will understand and no woman that I know of in the U.S. would regard as normal: I go to a cosmetologist. Or is it beautician? It tells you that there is no good word in English that describes this service: it is an appointment with a woman who works on your face.

Even in the post war years, women, especially women my current age would visit a professional cosmetologist on a regular basis. Treatments would include a facial massage, with perhaps a mask, so that you would feel revitalized and ready to face (!) the world. This particular cosmetologist has been giving facials at this very inelegant space for over forty years.






Times have changed and our knowledge of skin has of course grown, she tells me, and yet, as I get my "treatment," I feel I am back in the Warsaw of my youth. Indeed, this very cosmetology place was there in my youth -- my sister chose it for its untrendiness, its plain and honest approach to what is an important trade here.






When I tell her that people don't get routine facials in the United States (at least the average person doesn't get them), she responds that this is true, but some of her friends who have emigrated there give facials privately to Poles living in America.


It's nearly evening when I'm done and we hurry now because I want to go to the big supermarket across the river. Another subway ride and I alight by a big Christmas tree. A little girl pushes her baby doll by it and I think -- this may as well be Snowdrop, for surely she would show off this tree to her baby. Not doll, mind you. Baby.






I have a shopping list, but I pause at familiar sights too, ones that you would only encounter here. For example, filling a bag with sauerkraut or pickles.






Shopping done. My sister returns home and I hurry to a dinner hosted by my friends -- my neighborhood friends, actually! -- in a terrific restaurant just a few blocks from where I live (called Kameralny Komplex Gastronomiczny SAM). We occupy a large table and the food comes and the evening is one for the ages.





Of course, we are the ones who are indeed aging. We talk in terms of decades, not days. And, as you can tell from the photos, we can get serious too.

 It's a fine, fine evening! Oh, but the evening is well on the way to being night and most have to be at work early tomorrow. We finally pull away the chairs and somewhat reluctantly we leave.

I haven't been home all day and there are 67 emails in my box as well as texts on my phone and all this requires thought and of course so does the post. Stay awake, eyes! Just a wee bit more, stay awake!

arriving

Early in, early out -- how wonderful when flights surprise you with a little added time in your pocket.

I suppose I slept some during the long trip -- probably right after taking in the new Woody Allen movie. In any case, the time did not drag. When I was still expecting to be somewhere out over the deep ocean waters, I noted that we were just approaching the very tip of England. Cornwall, if I don't get back to you sometime soon, I at least will have seen you in the perfect splendidness of an aerial view.






France has wisps of mist in low lying areas, but as you can see, the weather over western Europe is pretty much the opposite of what it is in Wisconsin (snow raging, temperatures plummeting) and even Poland (it's raining there at the moment).






I expected to have a long layover at the Paris airport. Nearly four hours. But all that good weather, plus an early arrival tempt me to leave. Had I five hours (that's the cut off time for me), I would definitely take the chance and hop on the train to the city, suitcase and all. I look at my phone clock. Four hours and fifty five minutes until the departure of my Warsaw flight.

I'm off!

Oh, I suppose I could have had the bad luck of a train malfunction. Or something else that unexpectedly would cause me to miss my connection. But unlike taxis or even buses, the train is fairly reliable. If it's an express -- it'll be 35 minutes from airport to city center. If it's a local -- it'll be 45 minutes.

And so I alight in the beautiful December sunshine (and upper 40sF) of Paris.

You'd think there's not much you can do with just an hour or so and with a small but not unheavy suitcase in tow (it is loaded with gifts and stuff for Poland). You'd be wrong. If you get off the train at "Luxembourg," you're right at the gate to the park! This neighborhood is my very favorite for Sunday strolls, but I resist the temptation to just enter the park and hang out. I could use a meal.

I don't want to think where to eat, what to eat, I don't want to be crowded either (that suitcase!), and I don't want to be overcharged and so I head to Les Editeurs, where I so often eat breakfast, but remember having a very fine lunch there last May with Snowdrop and the kids.

(I sit under the big clock, as if to remind myself that as the hour approaches, I must get moving. I order a croque madame and a Badoit -- that's a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with an egg, and a mineral water.)






A selfie!






And then I make my way to the park.

I have to say, the most vivid recollections here are, in fact, of my times with Snowdrop. For example, this is the fountain where she liked so much to romp...






I don't cover much territory and so the few photos I take are of more or less the same area. I take this next one not because of the magnificence of the Senate, but because of the beautiful sky and the people below, taking advantage of the unexpected warmth that this day brings.






This next will be my one picture with a view toward the Eiffel Tower. For all you skeptics that reassured me that Snowdrop would not remember Paris, I cannot tell you how many times she looks at structures that resemble this great icon and she asks me, as if to create the dividing lines -- gaga, it's Eiffel Tower? (The last such question came as she admired a very huge crane that really did have the metal lattice work you would associate with the Tower itself.)






Children and grandparents, children and parents, couples, friends, singles, groups -- a mixed bag of old, young, of Asian, African, Arabic, Argentinian, American, they're all here.

For the French, the hour of the big Sunday meal approaches and so I see a more hurried walk among some, the "time to go home now" pace of a father and child...






And for me, it's definitely time to head back to the airport. I am in luck. I catch an express. I have plenty of time. And the flight to Warsaw -- that's on time too, arriving even a bit early. And as always, my sister is there, waiting and we catch the bus to my apartment on Tamka (the name of the street where I live).

(You could say that this photo, of a speeding tram, the Palace of Culture, and a rather somber passenger, snapped quickly during the bus ride, is like the blur in my heart and soul when I arrive here -- caused in part by weariness from the long journey and in part by my confusion as to which place better represents who I am.)






There, I'm home. Tamka: the little apartment that still smells like someone worked the last brush stroke against its walls just yesterday.






My sister lingers, but she has errands and I say  -- go! I'm fine! I'll probably go to sleep shortly!

Except that in the end I don't go to sleep. I go out again... Mmmm, it's stopped raining! See the Palace of Culture? The Chopin Museusm? My place is against the backdrop of these historic buildings.






I walk over to the local Carrefour. It's a French supermarket chain, but if you have to shop at a big store that has a little of everything, this is a good neighborhood choice.

And suddenly I'm taken aback: at the entrance, next to the carts, there are the wicker baskets I knew so well from grocery stores that I would go to in the sixties and seventies. You know, during the so called Communist Poland era.





And I realize when I go inside that the store is a confusion of the new and the trusted old. And now this brief trip to pick up maybe some milk for coffee and fruit for breakfast is taking forever because I have to read every label of every product so that I can understand!

And then the lack of sleep just catches up with me and I have to give it up and walk home so that I can post here and throw back the covers of my bed and crawl into it -- neat and tidy, fresh and clean, crisp and Polish.