2010 Tartu-Odessa-Tbilisi, Part6 / Warsaw Train Station - Warsaw - Warsaw Train Station

Text: Me
Photos and other stuff: We



Warsaw train station - Warsaw – Warsaw train station



Elusive Warsaw. I find it hard to write about you. You give me stories, yes you have, but you haven’t become a solid memory. There is something ethereal about you. As soon as I leave, your integrity, your oneness seems to evaporate.
There was a palm tree. That made me happy. Partly a reason for all of us, unconcealed, for to be on the road was the possibility to prolong warmth, for them for the length of the trip, for me - hopefully, to some extent - for the whole circle of the year. Now the sun was shining (occasionally) and a huge palm tree, a proof that we were doing all right as compared to all this chill and rain that had accompanied us until.
It was morning and we had to drink coffee. No rush, that was the general mood. We sat down at a street cafe from where the palm tree was reassuringly visible. The stupidest thing one can do in a new city is to try too hard. Run a museum marathon or pursue for a demanded adventure. And end up drained of energy, tongue hanging well down to a waist coat. Let it embrace you, let the pace happen. Drink coffee, chat, take pictures of each other. And go and get some beers. That’s a nice start for a day in a strange city. Start walking. Walk without aim, turn or not following local signs, impressions happening here and now. We ended up in the garden of the university. Wondered around, discovered unknown plants with huge blossoms, sat down at a balustrade with a beautiful view. Had some beer, scratched our initials next to names of lovers and those city space explorers who feel that their discovery, their arrival is as important as the ones before and after. The theme of the university library came up, He knew that this building is impressive. We figured out where it lies and took an aim to it. Bought more beer on the way. Reached the library. Said our “oo!’s” and “aa!’s”, the architecture is completely worth it, but didn’t want to go in. Wandered through the entrance hall, out again from the other side, on, up to the top of the building. There’s a garden. A wonderful lush greenery, diffused borders between up and down, on, around, next to and in the building. We stayed there for hours.
/I bought two postcards from this entrance hall. One depicted a man without a face, bent down under back full of masks bound to bundle. Other had a suited man from waist down on it, and a suitcase carried by this man. Suitcase was just falling open, autumn leaves and faces dropping out. I love them, postcards. It is a compliment, nowadays, if someone, for no reason of a red-letter day sends you a postcard. He or a she, this one, has spent one’s time to make this effort, for to produce a real thing, a piece of something, a value, what will then travel honestly through time and space and will surprise you, the recipient, with its tangibility. It’s not common for us to put anything else than money and effort of purchase into gifts. A postcard is one’s time and performance, an actual value turned, but not converted, to a token of value. One can’t buy time. Postcard carries a piece of presented time without the measured mediation of money. And yet it is an obsolete medium of message. /
We saw couples taking their wedding photos in this garden. This is always a sign that you have found a spot of local pride of generally agreed beauty (cf Colosseum). For us it wasn’t an alert for mainstream, no, we were by the side of it all, constant flow of tourists, we were sitting on a bench deep in the bushes and doing well with our beers and secluded in our bubble that we had brought along from the roadside. There was voyeurism around us and we gave it another angle.









