Home sweet home

Ul. Nowogrodzka 48 m. 24
Warszawa
00-695
Polska

This is my address. (By the way, I accept postcards/letters/packages/parcels/presents…) I’m lucky enough to be living in a pre-war building slap in the centre of Warsaw. The tenament block, or ‘kamienica’ (stone house), as it is called, is over 100 years old. If you’ve seen that devastating pan-shot in The Pianist of the complete demolition zone that was post-war Warsaw, then this is a pretty impressive feat. You can see in the peeling walls, bullet-holed exterior, and the flaking wooden doors that constantly signal the coming and going of people with a creak and a bang, that this place has survived a turbulent history.

Up 52 steep winding and very dusty stone steps you reach number 24 – actually my Grandma’s flat, but currently inhabited by me as she whiles away the winter in more temperate climes back in Cambridge. (Although because of global warming etc, the winters here are really no longer very severe – the snow doesn’t even settle – I feel at home!) My Grandma is 90 and usually lives here alone. The fact that she pioneers her way up and down those stairs on a daily basis, not to mention cooks, cleans, and shops all for herself with no help, thank you very much!, is a pretty intimidating example for me to live up to in my older years.

She’s not the only old chip on the block though. Below lives Mrs. Janicka – frail, ill and very cautious. On the top floor is Mrs. Sophie (as she is known) – a little stooped, a little toothless, and a little crazy… She has a mild form of alzheimers, and is forever walking up, and down, and up, and down, those stairs, ringing on people’s doorbells and forgetting where she lives. If you are unfortunate enough, (cruel isn’t it), to actually open the door to her, she will somehow shuffle her way in, demand in a pleading tone that you come and sleep in her apartment (she has a spare couple of beds), and then ask you who you are… If you are unfortunate enough to be at home and not let her in, she will ring and ring and rrrrrriiiiinnnnggg that doorbell until finally she confuses herself into believing she must have got the wrong door after all… I can’t quite bring myself to follow my grandma’s example by shouting ‘There’s no-one home – so Bugger OFF!’ Yet.

A little divergence into the past: After the war, (My Grandma’s stories always begin like this: for her generation in Poland, time is divided into the great swathe of history that is ‘Before the War’, the 6 years of ‘During the war’, and the decade or so ‘After the war’. For my Mum’s generation, it was ‘before Communism’, ‘during Communism’ and ‘after Communism’ – now it’s just a seeming constant striving rapidly forward into a more promising future… Or perhaps ‘Before EU’, ‘After EU’..?)

Anyway, after the war… the apartments here were divided by the state between various families. These buildings, despite their exclusive central location, typically house some of the poorest members of Warsaw society. Up until the age of 15, my Mum and Grandma lived in the 15m by 6m space that is now the bedroom. They had a wood-fuelled oven, and in order to use the bathroom or kitchen they had to walk through the adjacent room – now the living room – where another family lived. My Gran was sharp enough to acquire the whole place once they left – and now I get to have this beautiful, old-style flat to myself. Such high-ceilinged, wooden-floored sanctuaries are hard to come by now – Soviet-style blocks, modern atrocities, and Barratt-esque homes dominate in the suburbs and new developments.

However, what these edifices lack in aesthetics they may well make up for in functional adaptation to the 21st Century. True I have candelabras and great acoustics, but I don’t have a bathroom. Or a fridge. Or a washing-machine… I don’t have central heating either – or, the heating is centralised – just in communist-style; in some man’s basement caretaker-flat on the other side of the court. But for this, I’m always toasty.. Let me explain about the bathroom – this always shocks many a Westerner to my amusement. There is a bath, just no room – its simply in a curtained-off corner of the kitchen – which also acts as the entrance. An electric boiler hangs above. ‘Wow - old-school’, my young Polish friends coo in that secure modern delight on discovering quaint antiquities. ‘Wow – thank god it works’ – is what I say every morning when I shower.

Let me also explain about the fridge. There is a fridge – it just doesn’t work. It’s one of those old Russian socio-realist hummers – a great slab of nuclear proletariat creation. So, yeah, it doesn’t work. Perhaps it died in 1989. Inside you’ll find my Grandma’s slippers, a pot, a hairbrush, and some ribbons… Instead, I keep all my perishables on the window-sill – where it’s ‘cold as hell!’ as my Gran says. I’m amazed at how well this works – why do we need a fridge again? Perhaps I’ll rethink come spring/summer... For now, bitter winds are keeping my milk nicely chilled.

Low carbon living (out of default) is also finding me rolling up my sleeves and having to hand-wash all my clothes… I’m beginning to see exactly how the invention of the washing-machine played a central role in the emancipation of women. Soaking, scrubbing, rinsing, rubbing, squeezing, rinsing, squeezing, rinsing, squ.. ok, you’ve got the idea – it takes forever! Drying is a whole other technical phase in itself. It goes on. On the plus side, I’m working up some nice washer-woman muscles. A lot of people have those around here, actually… Maybe I’ll soon be able to pummel out a good loaf of bread?

Those of you who are starting to worry that I’m living in some pre-industrial cave – calm yourselves. There is hot water, heating and even plumbing! Oh, and about 100m from where I live, there are 2 shopping centres, 3 multi-plex cinemas, copious bars, clubs, and cafes, at least 2 pizza huts, 3 KFCs and 4 McDonalds and a 24-hour internet café... Not to mention a brothel right opposite. Sometimes I do love coming home to my archaic little haven of tranquility. :)

To see photos of where I'm living go here: http://irmaallen.tumblr.com/

Note on blog name

What do you call your blog? There are actually whole websites devoted to this one particular dilemma! At the moment, I quite like the name: 'Polyglot' -[n. or adj. POLY-glot] 'Someone who is able to speak, write, or read two or more languages.' Obviously, I'm not quite there yet, which is why I've changed the noun/adjective into a present continuous verb... (Sorry, grammar is fast becoming a staple diet in my daily life. But don't worry, cos I belong to the facebook group 'Good grammar is Hot'. So I'm still cool...)

