Warsaw, continued

Well, I feel truly domesticated right now. I get up, struggle once more with understanding how to operate the washer/dryer (one small machine does both!), then wash the floor. About time, no?

And that's not all: continuing on the theme of domesticity, I dash out to my favorite green grocer to pick up some fruits and garlic for tonight. At the last minute, I send out an invitation to my friends for a light supper and though I have much of what I need -- cheese, prosciutto, shrimp (here and in Madison, I keep shrimp in the freezer, just in case...) -- I want to add fresh fruit. My grocer guy is holding a few baskets of strawberries for me.
 




I need bread, too. Poles are not tied to a baguette like the French, but they are huge bread eaters nonetheless and predictably, the line at the bread bakery is long.






Finally, time for breakfast.





My sister drops off dessert for tonight. She has stuff to do today so I'll be strolling  on my own, like in Paris, contemplating life in ways that you do when you wander the streets of Warsaw.

I left Poland during my university years, and so I have no recent memories here. Indeed, unlike those of my friends, mine are getting mighty old and dusty!

Of course, Warsaw begs you to go back in time. No person who lives here or who visits, is left without some impression of the the war's impact on the city. And of course, of the years that followed.

Let's stroll a little bit together: to the Old Town, the New Town (a neighborhood dating back to the 15th century, so not so new!) and back again.

(Hip young women...)






(Copernicus... and one of the many churches, this one right next to the university building where I studied econometrics for 2.5 years before leaving for the U.S.)






(A Polish grandma is good for wiping a face of ice cream...)






(And now I'm nearing the Old Town.)






It feels especially touristy today. So I walk quickly, pausing only for a moment on the square...





I continue beyond the fortifications, to the New Town and I walk up to the little museum commemorating the life of Marie Curie. I always acknowledge it, but I've never been inside. Today, I go inside.





She was born here. Her mother ran a boarding school for girls at this address and Marie lived here briefly with all her siblings.





It's odd how this last week has put me in front of Marie Curie's grave and now her birth place. Am I on the prowl of coincidence on this trip?

I continue through the New Town, then turn back...





(So many reminders of the war in this city! Do they have an impact on generations that didn't live in those decades?)





Here's Warsaw for you: something old, something new, something sad, something blue.... The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the center of a vast square.







Evening. It's special tonight. A small group (thanks to the brilliant and far sighted organizational talents of one member), is going to attend a concert at the National Philharmonic. We're in the midst of a festival of music (in its 13th year) celebrating Chopin, but not only (reminding me a little of the Mostly Mozart Festival that I used to be a fan of when in New York). The title of it is  "Chopin and his Europe" -- with the subtitle -- "from Bach to Chopin."





Tonight's guest artist is Garrick Ohlsson.

If you're a calssical music enthusiast, you'll have heard of him. But for me, he's not just a great pianist. 47 years ago, during the Chopin Piano Competition (which takes place every five years in Warsaw), Ohlsson was a finalist and I was dumbstruck by the passion of his music. I was impressionable. A young 17 year old who felt everything deeply and excessively. I was in my second year of university studies (I was a very young student) and I skipped classes so that I could attend the various stages of the competition, listening to many contestants, feeling the music with every bit of my soul and heart.

In the end, Ohlsson won (he was a wild haired 22 year old then) - the first American to ever win the Chopin competition. He was a tremendous pianist!

And he was tremendous tonight! You could only cry (and I did) and then applaud thunderously (he surely gets the best reception in Poland and he splendidly learned a few words of Polish, which just brings down the house).

47 years had gone by since I was last at that concert hall listening to Ohlsson play. 47 years of decisions made, children raised, life lived. Where was my head then? (Oh dear, I remember where it was then!) Where is it now?

Afterwards, I linger, watching as Ohlsson makes his way to a CD signing...




I would have liked to stay, to convey words that would have had some small meaning, but the line is long and my friends are waiting. Besides, I think people who are that famous cease to really listen to praise. I remember reading last week in the NYTimes about how Alice Waters just doesn't care anymore if people are inspired by her or love her or hate her. Perhaps fame does that to you: after a while, it's just like the old carpet you've had in the living room for ages -- you don't even notice how tattered or beautiful it really is.


My friends came over for a light supper and it is a memorable evening...





... in that aside from the usual wonderful stories and commentary and advice giving on, for example, how to deal with a sore back...






... or a stiff neck...






... we also disagree. The topic? Oh, irrelevant. Perhaps nothing more than a late evening, where cultures collide. But for a moment, I feel once more suspended between two continents, two worlds, two lives. It is not new. I've felt it many times before.

Still, these guys are friends for life and then some!






But I do admit to being very grateful for skype and for Ed's terrific ability to see beyond the detail and shrug off my worries when I call full of cultural angst!

