full circle

 

we're back in the new old country, Philadelphia. I'm having reverse jetlag so here i am blogging first thing in the morning to say thanks, M and D for asking me to do this again and for everyone who's been following along. I'm so glad we took this trip, it wasn't the easiest and it's going to take me a while to really understand how everything in this puzzle of the past and the present fit together but that's for another blog :)

in the meantime here are photos from above of the mustard (and other) fields in Poland and Germany. You can really see the difference in farming approaches from this perspective:

last few hours back in warsaw

from the movie The Balcony which was filmed in the Saska neighborhood here in Warsaw:

A found the apartment from the movie and we're staying a few blocks away:

random interesting graffiti of Polish artists. There were a few others I missed like Krystyna Feldman. This is an actor, Marian Kociniak:

the symbol of Warsaw is a rusalka or mermaid:

someone's apartment garden:

poppies growing wild on a corner:

in the Łazenki Botanical Gardens:

an old gigantic Quercus robur (oak):

Acorus calamus in the gardens:

my photos were rushed and don't do this place justice. this is another view of Blikl. the first time we are here it snowed!

an imposing building with eagles on top:

approaching the building that was a gift to the people of Poland from Stalin and now houses cultural institutions like theater and dance:

we stopped at the bar in part of the building for our last hurrah snack and to see what it's like inside. the bar:

a lobby:

looking back at the bar:

maybe stairs going to a mezzanine?

here are a couple of views of the building surrounded by the contemporary shopping malls which is such an odd juxtaposition:

this is possibly the entry to the theaters. i went to look for the restroom and it's the room lit up at the end. the glass door is where the spiral staircase is: 

and this is a view one of the huge malls that surround the cultural center:

from a train compartment

i could take more pictures of this spectacular landscape but i would never put the phone down and see the countryside for myself. so here are just a few from the trip to warsaw from lublin. i might be tempted to take more.

 

Jozefow and Zamosc part 3

the train ride to Zamosc wasnt too long and the landscape we passed was so picturesque. The light here has a way of making the landscape appear to be glowing at times. 

on the ride out of the forest I thought about my grandparents living in this tiny village in the middle of the forest thats now a kind of resort with luxury vacation homes. i thought about how my grandfather would walk through the woods to the nearest large town, Zamosc, for his tailoring work, maybe to buy fabtic or to sell clothing he had made? I thought of how forgotten by time they must have been. Im not sure my grandmother left jozefow until they were forced to flee in the fall of 1939 when she was already in her twenties. A found some pictures online of Jozefow before the war:

and here is the rynek or market square of Zamosc as it appeared last night and where we had dinner at a restaurant called Werona:

we passed the castle walking to the last train back to lublin and i snapped some pics of that and also tried to capture the last rays of light from the train window: