matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

To Warsaw

Friday 16 June 2017

To Krakow

Just as you're stepping into the mini-bus, there's always a little panic, a little worry, a question that just sits there for just long enough to color even the brightest day with just a bit of gray: will there be an open seat? Not having an open seat doesn't mean that the driver won't stop; it simply means he'll stop and yell out the window, "Standing places only." He'll pack them in until there's no standing room either, and we'll have twenty-seven or more people packed into a bus with nineteen seats. As we rode from Jablonka to Krakow on just such a mini-bus, I saw that anxiety on each and every passenger's face: the quick scanning of the seats, the relief when there was an open spot, the bit of frustration when there wasn't.

Traveling the road to Krakow standing up is a challenge, with all the twists and turns as the bus goes through the low hills in the south of Poland that lead to the Tatra Mountains on the Slovak border. The side-to-side swaying is accompanied by a forward-backward challenge every time the driver pulls over to pick up and pack in a new passenger. With the number of noses simultaneously exhaling and the exertion of keeping your balance, the trip is an exhausting journey.

By the time we got to Krakow, the amount of heat and humidity made the whole experience almost unbearable. It was not the best way to start the trip Warsaw, but it was a reminder of the little gray linings of life in Poland, the things that drove me to distraction when I lived here.

In Krakow

First things first: find a bathroom. It was then that an unconscious but lingering question was answered:

Taken quickly on my phone

Bathrooms in public places are still pay-only. The technology has changed: instead of a woman sitting in a little room that straddles the men's and women's room with a little basket collecting money, there is now a turnstile complete with a credit card reader beside a machine for making change from large bills. The cost: 2.50 zloty. That's just about 70 cents. For a family of four...

Of course when E and I went in, I picked him up and carried him through the turnstile as I went through.

That done, we had some lunch and wandered around the Old Town for just a few minutes.

To Warsaw

It was the Boy's first train ride. The excitement was palpable.

Trains in Poland have certainly changed in the fifteen years since I've really traveled by train. We saw a few of the old trains we were used to, but they were all on railway sidings, out of commission. That's probably good: those trains were not very comfortable. Still, it's one of the things that differentiated Poland from Western Europe which have disappeared.

In Warsaw

"You won't recognize Warsaw." We've heard that from a number of people, and I don't really think K and I understand the extent of the changes in the city that neither of us has visited in at least fifteen years. Still, looking out the window of the apartment we rented through AirBnB, I see that not everything has changed.

That building in the foreground, with the tired windows and dirty plaster, with the bars on the window that are in fact made out of concrete rebar welded together -- that building is pure Communist-era Poland.

Boze Cialo

Thursday 15 June 2017

The terrace was all abuzz. The two grandmothers were chatting about details of the procession through the village earlier in the day. Grandpa was chatting with me about women and shopping. And a little blond angel was crying hysterically because of an unseen fall. Within all of this came the question: "Where are E and M?" We hadn't seen them in some time and hadn't heard them for a bit longer. Yet no one was worried. No panic. No flood of adults heading off in every direction, calling their names. "They'll show up soon enough," said grandpa, and within ten or fifteen minutes, there they were.

Village life. No worries about the kids when they disappear. No fears about the strangers among us because there are none. A certain kind of innocence that brings out both the good and the bad in people.

We spent the day in Pyzowka, a small village spread along the ridges of several hills just oustide of Nowy Targ, the nearest Polish town of any significance to Jablonka. Pyzowka is always a recurring destination, not only because of its beauty but also because of who lives there: D has been K's best friend since childhood, the closest thing to a sister K has ever had. She is the Girl's godmother and now, by proxy, a good friend of mine along with her husband, G. We always end up there a time or three while visiting the Old Country for the girls to catch up on gossip and that magic of just being in the same room together again. This year, though, because of various complications, today was the one and only day they could meet, so we went to Pyzowka for Corpus Christi.

Shortly after I first arrived in Poland in 1996, I encountered Corpus Christi for the first time. I had no idea what I was viewing. I prided myself on the depth of my understanding of Christianity that was in reality not even as deep as a small puddle of water. I had rejected it all because I knew better. Typical youthful arrogance, I suppose. Yet the first time I witnessed Corpus Christi, I began to understand that I didn't understand.

