Warsaw: Łazienki and the Warsaw National Museum

It's the last day of the tour, tomorrow we leave. We went only to Łazienki today, but it was amazing. It's this park with a palace in the southern part of Warsaw, near the park with the Chopin monument. The palace itself is on a small island, surrounded by bridges and random birds (I noticed maybe seven peacocks outside). They make you put slippers on your shoes before entering the building — it was unclear why at first, but very quickly you come across exquisite wooden floors that they want to preserve. The entire palace is decorated with frescoes, gold leaf, statues in a very Greek/Roman influenced style, and very dark (in light, not spirit) paintings I won't try and classify with a few early Romantic pieces. Of course, at some point the Nazis stormed the palace and shattered most of the statues, but they've been reconstructed. One made a really big influence on me: Hercules, in the second or third room, who towers above you with a slain monster at his side. He just looked so overwhelmingly strong, but not in a comic book superhero way. It made me think, "Maybe he wasn't a myth, but a real person who was turned into one." All the rooms really must be seen, there's so much wonderful art; photographs and explanations wouldn't do it justice.

From Łazienki we came back to the hotel. We had a few hours until we were to meet again for dinner, so I set out on a mission to find Matejko's "Stańczyk". Fortunately, the Warsaw National Museum isn't too far, but I wanted lunch first. I decided I'd try something new: McDonald's in Poland. It didn't work out, the place was so packed I could barely move, and I decided to find something else. Walking by H&M I heard "King Without a Crown" playing from some speakers hidden in the building. Tak. I found my way to the underground and got some pizza for 3,20 złotych (about a dollar) — it was a great deal, fresh, with some toppings; what's more, it was tasty. With pizza in hand I began walking east down Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue), and stumbled across the museum after four or five blocks. Inside, I tried to figure out the "procedure" without looking like a helpless tourist... which, I should mention, was almost successful: I dropped off my backpack with the coat-check lady, walked through the metal detector without buzzing, and got a ticket. Unfortunately, when he told me to go "left on the first floor", I forgot that meant "go up the stairs first", so I was scolded by one of the museum workers in Polish for entering an exhibition I didn't have a ticket for. But it all worked out, and I found the Polish painters. It started with some newer work, then a few Zakopane folk artists, and finally moved into a more classical style. You could spend days there and not get bored, so I tried spending as much time as I could with the paintings and sculptures that caught my eye. One of the recent pieces by Jacek Malczewski surprised me: a very simple line drawing on a small piece of paper, some of the lightest markings I've ever seen, but it was so beautiful. I see subtlety like that everywhere, but I need to learn to express it as delicately as he does. Another, a painting by Kazimierz Sichulski, gave me an interesting idea: he had a triptych, a study for some stained glass, and it reminded me of early Art Nouveau. I'm no art history buff, but I'd like to know if those sort of studies influenced the style of the movement. Eventually I found Stańczyk, he was waiting at the very end with some other work by Matejko. I didn't know what size to expect, I never looked up the dimensions, but it was about what I had hoped. I remember some vague thoughts on the crumpled letter next to him, the curtains, the sadness in his eyes... I let the thoughts flash through me, the other paintings already had my mind for that day. As I was walking away, I could sympathize with him: "That's it, that's all for now." It said on the plaque next to the painting that Stańczyk takes on Matejko's features. I can see that.

I took a long way back to the hotel, once I got to Nowy Świat I walked up and down for a while. I ran across an amazing accordionist from the Ukraine, and his Polish partner in crime, Bartez, holding a tip cup. One of the most comical things I've seen yet, Bartez half-danced for nonexistent tips, with exaggerated movements, while his partner lived and died with the notes from his accordion. I gave them everything I had left, and said thanks for the beautiful music. It started raining, so I shuffled quickly back to the hotel.

There was a dinner tonight with some żurek, gołąbki ("Little Pigeons", beef wrapped in cabbage), and some dessert. I had a very sour white wine — it must have been young, or just bad. It was kind of nice to see everyone one last time... but the end of the day, for me, was with Stańczyk and the accordionist.

Gdynia to Warsaw via Malbork Castle

We're wrapping up the trip, there was a lot of driving today. We left Gdynia around 8:30, with the sun finally pouring through the sky (after three days of fog and rain). A few hours later, we arrived at Malbork castle, former residence of the Teutonic Knights. In my opinion, this is one of the coolest places we've visited yet. It's one of the most heavily fortified defenses you'll ever see, there are two moats and multiple walls, drawbridges with assault areas, everything. The guide who showed us around started every other sentence with "In case of an attack...", demonstrating all the defense possibilities. The Knights were an interesting bunch — at the time, essentially fighting monks. The place is laid out with so much thought, it's incredible. There's a central heating system, waste control for disease prevention, efficient and beautiful rooms everywhere... and In its modern incarnation, as a museum of sorts, it's really well laid out. There is so much history everywhere, and everything has a little story associated with it. For example, in the main "ballroom", or dining room, there was a cannonball stuck in the wall. Apparently, a few hundred years ago, there was an assassination attempt on the head Knight. They were all having a meeting, and someone tried to hit the single column in the middle of the room, trying to collapse the roof. They missed (obviously), but not by much. I'm sure the would-be-assassins outside the city walls were hunted down and slaughtered. Another one of the rooms was full of amber: the knights, when they were in control of the area, took control of the amber trade and hoarded a ton of it. One of the pieces on display had a huge air bubble inside it, maybe the size of my thumb — think how old the air is inside there. After that visit, we had some great soup and Beef Stroganoff at the nearby Restauracja Zamek.

