Afterwards, as Marika generally does, we went to a nearby sidewalk café for lunch with her very pleasant friends Erika (whom we had met the week before) and Marie Louise. Later, Marie Louise’s daughter Jana arrived. Jana spoke very good English, having spent a year as an exchange student in Virginia. She was looking for employment and had a new interview lined up, but she had hoped to get an unpaid internship in Los Angeles. She had never received a reply to her inquiry.
Marika drove us to the Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) and waved goodbye as our Berlin-Warszawa Express headed east. It was supposed to take five hours and twenty-four minutes, but it arrived in Warsaw around 11:30 p.m., twenty-five minutes late.
We were picked up by Agnieszka, the mother of our friend Ania, who is a Polish woman married to an American and living in the Twin Cities. We first met Agnieska in 2004. We were going to be in Cracow, and Ania insisted that we visit her mother in Warsaw. As it happened, getting from Cracow to Vienna by train would have been a lengthy and involved process, so, instead, we decided to take the fast train from Cracow to Warsaw, spend six hours with Agnieszka, and fly from Warsaw to Vienna. She picked us up at the station, took us home for lunch, then gave us a tour of the old town, in spite of the fact that her English was extremely limited. She made it clear that six hours was not enough time to see Warsaw, so we would have to come back. And now we have.
Even though she has now spent much time in the United States, since it is generally in the company of her daughters and, even more, her grandchildren, with all of whom she speaks Polish, Agnieszka still speaks little English. What little she speaks, however, she can communicate very well in. She says that she is too old to learn a new language, having had to learn Russian and German when she was young. Our conversations were a combination of simple English, (extremely) simple Polish and (not quite so) simple German.
Agnieszka lives in a three-bedroom apartment (very small rooms by American standards, but as she said, it was “luxurious” during Communist times) which she had shared with her late husband and her daughters Ania and Kasia, who are now both in America. She is a teacher at a technical high school, and during the school year has a very rigorous schedule, getting up at 5:30, taking the bus to the school, getting out at 5:00, then grading papers, etc. until 2 a.m., five days a week. This is offset somewhat by the fact that she gets two months off in the summer, as well as several holiday weeks during the school year.
The next morning, Monday, August 15th, was the feast of the Assumption, so, after a nice breakfast, Agnieszka drove us to the nearby Divine Providence Center, which is in the process of being built. I didn’t bring my camera along, so I have no pictures. When it is finished, the church will seat 4,000 people. On an upper level, with great views over Warsaw, will be a museum dedicated to Pope John Paul II and Stefan Cardinal Wyszinski, who led the Polish Catholic Church in its decades of confrontation with the Communist regime. At the moment, however, the church is just a huge concrete shell, and mass is held in the lower level, where there will be a Pantheon of Great Poles (currently seven of the three hundred grave spaces are filled). There are shrines with relics of Pope John Paul (I think it is a piece of bloody cloth that he was wearing during the assassination attempt) and the Solidarity martyr (murdered by the secret police), Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko (a piece of his arm).
Nine a.m. mass had two musicians playing an electonic keyboard and singing. Everyone took communion in the mouth instead of the hand. Afterwards, we took part in a Polish-English tour of the facility (we were the only English-speakers).
Then we drove to the nearby Wilanow Palace, which we toured with the use of English-language audio guides (as at the Gruenes Gewoelbe in Dresden). It had been built in the late 17th century by the great Polish king Jan III Sobieski, as his summer palace. Perhaps the high point in Polish history, and a major turning point in the history of Eastern Europe, was in 1683, when a large Turkish army besieged Vienna. Sobieski led a relieving army that attacked and utterly destroyed the Turkish force, leading to, among other things, the decline of the Ottoman Empire as a Great Power, the freeing, within a few years, of Hungary and Croatia from the Turks, and the invention of the Viennese (and, later, any other European country's) cafe—for among the spoils of war found in the abandoned Turkish tents were large quantities of coffee beans. The Viennese tried them and developed a taste for them, later inventing the Sacher Torte and other pastries as powerful auxiliary devices for the better use of this Turkish secret weapon.
The Wilanow Palace was interesting and pleasant, and there were some connections with Dresden. Augustus the Strong of Saxony was also King of Poland and tenant of Wilanow. On one of the upper floors there is a Canaletto painting with no caption but clearly showing the Frauenkirche and the Elbe waterfront.
We had some Polish crepes (nalesniki) and coffee at a nearby outdoor restaurant terrace, then we went back to Agnieska’s apartment, where we had a more serious lunch.
Later in the afternoon we drove more than two hours out to Agnieszka’s dzialka (country house--pronounced "JOW-kah"), in the woods—sort of equivalent to a Minnesotan’s lake cabin, but with no lake. It is small and very simple, but comfortable, and something that she’s put a lot of work and love into. She said several times that it is her life. After less than an hour there, we headed back for the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment