Not again!

Yesterday I found myself yet again in a Warsaw medical centre. At home I visit the doctor for flu shots and script renewals. In Warsaw I visit the doctor because I am actually diseased. At home I have to wait for an appointment. In Warsaw I walk straight in. At home, most visits to the doctor are speedy affairs: in Warsaw each visit involves a thorough going over. At home antibiotics are easily prescribed: in Warsaw they are prescribed with considerable caution. At home, my doctor speaks English: in Warsaw, it's an adventure finding an English-speaking doctor.

At least the experience is becoming more familiar. I know now that you pay before your consultation. That you knock on the door of the allocated room, rather than waiting for the doctor to call you. That an appointment time is flexible, and you often get in long before the designated time. That your visit results in the purchase of a pharmacopeia of symptom-treating, over-the-counter-medications. That no matter how much you beg for an antibiotic, you probably won't get one.

Yesterday's visit was organised by my Airbnb host, Jan, who not only found a practice with English-speaking doctors, but made the appointment, drove me there, and offered to stay with me. I booked in with an English speaking-receptionist, and went to Room 8. Then there was a glitch. My doctor didn't in fact speak English, and negotiating my health in French (her other language) was as impossible as negotiating it in Polish. So she took me back down to the receptionist who organised time with another doctor, whose English was wonderful. My appointment was for 10, and even with all this argy bargying, I was actually out of the centre, business completed, by 10. A quick trip to the Apteka and I had my nasal spray, cough suppressant, eye medication, and cough lollies. I have a script for antibiotics, to be filled on Monday if I'm no better.

Of course, merely visiting a doctor creates a cure. I am on the mend.

 

 

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Ogròd Saski

Across the square to Saxon Gardens

Guards and cleaners at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Saxon Gardens fountain

Blazing red

Deep summer shade

Water tower

Across the lake

Enigmatic elephant

Prospect towards fountain

Glory

 

Ogród Saski is 15.5 hectares of garden in the centre of Warsaw. It was opened to the public in 1727, one of the first publicly accessible parks in the world. Last time I visited it I was negotiating treacherous icy paths under the skeletons of trees: now it is a luxuriance of deep summer shade across a blaze of red geraniums and cannas which almost burn the eyes with their brightness. Mosquitoes found it – and the flesh resting in it – pleasureable too.

The two immovable guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stood impervious as women wielded brooms around them. Sandstone statues lined the avenue, representing abstractions such as Geography, History, Arithmetic, Astrology, Glory. The fountain gleamed white under the blue sky. An inexplicable yellow elephant loomed near the playground. The small lake spouted workmen and fountains.

 

 

Springtime in Mariensztat

I can only show you summer in Mariensztat – have a look at my Warsaw neighbourhood in spring!

 

http://travelingilove.com/?p=2307#jp-carousel-2327

 

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Bonding with books

My granddaughter doesn't take kindly to strangers, even doting babcias. She screamed when she first saw me and for a few days took evasive action whenever she came too close in her busy trotting around in search of experience, or the right toy for just now. I was a bit concerned: I only had a few days to charm her before her parents left her with me for the day while they learnt baby first aid.

She's fascinated by books: “book” was one of her first words. So I held a book up tantalisingly and murmured grandmaternal nonsense about the pictures. She edged a bit closer, and then realised I was there and backed off. But gradually the temptation was too great, and she leant on my knee. Eventually she said “Up” and climbed onto my lap.

She still covers her face occasionally when she sees me. I know that trick: if I can't see you, you can't see me, and maybe you're not even there. But sometimes she'll koala up me when she needs a place of retreat, or a view of a passing aeroplane, even when there are other alternatives.

 

 

 

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Normandy landing in Poland

This morning I read my friend Christine's post about her encounter with World War 2 in Normandy – http://dadirridreaming.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/normandy/

In Poland too there is a celebration of the 1944 landing of allied forces in Normandy, when the Polish Air Force gave significant support. These images are taken from old photos, and displayed along the fence of the Botanic Gardens in Warsaw, telling some of the story of Polish airmen in World War 2.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sun-prints in the park

Today I'm feeling relaxed. I ambled out late, and made for Łazienki Park. My eye was captured by sun blotches under the density of northern hemisphere trees, and suddenly I could see leaf prints made by the sun everywhere. Some of these are in Łazienki Park, and some in the Saxon Gardens.