Random observation of the day: The United States is slowly invading Poland. Normally, everything here costs some full number of złotys (10, 20, 2, etc.) I saw a sign for Pizza Hut, and it's 19,90 for a pizza. That extra 90 grosze are going to kill peoples pockets with change.

Random Polish oddity: All the light switches here are big panels you put pressure on. I have yet to see an American light switch. It's very elegant, but disconcerting.

Warsaw: Łazienki, Jewish Ghetto, Royal Castle and Market Square

We started the day with a drive around Warsaw — over to Łazienki park to see the sculpture of Chopin, Poland's beloved composer. It's incredibly romantic: he's sitting under a willow tree, bending with the leaves and the wind, eyes closed. It reminds me of something my Ghanaian drumming professor once told me: "Sit down. Listen... to the wind. There are two sounds you hear: one, there is a tree, two there is no tree." Leaving the park, I noticed a sculpture of Józef Piłsudski, a Polish revolutionary who helped restore the Polish state to unity 123 years after it was partitioned by Napoleon.

After the park, we drove through the former Jewish Ghetto, where the uprising took place in 1943 (one of the events described by The Pianist). Almost everything is completely restored, but you can still get a feeling for what happened if you walk around.

We stopped by a cathedral or two, and then headed towards the Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski). Our guide was this old, eccentric Polish man with wisps of white hair around his temples and a well trimmed beard, "from a poor peasant family in the mountains." The place is packed with tapestries, statues, busts, paintings, and covered in marble and gold leaf. Some of the tapestries were huge, maybe 40 feet long and 20 feet tall; it would take a year to produce just one square meter. One of the guest rooms was occupied by Napoleon as he came through Warsaw, and they keep his desk in there. All sorts of things have been donated to the castle — the desk was donated by the French, who, according to our guide, "give out a new desk of Napoleon's every year". That's not as bad as the American donations, which were busts of people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin — our guide kept sarcastically muttering "bloody American imperialists...", but with such a smile that made it hard to feel insulted.

From the castle we stopped by two cathedrals on our way over to the old market square. There's a little theater in one corner of the square, part of a small museum on the 1944 rising and World War II, they show a short film every hour or so, it was really crazy to see footage of the old town during the war, and then walk back outside to the restored city all around. I meandered around for a while after the movie, finding Kamienne Schodki and the statue of the youngest soldier in the Home Army.

After the Old Town visit, we took a short break and went to a Chopin recital by Robert Skiera at the Szuster Palace. He played all the well-known pieces, and threw in a few others as well. It's the first time I've heard "Revolution" sound like a war cry rather than a lament.

Australian slang of the day (from Danuta):

• pucy (PYOO-see, adjective) — weak, no good
• piker (PIE-kuh, noun) — chicken, coward

Warsaw: The Uprising

Amazing breakfast this morning (with the exception of that one egg I broke open, expecting it to be boiled). They serve a very calm earl grey, apple pancakes, and a variety of other treats. After breakfast we caught a cab for a ride to The Warsaw Rising Museum. There's this problem in Warsaw with "Mafia Taxis" — if you don't see a city-issued number on it, they will charge up to five times the normal rate. But the taxis outside the hotel are safe — the one we took had a very kind driver, his father fought in the Uprising like Grandpa, so they got along very well.

The museum was almost too much. The entire place has a heartbeat, literally, you can hear it as you walk around — wherever you are inside, the spirit of the city is alive. A kind girl named Yola, who had a subtle but infectious enthusiasm, showed me around. She spoke quickly, always saying "What's more..."; as a placeholder, an exclamation, a rhetorical question... there are more uses to the phrase than I realized. There's too much in the museum to describe here, you really have to see it for yourself, but a few things made huge impressions on me... There's this one wall in the center of the museum that spans all three stories, with names inscribed of people who fought in the war. If you put your ear up to the wall you can hear recordings from the uprising. It goes like this: yelling, gunfire, yelling, gunfire, and then it cuts to one of the most beautiful chants I've ever heard, perfectly balanced, slow and resolute, but joyful. It felt like a couple millennia of tradition made immediate. I asked Yola, and she said it sounds like a hymn she knew from church. I was reminded of an article I read recently that made me frustrated — Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life", was writing about selecting music for contemporary worship services:

Speed up the tempo. Many worship services sound more like a funeral than a festival. The Bible says, "Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs." (Psalm 100:2) John Bisango, pastor emeritus of the 22,000-member First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, says, "Funeral dirge anthems and stiff-collared song leaders will kill a church faster than anything else in the world!"

