polska
Leap Day
I was very surprised for a moment when checking the Time Machine widget at the bottom of the site: only four entries for this day?! And then I remembered the date.
And realized one of the entries had to do with the kitchen remodel Babcia and Dziadek decided to do when K and I got engaged. They’d planned to do something else with the money, but in the end, they went for the remodel. “If we’re going to have guests from the States…” I seem to recall Dziadek explaining.
Looking at that picture, I think how much younger Babcia looked. It was twenty years ago, and it hits me: in this picture, she’s only a handful of years older than I am now. And the last two decades have simply floated by without any effort and little notice.
And the next two decades?
LW School
A century-old shot of an old school in Lipnica. I passed this building every time I left or arrived in Lipnica.
Last night
An unpublished entry from the end of our 2022 visit to Poland.
The Boy’s stuff is spread throughout the house: toys on the living room, play money in the kitchen, shoes in a variety of locations. My stuff is spread just as widely. So much to remember tomorrow. I’ve got to clean and cover the fire pit in the gazebo. I’ve got to bring two bikes upstairs, remembering to take the pedals off my bike to take back to the States but remember to leave the shoes for next time.
ANd I sit here wondering if I’ve done all I could have here. Have I rolled in nostalgia enough?” Is another way to put it. I met almost no one from my side here—few former students (always a joy) and no former colleagues. It’s the first time that’s ever happened. We often come back just before the end of the Polish school year, and I simply have to drop in at my former school to meet a lot of people. This year, we didn’t arrive until a week or more after the year was over, so it was only a matter of chance whether or not I met anyone.
I did get to meet with my absolute best friend here, which I was unable to accomplish during our last visit in 2017. I’m not even sure if we got to meet in 2015. Still, we had a chance to sit around drinking beer and talking about nonsense like old times. Sort of. E was with me; neither of us touch cigarettes anymore; we didn’t listen to any music (no exclamations about the perfection of the coming guitar solo); it was in the afternoon in the gazebo he built on his parents’ property during his Covid lockdown. “I had to do something” he explained.
Again wallowing in nostalgia, I guess. Looking for the joy of repetition, even in the small things.
“And it doesn’t come back, but I’ll be looking all of my life.”
From Babia
Blasphemy in Warsaw
There’s a new cafe in Warsaw called “Madonna.” It uses images of Mary and Jesus as decorations, and it’s driving the fundamentalist Catholics crazy. Just look at the list of blasphemies they’re committing:
- The figure of Our Lady invites you for drinks among vulgar neon signs.
- Rosaries hang on vodka bottles.
- Blasphemous images depict Our Lady smoking cigarettes.
- The face of actor Keanu Reeves was placed in the image of the Sacred Heart of the Lord.
- The face of singer Rihanna was substituted for Mary’s face.
- There are statues of Mary on the tables with a QR code for the customer to download the menu.
- There is a confessional in the restaurant where you can take photos.
The horrors!
Just look at the pictures:
It’s unbelievable.
The price of democracy can be steep for fundamentalists.
Hel
Polish Mass
Warszawa Centralna
Looking at some old pictures, I found a shot of Warszawa Centralna train station from about 2002. It was an exterior night shot, and there was little indication of what the station looked like inside. What it looks like now is vaguely similar, but there have been so many renovations and little additions that it doesn’t look like the Warsawa Centralna I remember from the mid-90s.
So I turned to Google: “warszawa centralna lata 90.” Instantly, there popped up a picture that looked almost just like it did in the mid-90s. According to the credits, it’s from 1991, but the only real difference I see is in the ticket windows: the numbers were blue as I recall.
But that mass of people in front of the ticket window, those lines that were not lines, that bundle of confusion — that is identical. How many times did I stand there stressing about getting a ticket on time, stressing about getting a ticket with reserved seating (I rode back to Krakow many times on a “standing” ticket, which meant I had to try my best luck at finding an empty seat), stressing about whether I was actually in the line or not, and once, stressing about the amount of money I had (did I have enough to get me back to my humble village?) — just stressing.
Roadside Chapels, Chyzne, 2004
Reworking Pictures from 2013
Church
Revisiting Krakow Shot
Views of Nowy Targ
Dworzec
Warsaw, 1985
Polishness
Indicator 32,048,985 that your wife is Polish: you find her Saturday evening ironing sheets for family visiting the next day…
Building an Icon
Changes
Changes are visible every time we head back to Poland. This summer was no exception, but I didn’t notice a significant change until long after we returned.
At the corner of the rynek in Nowy Targ stood a strange building that seemed more like a house that had been renovated into a business. It always stood out.
What I didn’t notice in the summer of 2022 (and thus did not photograph, relying instead now on Google Street View) was that the entire building has been completely renovated.
And yet I recall looking at the bank to the left, the bank I visited countless times, and thinking that something just didn’t look right.
Window
Homes with windows like this used to be ubiquitous in southern Poland.
