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/