three days in łódź and way too many words

Jan 25, 2007 22:52



15th January, I learn to use public transport.

Yes indeed. My father and Pani Marysia head to Warszawa for their respective appointments (about three hours by car) and I stay behind to Do Something New. In the morning I wander into the big bad world of Łódź by catching the 70 bus into town, walking to the wrong tram stop (right side of the road, not left. I keep forgetting that.) and then walking back to the proper one, and then finally doing rather well. I travel the length of the city centre to Manufaktura, a new shiny shopping complex with many expensive stores. So, yes, on with the photos.


  

You probably can’t see anything in that first photo - as I walked down the street towards the bus stop I passed this bush, filled with adorably fat little sparrows. Of course, they’re brown, and so is the tree, so… ahem. Second photo is a building on the corner of… a street. Anyway, it’s pretty.


  

It has finally become apparent to me that I can’t take a photo with proper right angles. Everything is crooked! But it’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. I’m trying to correct my faults. In any case - Manufaktura is a pretty interesting sort of place. It’s on the site of an enormous old factory, and all the buildings are still there. The people building the place decided to keep the old facades and tear out the buildings’ innards, replacing the old stairs and machinery with clean walls, smooth surfaces, and specialty shops. It’s a brilliant idea, actually - as you can see, the buildings are gorgeous.


  


  

I have to tell you, I’m actually rather in love with Manufaktura. It seems a shame to me that they’ve built a big block of shops in the middle of the place, but at least they’ve renewed all the older stuff… it looks rather like ruins, actually. In any case, there’s a big square, fountains, big lawns, a tram that travels the length of the square, everything you could possibly expect to see… and these awesome multilingual bins. The “welcome” signs on the doors are in multiple languages, too.


  

Okay, so on the left is the view down the square to the stores. To the left are specialty shops and fountains. To the right is some kind of huge warehouse. And in the second photo, view to the left of the entrance, old buildings next to huge graphic-art billboards.


  

On the way back from Manufaktura; and a statue of John Paul II on Piotrkowska. There are little candleholders on the ground next to the statue, though I don’t know if you can see them.

People still care for the Pope here, and not just as a religious figure. Polish people have a culture that respects and remembers the dead. All Saint’s Day is actually celebrated here; cemeteries are brightly lit in the middle of the night from all the candles lit by family members, some from many generations down the line, in respect to those who came before them. And the cemeteries are not brightly lit just on that one night, either, although it definitely helps to have a specific day to remember.

Regarding that statue… I rode past on a tram that stopped near the church later that week, and there was an elderly man standing a few metres away. As I watched, he removed his hat, held it to his heart, and bowed his head towards the statue. I am still surprised to see things like that, people like that, who still have such faith and trust in something, and I’m pretty sure that level of respect in people is slowly disappearing…. But I digress.


  

The aforementioned church, on Piotrkowska.


  

On my way home, I got on a tram a few streets away from Manufaktura. Three stops later, the driver told us they were redirecting all trams as there had been a “malfunction” of some kind. All trams were turning left instead of going straight, and switching to different routes. Perfect for my first day of Getting To Know Public Transport.

Anyway, so instead of standing around, I set off through the city following the tramlines. Two stops later, I passed the “malfunction”, where one tram had broken down and another had stopped behind it. Yay. So yes, another four stops and seven streets after that, I decided I’d walked enough and waited for a tram, which showed up within a few minutes. Yay again. Fifteen minutes and another four stops later, I switched to a bus. So, photo #1 is of some corner as I walked through the city, and the second is the bus on the way home. Look! Merge to your left! I can’t deal.


  

The last stop. Sadly, I didn’t know that the bus I was on didn’t go to the stop I came from in the first place, so I legged the last few kms home. Yay, more walking!


  

Not to say the walk wasn’t delightfully pretty.


  

Let’s just say my legs were a bit sore the next day - not even from the distance, but because of the fact that I felt it necessary to speed everywhere as fast as my legs would go. Oh well.

17th January, I spend an evening at a café watching a film about Russian avant-garde artists of the 20th century.



Dominika works… actually, I’m not sure what it is exactly that she does. Once every few weeks, though, she organises an evening where there’s a huge kind of art discussion group. This time it was about Russian avant-garde artists after WWI and all this other stuff, and then an art historian/gallery curator and an artist (who hate each other) argued with each other about theory and artists while barely veiling their contempt for each other. Oh, it was glorious.

Anyway, it was held at a place called Mała Litera (trans = Little Letter), which was a really gorgeous café-bookstore-music store, in a little nook off a street called Trauguta. Pretty!


  

Totally in love with that table, by the way.


  

Dominika with her mother-in-law (very firm handshake) and cousin Iza on the left; Dominika with the art historian/gallery curator.

Nice, quiet way to spend an evening, sure, but very interesting. Plus the film was in English, so I actually felt a little more “in my depth” than usual.

19th January, storms with hurricane-force winds knock an entire street of power poles down in our area and we are without electricity. Oh, okay. This day was awesome. On Thursday night I went to visit my mother’s friend Joanna (the one she’s known for almost 40 years, not “a good” 40 years… sorry about that ;)) on Piotrkowska and was meant to head back home to Laskowa in the evening, but Joanna and her husband told me I was staying with them. So, folded out the couch, listened to the crazy wind rattling the windows, the power went out for a few seconds (they live in the very centre of the city, and Piotrkowska is one of Łódź’s tourist spots - long street, no cars, beautiful buildings, rickshaws, etc), and yes, all in all a good night. They fed me like crazy.