Unknown Corpus Christi

Twenty-one years later and I'm a participant in the Mass on this holy day, a participant in the procession. I snap pictures as discretely as possible because I'm starting to understand the significance of the day, of the procession. Do I believe it all? That's hard to say. Where do questions leave off and doubt begin? Perhaps it doesn't matter in the end: I've come to see a certain beauty in the communal nature of Catholicism that makes me think that even if again I lost all my faith (the little strands I hold on to), I would still participate because of the value I see in simple act of people coming together and humbly submitting themselves to something bigger than they are. Such humility is rare these days, it seems.

Today's celebration, though, highlighted the flavor a Polish village imparts on Corpus Christi. The procession began at the church and wound its way through much of the village.

At least twice cars approached, saw the whole road blocked with the procession of about 500 or so people, and turned around. I can't imagine something like that happening in America or even a larger city in Poland. Life goes on despite holy days and celebrations, and in America of course, the vast majority of the population begin non-Catholics have varying opinions of Catholicism that color how they would view such a procession, mostly affecting the negativity of the hue, truth be told. At least in the South, where we live. That's why the processions in America tend to be just around the church itself, not out into public itself.

After the procession, we had lunch at D's before heading to the other side of the village to visit D's parents, who are those rare Poles who packed up and moved from one village to another, almost as if they were Americans. Most Poles build a house and stay there. Stay there. But after several years of serving Jablonka's animals as a veterinarian, D's father and mother moved back to the village they grew up in.

While there, cousins and their families arrived, and we all sat around and ate and drank and chatted. It was then, at the close of day, that I really saw the magic of a Polish village. It's only magical if you have connections, if you have someone who grounds you there. That almost seems axiomatic, but it shows why nothing like Polish village life exists in mobile America. Packing up and moving across the city, across the state, or even across the country is no big deal. Put your house on the market, find a new place, and arrange for movers. It's as simple as that. But it's far from simple when you really look at it. Roots can't grow when you're constantly transplanting.

Wednesday in the Village

Wednesday 14 June 2017

Polish Village Reality

After a quick breakfast, a little reminder of Polish reality, at least an older reality: no hot water in the morning in the summer. The energy for heating the water is not electricity, for that would be far too expensive, but rather it comes from coal, as in a small coal-burning furnace. Babcia makes a fire in the evening to have warm water for baths, but by the morning, it's cooled down.

So to wash dishes, one has to warm water in a pot and then poured into the sink.

Homes built in the last fifteen years or so have different systems which means less work for the hot water. Apartment blocks in the city have central heating for hot water, as do whole neighborhoods in some sections. But in the village it was always (and is still at Babcia's) simple: to take a bath, build a fire.

Jarmark

"Fish monger" is about the only use of "monger" I know in English. There must have been others, because the word exists, but it's largely fallen out of common use, but that's too bad: it would really come in handy when describing the flea market that appears every Wednesday in Jablonka. There are sock mongers, cheese mongers, suit mongers, hat mongers, jacket mongers, shoe mongers, farm tool mongers, auto part mongers, garden tool mongers, and just about anything else one could imagine.

Each of those mongers have a script, it seems, when it comes to selling. They begin always with "Prosze bardzo," which would really be translated "I really ask" but in essence "very please," which itself is a rather literal translation. It's not literally "Can I help you?" because that would be "Czym moge pomoc?" Yet it's a common greeting in stores. Next step: make a million suggestions about how this or that product is in fact perfect, is in fact just what the customer has been looking for. If the customer protests, well there's always this over here, which would be perfect.

At some point, the monger will try to show how amazing his product is. When I bought a Russian-made Zenit camera in the market in Nowy Targ some twenty years ago, the monger literally drove a nail with the base of the camera to show how tough it was. Today, a jacket monger poured mineral water water on the jacket K was trying on to show how effectively water proof it was.

If the monger finally realizes that there's nothing to do but admit defeat, the responses become almost cold. "Nie ma." Finally, if a customer finds something she likes but wants to look further, the whole exchange ends as it began: "Prosze bardzo."

We came to Poland without jackets with the plan of simply buying them today at the market, so we met that formula several times today. Though I've been to that market (and others in the area) countless times and went at least once a month when I lived here, I only now noticed that linguistic pattern.

Respect

Poles take care of their graves. They wash the grave stone, pull weeds from around the grave, keep candles lit on the grave almost all the time.

Today, Babcia asked us to take care of Dziadek's grave, sending us out on the one-mile walk to the cemetery with various cleaning clothes and several new candles. The walk revealed a new reality for Jablonka: there is now so much traffic through the main road of the village which leads from Krakow to Slovakia and eventually Budapest that the Boy was virtually yelling to tell us all the wonderful things he was noticing.