It's late. The dishes are stacked but not washed. The sheets are dry, but not yet on the bed. And tomorrow is the wedding. It will be a busy set of hours!

home away from home

My Warsaw apartment is just a little over a half hour's brisk walk to my childhood Warsaw home and just a little under a half hour's saunter to my teenage home. Perhaps it's not surprising then that nearly every time I am in the city, I happen to pass by at least one and often both of those buildings.

I've moved around enough in my life that I have a rather mobile conception of home, but some places, such as those two Warsaw apartments (too, the house where my girls grew up and now of course the farmhouse) remain firmly lodged in my heart as real homes, the ones that come with memories -- many of them grand, some quite ordinary, in the way that some days can be quite ordinary, but still fine because they make up such a big chunk of life...

My current apartment in Warsaw is more and more getting to feel like home rather than a place I pass through every now and again. The other day I bought a coffee cup for it: bigger than espresso, smaller than cappuccino. Just the way I like it!  You don't do that for a place that isn't home!

Breakfast, at my new Warsaw home (with new and very perfect coffee cup)...





Did I mention that the weather here has turned suddenly beautiful? As if in competition for my love (oh, but I love you both! Just differently...), it reminded me that Warsaw can be as brilliant and effervescent as Paris.





I have an internet issue to take care of at the provider's office and this is the beginning of what will turn out to be a very long walk indeed. If you follow along and if you have done so in the past, you'll begin to recognize some of these streets!

This one, for sure. How grand it looks on an August morning!






(A Polish food truck: a few sandwiches and then the traditional doughnuts and cheesecakes.)






I nearly always walk past this Square of Three Crosses...






And from there, it's just a hop skip to Park Ujazdowski -- what I often call the "Lesser Park," only because the other one, the bigger one is beyond grand.






The lesser park is rather empty today. Summer vacation continues in Poland until the end of the month. The kids are in the country. Others are at work. Not all, not all, but enough to make this a very quiet place today.





Errand done, I'm walking now to meet my sister at Lazienki -- the grand park, the park of all parks. We're to run into each other in front of Chopin himself. And again, I take seriously the sign that says -- "take a selfie with Chopin!" I do it on a time release.






My sister and I do a very circuitous walk through the park.

First pause -- at the Orangerie, home to one of the park's three royal theaters... (Oops! I appear to be on a selfie binge!)





Now coming up on the back of the Summer Palace...





... through quiet alleys...






... with the classic view of the Summer Palace before us (trying not to disturb the pair of lovers, remembering my own time of being in the throes of adolescent love, in this park, getting a thrill from just holding hands)...






... a park that offers beauty, grand communal spaces, but also privacy...






... for love, and now -- for reflection...






Yes, small wonder that I return to this park again and again.


We're hungry. We have our favorite coffee shops in this neighborhood and we check them out, one by one, settling in the end on old reliable MiTo -- a half a block from my childhood home! Coincidence?

It's a bookish place and it invites a thought or two on how our attitudes towards books, toward reading matter, have changed. (For instance, quite recently, I've come back to French murder mysteries. Is it a return to the exquisite feeling of wanting to reach the end of the story line, even as it's dreadful to reach the end, because it signals finality?)






Revived, we continue our walk. Toward the Old Town... (cafes are bringing back the traditional sling back chairs...)






...And down the incline, toward the riverwalk, where the seating arrangements are even more interesting.






It's not terribly hot, but the splash pad here remains popular. Oh, a few come equipped with a swimsuit.






But most kids just make do...






The adults? For them, it's all about taking it easy... (Unlike Paris, this riverside "beach" remains open all summer long.)







And now it's evening. My newest friends -- my incredible architect/designer (who is fully responsible for everything that's good about my apartment's interior) and her (also architect) husband are, along with their youngest child, meeting me for a dinner by the river. And so I am back on the riverwalk -- it's a mere 7 minute stroll from my apartment! How good is that!

As I wait for them, I see animated groups of people, decked out in red and white. It's momentarily confusing -- these are the colors of the Badger teams back home! Wisconsin colors! Where am I??





I'm by the river in Warsaw, near a bridge that leads to the stadium where there will be a game tonight. No, not Badger football. Rather, a match between Poland and the Serbs (I think.) In, of all things, volley ball.





No rowdy drunken crowds here. Just young people, heading out to root for the home team.

For us, it's dinner time. There are many, many indoor and outdoor places to choose from. I let my friends pick a spot. Italian! With excellent , fresh and honest pizza for us all.






The sun has set as we stroll back. The bridge, the one that we always used to cross to head up north to my grandparents' village home -- shines in bright and ever changing colors. Like the bridge spanning the Bosphorus in Istanbul, only different. (Or, aren't we all pretty much the same?)





A beautiful evening in Warsaw, Poland. All it needs is all my crew of beloveds from the other side of the ocean here with me and it would be pretty darn perfect.

I'm back in Warsaw

It is another beautiful morning in Paris.

But I haven't time for it. A flight at 1 p.m. means that I have to be out and walking toward the commuter train by 10.

But I offer no complaints. These three days in Paris have been defined by walking, Snowdrop shopping and leisurely reflection.

The mood of calm stays with me as I stroll to the little square, which is now the confluence of four distinct cafe/eateries, including Les Editeurs -- my default breakfast place, and of course the newly opened cafe-creperie -- Cafe Breizh. (I smile at my last minute purchase from them: a sack of buckwheat flour and their cookbook. The flour, stone ground in Brittany, is a necessity. I tried using our own buckwheat flour back home for the crepes and the taste just is not there.)

(Walking to that little square, Ocean author pauses to snap a photo of cups she purchased a while back for her porch coffee breaks. Snowdrop also likes them for milk and cookie breaks. Note big mustache on Ocean author's face.)





I sit outside for my simple croissant and coffee. I wait patiently to take a photo. It takes a while to have a clear view onto the square.





In the morning, trucks pull up to make deliveries to the growing number of cafe/restaurants here. It has been said of the French that they don't care about the visuals of where they sit for their meal, just the taste and visuals of the food itself. A truck parked in front of their wee table would barely be noticed.

Conventional wisdom has it, too, that for the French, fresh air is always preferable for a meal out, even though the fresh air is not necessarily so fresh, given the curbside trucks and given that the French still permit smoking at outside tables. You have to sit smartly to dodge those bullets!

I remember when a general smoking ban went into effect here in 2006. Smokers grumbled and people said it wouldn't stick. The French are notorious rule breakers -- at least that's the cultural stereotype. And more importantly, the overseers of certain rules are notorious at looking the other way. No, you can't cross a street on a red light, but everyone does it. In Poland, no you can't cross on a red light and you'll get a good authoritarian yelling and a ticket if you do. A French person in Poland succumbed to this admonishment just a few days ago and found it, of course, absurd. Still, in France, the smoking ban inside public spaces stuck. So much for stereotyping.

Which leads me to the topic of cultural understanding. (These observations are mine only. There is no universal truth about people. They are what they appear to be to any one person at any one point in time, subject to change -- given a political shift, a weather patter, technological innovation, a fad, climate change, sun spots -- or anything else that may come around.) I think that Poles understand Americans far better than Americans understand Poles and the French understand both, but just a little.

Poles read about the U.S., they watch movies, and chances are they have contacts there. What does the average American know about Poland?

As for the French -- well, that's more complicated. They get Europe more than they get America. Those who have traveled to the United States, always seem to begin their comments this way: "I liked your country, especially Napa/San Francisco/the Grand Canyon."

So here I am, jumping between these countries, looking for that more complicated picture within each.


Time to travel now to Warsaw. I say my goodbyes at the lovely hotel staff and I walk up the hill. (A block down puts me in the little square with the cafe/restaurants, a block up puts me on the quiet Odeon Square and then the park. The photo below, of the Odeon Square, shows off the blueness of today's skies.)





I cannot resist that sidestep to the Luxembourg Gardens. (They are on the way to the train.) The day is so brilliant!

I bet this bronze man is the most photographed guy in Paris! (It is a statue from the 19th century, celebrating the joys of music, dancing and wine.) Certainly by me. I like joyousness in all forms.






The park is nearly empty. The morning joggers are done with their regiment, the strollers, families, lovers and solo meanderers haven't yet arrived.






It's a beautiful time to take in the quiet of this magnificent park! (Sadly, the leaf miner is at work here, as in the rest of northern Europe. The chestnuts look like they've passed through half of October already! I have noticed that some of the affected trees are being removed and replaced. Ah, but to preserve these magnificent trees!)






The flight is on time, smooth, without problems. In Warsaw I catch the bus to my neighborhood.


I left when it began to rain and that rain stayed here all the days I was away. Trickles of it remain as I get off the bus. But my flower lady is there nonetheless, fixing, straightening...






For me, all that remains is le grand unpack and a visit with my sister.

We go down to the neighborhood that borders the river. There's a great vegetarian place called Veg Deli and we settle in for a beautiful meal...


 


I'm enjoying a tomato tartare followed by "boczniaki" -- a delicious mushroom dish that tastes vaguely familiar...
What's the name of the mushroom in English? -- I ask.
It's at the tip of my tongue... You know, they cultivate it. It's not a forest mushroom.
I zip out my iPhone for a translation. No, really?? Oyster mushrooms! With spinach, endive, and roasted potato.  Delicious!






It does feel like the vacation inside of a vacation has ended, even as I continue this vacation. Odd, but not at all unpleasant!