We strolled on, finally; reached the old town. There’s a square on the edge of it. Every time I go there, I feel like visiting a place where I’ve maybe been to, this “maybe” being similar to what you inherit from dreams, or childhood travels. I can’t even tell how many times I have been there, really. There were breakdancers performing in front of the monument. This time and that I know, She took pictures of them with my camera. And yet, now, already later, I find once again my memories about and from this square being mostly evaporated. Solid pictures depicting those rather average breakdancers and that’s it. “There are nice houses there,” I could say, about my memories, but that doesn’t actually take visiting the place. Could be a lucky guess.
We somewhat wandered around the old town itself, inside it. I have pictures to prove it to myself. And ended up in a round-shaped bar. A very cute one, almost nonexistent type in Estonia – layers of history and traditions of past times mixed with modern details and tastes made up the interior, people making a contribution for the atmosphere. All kinds of people, young and old, local and foreign, some with fancy suits and some with oversized taste for trend. No seats, some bar-perches, most people were supposed to stand by the thin board attached to the wall at about chest level. That was a type of gulp-and-go place. Coffee, of course, selection of drinks - but a small glass of beer being a norm - and some light dishes on offer, sandwiches and the like. A perfect lunchtime venue, humane and with some temperate per-mills. Again, an interactive book I liked to read. We had some beer and sandwiches, me quietly reading and enjoying, made our explorer-initials on the wall amongst others, and went on.
Another aimless stroll ended up in a remaining part of Warsaw Ghetto. We passed through it on our way back to the train station. I don’t know how correct it is to call it “a monument”, nevertheless it is one of the most impressive monuments I’ve seen. A street sided by empty houses, in contrast with surroundings by their style, a cut in city reality. You walk this street and think; huge black-and white portraits of people, photography’s truth value at its best looking down at you from walled up window holes of the buildings, and if that could go unnoticed, then same kind of portraits hanging down from wires connecting two sides of the street hardly can. A history’s lesson to learn, I hear sometimes being said.
It started raining. That was no drizzle any more, that was a sound downpour. So we ran, and I, as little as I wanted to admit it, ran to meet my Comrade.
Might be that all this ethereal Warsaw-issue can be addressed as a task to overcome my first Warsaw memory. We were coming back from the Czech Republic, I think, another one of those bus excursions so popular back then. I was about 17. We were supposed to spend the night in the bus. It was during some kind of a pause when one of the bus drivers approached me and asked: “What do you do at nights?”. Confusing, for sure. Those drivers usually completely avoid dealing with people behind them. I said: “I sleep.” The thing was that he “had noticed” me being talkative, or social. Or something. Actually, I have no idea what had he noticed, but he asked me to give him some company during the night, to have somebody to talk to in pursuit of avoiding sleep. Not for all the night, of course, just as long as I want to, no sweat. The other bus driver needed some sleep to be fresh the next day. I agreed, although with serious second thoughts – I was sitting next to a girl I covertly (at least so I thought) adored, fairly to no avail. But there was some win-win quality to it. Getting some karma-credit from the bus drivers side and give more space for her, for more comfortable sleeping, and at that age a feeling of doing something for everybody’s benefit was much more of an ample cause.
When all others fell asleep it was time for me to climb to the front of the bus. There were limp limbs and an occasional head hanging to the aisle, pitch black shadows in the restless dim darkness of the road and its traffic. So we sat there for hours, like pilots of a space vehicle carrying the crew in cryogenic sleep through the darkness of the space. Car lights as passing stars.
We talked about everything. Very slowly, sometimes having gaps between the words for several minutes. Even if some sleepers close to us heard us, it most probably sounded like primeval Nordic lullaby.
I got a personal pee stop, somewhere along the way. Our dark starship, engine silently humming, waiting for me to get back from my spacewalk. I felt important.
Around half past four we were deep in Warsaw. Soviet apartment blocks passing by, endless rows of gray buildings lined up by broad gray lanes. And suddenly a statue of a bear standing on a rock, far, visible and gone again, all gray. The driver gave me a road atlas of Europe, where Warsaw was two to two centimetres stain, and asked me to help to choose a correct way out from the upcoming roundabout with five or six exits. We took wrong turn at least three times. It is not easy to turn around a full size bus, even with the somewhat more loose traffic rules of the night. The other bus driver woke up. Probably he felt seasick, finally - after all this whirling - in that weird coffin-like drawer they have for sleeping, and came to us, pointed the right way out (he was a pro of night-time Warsaw navigation), and let me go to sleep.
Grey and dark tones of block houses and a stone bear in the midst of a desolate night. Elusive, deeply surreal experience for and in a young mind. Seemingly harder to overcome than presumed. Fuck, compared to that trip, all other Warsaws are as real as a sci-fi movie.