Welcome to Warsaw

It’s really hard to be somewhere like Warsaw and disentangle the patchwork of knowledge I have about the place from what I observe around me. For example all night long in some far flung building which makes up the giant court-yard behind me, there’s a low rumble of what sounds like the kind of music Stalin enjoyed: a baritone of unending marching songs (to the Volga and back?) But it’s probably nothing of the kind. Maybe it’s music to the Polish ear, the ear that doesn’t care for Chopin. Last night, in the middle of the ‘endless steppe’ a loudspeaker boomed incomprehensively. I think that was about 2 am. Did a giant black ZIL41047 pull up with all its doors flung wide and disgorge twelve men in Homburgs? It’s so hard to know what to think. About anything.

Then there are the buildings themselves. Huge walled slabs without any kind of character once you strip away the Cold War glamour of Richard Burton types going to seed. I have photographs but blogger seems to be playing up so I can’t post any of them yet. My apartment is on the top floor of one of these buildings. Luckily there’s a lift to level 4, a tiny lift which bounces when I step into it, and with two little saloon doors which are part of its activation. At any moment I expect it to expire with me inside it, and then as I slowly expire too my neighbours will continue minding their own business.

The bedroom doesn’t actually exist, but is a corner with a rice paper screen nicely tidying a little Goldilocks bed from view, while in the sitting room next to it a four-sofa looms like a stone fence. It does beg the question (Stuart will tell me I’m using this phrase incorrectly) – where are the four occupants of this sofa to be found when the sleeping arrangements preclude anyone else staying? Or is it for a visitor with too much vodka on board? I’ve seen a few of those lying around in the streets already.

I also have a kitchen with the kind of long-legged table Dr Phil probably eats at. When I stand next to it the table top is chest height, so chopping the potatoes for a dish of Pierogi won’t be happening on this Through the Looking-glass surface. And the bathroom has a large piece of equipment attached to the wall: aka the gas heater. Here are the instructions I received after an emailed plea for help (there aren’t many phones in Poland apparently, and in the absence of a mobile I use my internet access to engage with the agents):

Hello,

In bathroom there is an automatic system of hot water.

So what you should do, you should turn to the right or left side, where is hot water, in the bathroom sink.

Please then wait until the bathroom heater will on, and then only regulate how hot water would you like to have.


Then you can use the bathroom shower.


I hope I help you, it's not very difficult:)

But really, apart from the frightening break-neck buses, the incessant Marche Militaires in the court-yard, and the keys which jam in the locks (there are four separate keys) things could be SO much worse, as anyone of my age who grew up here could attest. I can watch ‘Border Security’ dubbed into Polish (I listen eagerly for the glimpse of a Sydney vowel) and I can play Scrabble online, and there’s a kind of supermarket around the corner which sells extremely good bread and ‘winter’ sprats (how do these differ from their summer cousins - coats? scarves?) And people, in spite of their unsmiling faces, turn out to be tremendously helpful when I cry whaaaaaa!!!!! (metaphorically). Apparently to smile at a stranger here is an indication of mental weakness. So I’m mastering a look of grim resignation, which doesn’t seem to need a lot of rehearsal.

PS This is the month of Chopin I Jego Europa (or Chopin in Europe, an international festival held every year). As Chopin, not gin, was mother’s milk to me I hope to get to at least one event in honour of Maman and her Steinway, and the wonderful etudes and polonaises we grew up listening to in various bank sitting-rooms in western Queensland. If I can find my way to Chopin’s house (reading all the consonants on street maps is so tiring) I’ll post some pix.

PPS There are lots of tall people in Poland.