So, the next morning Marek (the husband) drove me to Laskowa… where I found out the power went out the night before and was still out. Great. All well and good - the day was spent quietly reading, cleaning a bit, getting stuff ready for my trip to Warszawa the next day.


  


  

The sunset was nice, too - the sky cleared a bit after the clouds that had been hanging around all day, so there was a bit of brightness before the night set in.



I, being stupid, showered at about 3:30, an hour or so before the sun started to set. I say “stupid” because the water was fuh-reezing (no electricity meaning no hot water), so yes, the shower lasted all of three minutes. But I washed my hair like the good prissy girl I am, and felt fresh, to say the least (cold water does that to you). Thank goodness the house uses gas stoves.


  

The kitchen, all done up in candles; the sun officially sets and Pani Marysia begins to make dinner.

Segue! We had an oil lamp. I fell a little bit in love with it, actually, as I am of the novel-reading kind who think that oil lamps belong in books about sailors and lighthouse operators. You know, the ones in yellow plastic rain ponchos with long white beards. Anyway. So! Oil lamp!


  



Oh, come on, admit it - it’s pretty.


  

Pani Marysia, using a torch to see whether the fish was ready.


  

Kitchen corner… I was in charge of salad. Whoo!

Okay! So, ten minutes into boiling the potatoes and a chat about how Marysia loves guests and people call her house the tram because it’s always full of people, her mother (Babcia, trans = grandmother) called from downstairs: “Igor and Kasia are driving to Łódź and will be here in half an hour.” Um, what? I swear I didn’t even hear the phone ring. But Babcia wasn’t done: “And Roma said that Adaś would be around later, too!”

Roundup: Igor is Pani Marysia’s nephew, and he’s in his mid-30s. Kasia is a year or two older, his partner and, as I referred to her, his half-wife: she is post-divorce, he is three years into his. Not pretty. In any case, they live together with her daughter and one of his daughters, while his ex-ish-wife lives with the other. (Oh, and pron = kuh-sha.) In any case, Igor and Kasia were going to visit on Saturday night for a few hours, and I was going to miss them, what with heading to Warszawa early Saturday morning, but apparently their plans had changed and it was Friday night instead.

Adaś, if you’ll remember, is Roma of the Half-Village’s son, returned from Dublin for a visit to ye olde motherland, who I was meant to “occupy”, and who was so ridiculously, obviously a set-up. I love my life. Maybe I should write a novel.

So! Igor and Kasia arrived at about 5:30; Adaś showed up after six. What I loved about the whole kafuffle was how Pani Marysia was so very calm about everything: “Oh, okay. Well, light some candles and get out the bread. We’ve got plenty of time.” Um, okay. And the good cutlery, too?



Babcia made the trip upstairs to join us for dinner, in a truly rare occurrence. (As I have since learned, she has a soft spot for Adaś.) We sat down for awhile and ate the majority of dinner, and at some point I left the table to get a jumper from my room. As I stepped out onto the balcony to take a breath of air I looked towards the side gate, where someone with a rather bright torch was making their way onto the property. My timing was, as always, impeccable. Headed downstairs to open the door, met Adaś coming up the stairs and having trouble with the gate, and we headed up to dinner. Yes, girls, he was dreamy. In that round-faced, bright-eyed, short-haired, intense kind of game-playing way.

Anyway, so we headed upstairs to the table, where he took Marysia’s spot next to me, and the evening Began properly. At this point, Kasia and I had already drunk half a bottle of wine, so there was nothing to do but polish off the rest. Babcia and Marysia sat at the ends of the table watching the four of us talk, and occasionally I saw rather sly gleams in their eyes. Marysia kept making comments along the lines of, “But you have to admit, this candlelight is rather romantic,” and Babcia just stared at Adaś for most of the time, listening to him speak. The group of us got along very well, strangely. Igor and Adaś said they’d take me to Moscow (hell yes) and we talked about Igor and Kasia’s daughters, and apart from that I don’t remember much of the conversation. Oh, except for a fantastic story Kasia told about a restaurant in Poznań (the town where she and Igor live) where every time you order a cheesecake, a guy dressed as Zorro comes out and does a whole sweeping production and - this is the part I’d like to see - sings and dances. So, of course, she went there for a girlfriend’s birthday and ordered seven cheesecakes. Poor Zorro.

Before nine, Igor and Adaś left to buy some more alcohol (ha). They came back as I was packing for the next day (not at all strategically with the door open so they’d ask questions, nooooo) and when I came back to the table Igor started in with a whole “You should go to Poznań, not Warszawa” speech. And from there it got a little crazier - Adaś and I were ordered to make a trip to Poznań in March for a few days of insanity, to which we both agreed, of course, and yes… Too much detail in all this really, I know, so congratulations to you if you’ve read this far. It was a good night, though - warm, friendly, interesting. At one point the guys and I disappeared to my room (mind out of the gutter, please) and ended up having one of those wonderfully horrible half-serious, eye-opening Deep and Meaningfuls you can only have after a few bottles of wine. The whole night was surreal, though - spots of candlelight and darkness in the rest of the house. Adaś went home after midnight and Igor and Kasia went to sleep, candlesticks in hand as they disappeared down the stairs. As I said, surreal.

Okay, that’s definitely enough for that one.

lodz

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