Please indulge this photographic eccentricity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Festival of posters

On my previous visits to Warsaw I have enjoyed the outdoor gallery attached to the fence of Łazienki Park. This time, the exhibition features posters, as part the International Poster Biennale, hosted by Warsaw since 1966. The artists featured are U. G. Sato and Jianping He from Japan and China. Sometimes the point of the poster is very obvious to me: sometimes the meaning is obscure, but always the design is pleasing, and often also clever and amusing. The most straightforward ones are ads for exhibitions or events, and comments on environmental issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Warsaw: settling in

 

A strange feeling, arriving in the familiarity of Warsaw, without the urgency of “only two days and I've got to see everything.” I've not done much except notice posters on the Łazienki fence that need a closer look; register a poster exhibition at Wilanòw; discover that the mime festival is on again; and been tempted by a Suzanne Vega concert. I've eaten out at the pub just across the way, taken the family there for dinner, driven my airbnb host nuts with washing machine dilemmas, understood the strange re-routing system of weekend buses, peered into four large marquees set up with board games and earnest players along Krakowskie Przedmieście, discovered a new public loo, and bought bus tickets from a kiosk without common language. Most of my energy has gone into recovery from that mad wonderful dash through five countries, and into rebonding with my grandchildren.

My apartment at Mariensztat is very convenient, but also quite small. It remains to be seen how two people not used to living together manage for six weeks. It's only a short walk up to Plac Zamkowy, past the statue of a woman with a chook and a basket of fruit. The corner of my street is ornamented by owls, a worn one nesting on the corner wall and a metal one, crosseyed and black against a grey sky.

I love the sense of a longish stay, where I don't feeling I'm wasting a place so far from home if I'm not out and about every minute.

 

My route up to Plac Zamkowy

 

Looking back towards my apartment, just on the curve

 

The woman with the chook and basket of fruit

 

My view across to Plac Zamkowy as I walk up the hill

 

Corner owl

 

Metal owl

 

 

The owls are for Franki and Paula.

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Grandtwins

Let me catalogue some of the delights of seeing my Polish grandchildren again after five months.

The way they move with a forward tilt at a semi-trot.

Their delight in drinking from a real glass – or putting spaghetti into it.

Their sure footedness, even when they’re looking up high and pointing at a plane.

The way they wander off in the park, focused on iridescent bubbles or a coveted toy.

Maja’s confidence clambering onto a whale on springs and making it bounce wildly, or pulling herself up a ladder or onto a bench.

Janek’s delight in a purloined duck on a stick with flappy feet, and the way he ran to me and cuddled up with the duck hidden behind us when someone else showed an interest.

Maja playing contentedly by herself inside a train cubby house.

Janek stomping through a bed of geraniums and releasing the characteristic geranium smell.

The pair of them in my apartment, noticing mirrors on the ceiling, and other things I hadn’t seen.

Both of them sucking on bones scavenged from Tata’s rib dinner.

The way they kept us on the hop exploring Mariensztat square – the fountain, the puddles, the little boy statues.

The whole gloriousness of being eighteen months old.

 

Are you satisfied, Auntie?

 

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Train journey: Prague to Warsaw

I arrived at the railway station ridiculously early even for me. My usually cool room felt hot at 5am, so I took off as soon as I was ready for my last walk down the hill to the station. I'd been so fixated on a route I'd mapped out for myself, I didn't see a much simpler alternative. It took a lightly inebriated man with no English, standing next to me on the metro, and responding to my baggage, to show me a direct route to the station, which took me no time at all. No eerie corridors that went on forever. No escalators soaring into the empyrean. No puzzling over directionality. No daunting flights of stairs. Just one change, and a short escalator. Thank you, stranger.

I used the time to sit in the sun, prowl around the magnificence of the station, drink what has become my habitual espresso and change a variety of left-over currencies into złoty. I was very glad to see the end of forints, and I had enough Polish money at hand for taxis, bus tickets, dining out, nappies and food when I arrived.

I was eager to reach Warsaw and less than committed to photographing out the window on this trip, although a mischievous little boy sitting opposite me took delight in putting his hand in front of the camera whenever I did brandish it.

Then I heard that my grandson was in hospital, and the train got slower and slower (it really did) until it was an hour late. He was fine, but in for a second night, while they monitored him, fearing pneumonia. So after a quick dinner my daughter went back to hospital to spend the night, and while we waited for M. to come home, his mother and I communicated incomprehensibly across a monstrous language barrier which had no gateways except grinning. Our granddaughter was asleep, so we couldn't communicate through her.

Which meant that I'd had a good night's sleep when I first encountered Maja, and she screamed at the sight of me and koala-ed up her real babcia. Exactly her reaction to the terrors of sand and sea at Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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