"Funeral dirge anthems"? Nothing provides solace like tradition, and nothing comforts in a time of war like memory. Reread Psalms. The Nazis knew this, it's why they completely destroyed the universities and replaced street signs that referred to Polish stories and beloved heroes. These are the things that made 30,000 Poles rise, only 10% of them armed, against 20,000 fully armed Nazis, taking down 500 on the first day, holding out for 63 days, and eventually killing somewhere between 10,000-17,000 Nazis.

From the museum we went over to the intersection where the entrance to the sewer that Grandpa crawled through is located. More than five thousand people were evacuated from Warsaw through these sewers — "It's hard to imagine, but it was covered in ruins at the time. They make wonderful protection."

We rested for a while back at the hotel and then met up with the rest of the tour group. There are 18 of us total, so far we are two of the three guys, and I'm the youngest. The median age is probably about 60 years. One of them, Danuta, is visiting from Australia; she's a bit saucy. Another, Jane, seems slightly senile. For example, Grandpa tries to grab a chair for Danuta to sit in:

Danuta: "Why are you helping?"
Grandpa: "Because this is a man's job!"
Danuta: "Oh my — if we left those jobs for the men, where would we be? Left for dead!"
Random Interjection: "Especially if your husband dies."
Jane: "Ah, that happened to me once."

Pleasant surprises: Steak tatar for lunch; Grandpa's story about the first Polish McDonalds: "The communists wanted to serve Vodka, but we wouldn't allow for it."; the 240 to 120 volt transformer exploding, followed by the realization we didn't need it.

Poor translations of the day (from the Asian-Polish fusion menu at hotel restaurant):

• St. James playing tomato with the devil
• Lotta marinated burning on a stake, stuffed passers-by watching

Troy to Warsaw

After a night without sleep, moving some things from my RPI dorm to The Mothership, Jem took me to the airport to catch a plane from Albany to Newark. The Newark airport is surreal, there are more characters there than any other airport I've ever been to, each of them acting out little stories. Walking to Grandpa's gate (so we could meet upon his arrival), I noticed this old, short Asian custodian — he could have played the part of the silent cross-legged zen master in an ancient kung fu movie. He had some silly slogan on the back of his shirt — something about the quality of his service (exactly the sort of thing an airport would put on a custodian's shirt). Watching closely, I could see that he really was giving all of himself to his vocation: each new trash bag a job well done. I timed things so I could drop a glass bottle into his most recently replaced bag... we both heard it bounce off the bottom of the synthetic can, smiling at each other with mutual satisfaction. Like I said, a zen master.

A few hours later Grandpa arrived and we found the LOT desk, checking in again for the flight to Warsaw. Grandpa, ever the terrorist, was patted down... and we continued on towards our full flight. With the stewardesses speaking Polish, I felt like we had already arrived. Inside the little seat back there was a little magazine with various drinks and cigarettes for sale... I noticed the first Polish oddity: every cigarette pack, throughout the entire country, has a notice on it. These aren't subtle notices like in the United States, where it says, in small print, "Surgeon General's Warning: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy". They have huge lettering, at least a third of the front, put simply: "Smoking kills." or "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you."

Eventually arriving in Warsaw to a very foggy afternoon, we met up with Mirka (my grandma's cousin, an editor of a health magazine in Warsaw) and Kuba (her sister's son, from South Poland). I met Mirka once before when she visited San Diego — she's great; she reminds me of a James Bond villain, but she's so kind. I hadn't met Kuba before, but I already had respect for him: he'd asked Grandpa to bring a copy of Psyence Fiction, which is, apparently, hard to find in Poland. I asked where to find the best Polish hip-hop, and he pointed me to O.S.T.R. [pl|en]. Not bad at all.

We took a bus to the Novotel hotel in central Warsaw, and rested for an hour or so on the 11th floor — room 1124. We headed downstairs for an early dinner with Grandpa's cousin Krzysztof, who works with the import/export organization in Poland, his girlfriend Eva, Dr. Sadowski (Grandpa's friend from Illinois, a kidney research specialist and member of the Polish Sciences Academy) and Mrs. Sadowski. I mostly spoke with Kuba over dinner and got a better idea of the mindset of the Polish youth, their perspective on the rest of the world. Europe in general is hard for them to romanticize because it's all so near and immediate. He holds the UK on a small pedestal though, he says he'd like to move there and become a music journalist.

After dinner I was itching to look around and breathe in a little bit of this place, so I went for a walk — towards the Palace of Culture and Science, one of the tallest buildings in Warsaw, a remnant of communist rule, commissioned by Stalin and built by Poles with their own resources. Over by one of the entrances I noticed that a hot dog and beer vendor set up a set of speakers and was playing some music he liked. The UK returned in the form of Mattafix's "Forgotten". In some ways, Warsaw feels like a big American city. In other ways, it's completely different... some of the things that caught me off guard: the abundance of parks, street musicians, and odd underground stores.

Tomorrow we'll be meeting up with the rest of the group, I have no idea what the demographics will be like. It doesn't really matter, though — I'm really excited to be here, and can't wait to see more.