I’m finally here — and I feel like I never left. Except for a Marks and Spencer in front of the Pałac Kultura i Nauki, nothing much has changed. On, and the cheesy PKP picture gallery has been replaced by still other shops. Otherwise, it’s all the same.

I feel I’m back after only a small break at most. As I was walking along the peron, I had a memory of stepping off a train here, in sektor 1, where it’s not so open or spacious. I remember stepping off into that constant florescent dimness that is Warszawa Centralna at all hours of the day — early morning, though — I think it’s a memory of arriving on the all-nighter from NT to deal with all that visa nonsense.

It seems somehow different to be here as a visitor — a tourist, even — as opposed to being an inhabitant. A temporary inhabitant, but a resident all the same. Now I’m not struggling to keep my sanity in a long journey home; I have no home here . . . I’m a visitor. First time in Poland as such.