Not only does polyglot mean a many-tongued (literally) person, but also means 'a mixture or confusion of languages'. I don't intend for my blog to be confusing, but I like the idea of it containing a 'mixture of languages' - i.e. speaking on many levels about many different things from a fusion of Anglo-Polish as well as idiosyncratic perspectives... There, that's my liberal interpretation of the word. O, and did I forget to mention the double entendre here? 'Pol-yglotting' - learning Pol-ish - get it? Very clever, mais non? ;)

Apparently, though, there's also a list of the top 10 words used for a blog name, which therefore are hit the most through searches.. (So I've heard....) Originally, 'blog', 'life', 'journal' , 'world', 'thoughts', 'daily' are 6 of them... So, I may well change my blog name in the future purely in the name of unabashed self-promotion :)

Going Slow

[Friend #1]: ‘How are you getting there?’
[Me]: ‘By bus.’
[Friend #2]: ‘Aren’t your parents going to take you to the airport?’
[Friend #1]: ‘No, I meant to Poland, not to the airport – what airline are you flying with?’
[Me]: ‘No, er… I’m going by bus – to Poland.’
[Friend #1]: ...Long Pause... ‘Oh. Why?’
[Friend #2] ‘Is that even possible?’
[Friend #1]: ‘How long does that take? Are you mad?’
[Friend #2]: ‘How much does it cost? What’s wrong with you?! It’s not because of your 'environmental beliefs’ is it?’

And roughly so went the conversation with a couple of my friends about a week before departure time. Only, I was going to be leaving by a very different departure lounge to the one they had so clearly imagined. I was catching the Euroline service from London – Warsaw, via Dover, Calais, Holland, Belgium and Germany. In spite of my friends’ consternation, and with perhaps an inkling of self-doubt as to my sanity, being so frequently questioned as it had been those last few days, I was actually quite excited! A chance to pause, reflect, think, dream, mull-over, contemplate and plan before I arrived at my destination a full 24 hours, maybe more, later. I was definitely going to need a window seat. I needn’t have worried; the bus was less than half full.

Not very surprising, you might think? Actually, I was pretty surprised that there were any others like me, stupid enough, sorry, ‘adventurous’ enough, to choose such a mode of transportation. Why the hell bus it? Hell being the supposed defining word…

Money was nothing to do with it; a one-way ticket had probably cost me more than a return flight to Morocco, let alone to Poland… I decided I must be travelling with a bunch of aviophobes, having recently met more of these than I realised were out there. (Perhaps they could form a powerful anti-aviation support network. Something to tap into…?)

But then I realised that this assumption of mine about my fellow passengers presumed something. Something that was similarly presumed by friends, family and acquaintances: that, of COURSE I was going to fly to Poland! How else does one get from A to quite a distant B? Such assumptions are two sides of the same rather persuasive coin – that the idea of flying has so monopolised our imaginations to the point where it no longer becomes a choice among choices, but the only way to travel. So, the only people who don’t travel this way are either a) crazy, like my good friend #1 feared, b) puritans, like my even better friend #2 surmised or c) whimpish, like I myself deduced….

However, I would like to point out that, on this occasion at least, neither a, b, nor c applied to me. Low CO2 was a bonus – true, when I’m in the mood, I like to keep my eco-image as shiny as possible ;) But it wasn’t the main reason I chose to go slow. There’s just something so much more relaxing, time-expanding, psychologically soothing, even meditative, about travelling overland – measuring out the miles as they exist on the ground, sensing the graphic changes in road surface beneath you, seeing the gradual changes in landscape and culture and people as you drive through it all instead of flying over and above it. Allowing yourself the space and time to prepare yourself mentally and physically to a new place, as well as making sense of that place within a geographical, ecological and architectural context, is so valuable and important to arriving invigorated, inspired and excited. You have just driven thousands of miles, you are a little tired, yes, you probably haven’t slept as comfortably as you would have liked to, but you have arrived – at last! You have not been teleported via a giant metal tank, stepping out into generic Airport 2 before you have had time to swallow your imitation sandwich having left prototype Airport 1, a voice-over thanking you for ‘choosing’ easyjet….

But really, there exists a greater choice, dear consumer, not just between BA or Lot (ehem, that’s Polish Airlines to you). Having cycled to Geneva last summer, hitch-hiked to Morocco, eurostarred it to Paris, and, yes, bussed it to Poland, it’s a shame such luscious alternatives are not advertised as loudly by most, if not any, travel agents. But they do exist. Of course, they are not for everyone, and are not even always the most appropriate option – who am I to tell you to get on your bike? But, as long as we can still imagine a world without airports, runways, jumbo jets, or 747s, then that’s a step, admittedly not a long-haul flight, in the right direction. As long as we know the alternatives, then flying can take its place as a choice amongst a genuine selection…

Meanwhile, back on the bus, friend #3, who is supposed to be meeting me at the bus terminal in Warsaw, calls: ‘Which airport are you arriving at again…..?’

* * * * * * *

For slow travel info visit: http://www.loco2.co.uk/ or http://www.seat61.com/ :)

Food for thought (Keeping our decisions Conscious): http://www.planestupid.com/ and http://www.marklynas.org/2007/8/28/heathrow-the-most-important-protest-of-our-time