But some things don't change. The two main pavilions that hold everything from money changers to butcher shops, from a law office to a toy shop, from a hair salon to a post office, from a surveyor's office to a newsagent -- they still stand as they have since I first arrived in 1996.

We cleaned the grave, lit new candles, pulled some weeds. We prayed an Our Father and threw away the old candles before moving to the other family graves.

"This is your great-grandmother and great-grandfather," K explained, in Polish.

"What does that mean?" asked E.

K explained in Polish, then added a few key words in English. It's a fairly typical way she talks to the Boy. Yet he's already begun chatting in Polish, so by the time we leave in six weeks, it should be a whole different story.

Old and New

Within a village as old as Jablonka, one can find the newest of the new and houses that have stood for well over a century, and just about everything in between. This house stands on the way from the church and was built in the early 1920s. The plaster has fallen off in several places, yet it's still occupied. It's positively romantic.

Just down the street is an older house, now unoccupied. The door was open and we peeked in. L couldn't understand why no one lived there. I can't either.

Shops

Traditional Polish shops have one thing in common: they are crammed full of goods. It's as if every square meter is the only square meter of the shop.

Newer stores are not like that, but shops in the pavilion (see above) are all packed tight, like herring in a jar to translate from Polish.

Evening Walk

When it's this gorgeous outside, what else is there to do but take a walk?

Loans

Homes used to be built and paid for at the same time. It explains why there were so many half-finished yet occupied houses in the area when I first moved here. Loans were hard to come by. Now I see television advertisements for loans to pay for vacation. Not sure that's necessarily a good change.

Arrival 2017

Tuesday 13 June 2017

When I first arrived in Poland, everything looked so very different. It wasn’t just that it was a different country. I was living in a very rural area for the first time as well, so everything in 1996 looked doubly new.

Subsequent arrivals had a feeling of comfortable familiarity, and that’s a pleasant enough feeling, but it can take a bit of the edge off the excitement of arriving. Just a bit.

Four years ago, I got a flash of that newness again when L and I spent the summer here. She was six, and everything was new to her. It was her third time in Poland, but the first time as a six-year-old, and there’s an enormous difference between a four-year-old and a six-year-old.

This time around, it’s the Boy’s turn: he’s been so excited about coming to Poland for the last few weeks that it’s been a common topic in our conversation.

“Daddy, are you looking forward to going to Poland?”

Monday he was terribly excited and then terribly confused when we told him, once again, that we’d be leaving today but arriving tomorrow.

When we finally made it to Babcia’s house, the excitement was somewhat tempered by the exhaustion, but a lunch of clear broth with homemade noodles followed by a cutlet with new potatoes and fresh cabbage generously garnished with fresh dill was refreshing enough that after dinner, we decided to head out to look for cows. The Boy expressed the thought in Polish and, as he always does, had significant trouble with the trilled “r” in “krowa,” so we went out in search of klowa.

There were none still out by the time we made it to the fields, but there were still farmers out working in the fields, turning and gathering hay.

He examined a bit of the freshly cut grass,

and somewhat drier grass — not quite hay but close.

And though he was cold throughout the whole walk, he said nothing. “I was having fun,” he explained, “and I didn’t want to go home.”

A good start to the trip.

 

On Our Way

Monday 12 June 2017

Last Evening

Sunday 11 June 2017

So that means, as always, Taproot. Listening to this album before leaving on a long trip is a tradition of mine going back more than twenty years…

The Market

Saturday 10 June 2017

One of the things the Boy is most excited about our coming summer in Poland is going to the market on Wednesday.

The Girl, too.

Three Babies

Friday 09 June 2017

The three baby owls dropped by for a visit this evening, but it was too dark to get a decent shot.

Late Morning at Furman

Thursday 08 June 2017

Tomatoes

Wednesday 07 June 2017

The tomatoes are really starting to take off just before we do. Blossoms everywhere. Pin-size to golf-ball-size green tomatoes here and there. This year, I’m doing the opposite of last year when I simply let them be. This year, I’m pruning, pruning, pruning. The manager of a local university’s sustainable organic gardening program told me I could do two things to get bigger, juicer tomatoes: snip the suckers mercilessly (which I’ve not been as successful with as I would like), and snip the stems so that they only have the first to leaves remaining. The former I’d heard of; the latter was new to me. He explained it this way: “Either you can have your vine spending substantial energy and nutrition growing stems and leaves, or you can have the putting that into the fruit.” He assured me that each stem only needs two, maybe three leaves. And so our vines look a little different this year.

Especially when the late sun hits them just right. (And of course Lightroom hits them just right.)