Weeks Three/Four: The Move to Warsaw and Getting Settled

The past two weeks have mostly been about getting settled in my new apartment and making contacts in Warsaw, so I'm going to do a combined post.  I booked an apartment for a month using AirBnB, which is a great service that allows travelers to rent rooms or whole houses directly from the owner.  It has been really helpful in exploring places to live both in Warsaw and in Buenos Aires, which is my next stop.

The apartment in Warsaw is very small, but it is perfect and has more than what I need, including a balcony and washing machine.

The view from the entrance.  

My kitchen and washing machine. 

The dining room. 

The wall above the kitchen table. 

The sofa, which pulls out into my bed. 

View from my balcony

My apartment building

Having my own space is wonderful  Hostel life was great for many reasons.  It offered access to a community of other travelers and social spaces.  Even in Berlin, where the hostel was not nearly so social as the Oki Doki, I was surrounded by other people who were trying to get to know the city (or its nightlife) and asking the same kinds of questions about transportation and good places to eat or have a beer.

That being said, I am so thankful for my own bed and for a kitchen.  I've been able to take a shower without my shoes on, and I can go to the grocery store and have what I want and need in my kitchen.

I've been learning to cook some traditionally Polish food, and because I love cooking (and eating), I am really looking forward to all of the culinary opportunities that the Watson will provide.  Before leaving for the trip, I was a vegetarian for 10 years.  I started eating meat again partly because I understand that I will only be able to live and eat in these places once and I want the full experience and partly because I did not want to be the person to decline someone's hospitality in a foreign place.  I am a Southerner and I am essentially bothering strangers for a year, so I am terrified of being rude, and it would seem to be the height of rudeness to say no to someone who cooked food for me.  All that is to say, I am now cooking with meat again, and while I use it less often because it is more expensive, it is also delicious and this year-long hiatus from vegetarianism is pretty awesome (apologies to Caroline, Charlotte, Emily, and Aubrey, among others, for this betrayal).  Here are some of my favorites so far:

Typical trip to the grocery.  Pierogi, onion, mushroom, kielbasa, cheese. I also always have broccoli and some kind of fruit in the kitchen, just so my mom doesn't think I am only eating sausage and pierogi (although it is tempting).  

Pierogi Ruskie, which is stuffed with potato and cheese. 

Spinach pierogi with broccoli and mushrooms. 

Spinach pierogi (they're my favorite so far) with onion, mushroom, and a homemade cheese sauce.

Pasta with kielbasa, onion and broccoli.  

Potato hash with kielbasa, bell pepper, onion, and cheese

In addition to the successful cooking adventures, I have had a few accidents.  One night I was so happy to find pepper in my kitchen that I ground it over my pasta without really looking at the container.  Thinking the red sauce I bought was strangely sweet, I went to get more pepper and discovered the real problem.  I had been grinding chocolate, meant for coffee, onto my food. 

Navigating the grocery without any knowledge of Polish (working on that through an internet program but it is slow going) or any access to wireless data to Google Translate my way through shopping, I generally just try to look at the pictures and hope for the best. Sometimes it works really well.  Other times I end up with mint apple juice, which as it turns out is not really meant for me (that pun was for you Mimi Dunn).  

Despite some struggles, I think that having my own space has been beneficial in terms of really getting to know the city and having to find a social life and take care of myself.  Part of what the Watson Foundation asks us to do is to be present in the cities and towns where we choose to spend our time.  We should get to know the people and places.  Not having the (awesome) social life of the hostel has meant that I do the exploring on my own and that I have to know the bus routes or be willing to ask someone, to learn to communicate how many pierogi I want from the local grocery, to be conscious of where I am walking at night by myself.  It is a real learning experience, and while I am not always comfortable, whether because I am lost or unable to communicate what I want or need or very aware of the fact that I am eating alone at a restaurant, I am already feeling the benefits of these experiences.

Many of y'all will know that I have a terrible sense of direction.  Truly terrible.  If I am driving in a relatively new place and think I should go one direction, I should probably go the opposite.  It's a curse that comes down from my mom and my nana, and it made me particularly nervous given that I had never been to Warsaw or Berlin or any city on my Watson list.  Because I am traveling on my own, I have had to get over this.  At some point during the stay at the Oki Doki, I started to know where things were.  Since returning to Warsaw and moving into the apartment, I am even more comfortable.  Last week I gave someone totally accurate directions in the city.  This is not to say that I do not get lost.  I get lost and fairly frequently, but I have enough knowledge to try again and enough confidence to look at a map or ask someone how to get back on track.  It is also the case that getting lost offers some pretty fantastic opportunities to discover new things.  All that is to say, I am learning lots and getting to know my neighborhood, Srodmiescie, which is the central neighborhood of the city.

Sometimes I feel like a jerk and an idiot, which is a learning experience in itself.  For the most part, people in the grocery or in the small shops where I go to top up my Polish phone card do not speak English. One amazing woman in a phone shop made my day by pulling up Google Translate on her computer.  We talked back and forth and she helped me.  It had been sort of a rough journey that day and I was so thankful for her.

As I learned the other day, however, assuming that someone does not speak English is a great way to make an ass of yourself.  I walked into a local quick stop shop and began gesturing and using fragmented words to describe what I needed to the man working behind the counter.  He looked at me, frowned, and said, "I understand English but I have no idea what you are saying to me."  Although I wasn't yelling or speaking insanely slowly, I had still become THAT person, that tourist, that jerk.  I always use complete sentences now.

Through the stumbling, I am learning and making myself at home.  I have a favorite grocery store where the nice ladies in the produce section put up with and interpret my gestures about how many or how much of what I need.

Warsaw is a really green city.  There are parks everywhere; two across the street from my apartment and a much larger one, Park Lazienkowski, just about a mile away.  On the way to grocery store or to the city centre, I almost always walk through a park, and it has been great to be able to read and enjoy the summer weather.

There are peacocks in Park Lazienkowski, which translates to Royal Baths.  They hang around the tourists unperturbed and enjoy the bread that people bring as a fair trade for the children that chase them. 

The Palace on the Water

Myslewicki Palace

The view from the Palace on the Water

The Old Orangery. There are so many buildings, fountains, and paths in Park Lazienkowski that I felt like I would never stop discovering things.  It was a great way to spend an afternoon, and I'll definitely go back to read and maybe picnic. 

Although I normally walk through the city, there is a great bus system for the longer treks. As noted above, I'm working on my navigation skills and figuring out bus lines is a difficult but useful part of that. 

View of the Vistula River from the bus.  It divides the city. I was taking the bus to Praga South, one of the neighborhoods on the other side.  

The walkway and bike path that run parallel to my apartment.  This is how I walk to the grocery and to the KPH as well as how I walk into the main part of the city.  It is a longer walk but worth it.  

Fountains run along the path and there are benches perfect for reading. 

One of the fountains lit at night. 

A view of the Palace of Culture and Science, the tallest building in Warsaw and a gift from the Soviet Union to communist Poland, during a walk through the city.  

And at night from the bus stop. 

Favorite reading spot.  On that note, I am reading/have read a few things, ranging from Night to Slaughterhouse-Five to the report on queer life in Warsaw that Slava from the KPH gave to me (more below on that).  

I've also been getting to know the wonderful folks at the Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (Campaign Against Homophobia).  Last week after returning from Berlin, I met with Slava, a project coordinator at the KPH, and talked with him about the Watson and possibilities for getting involved.  He has been really great not only in terms of helping me at the organization but also inviting me out to be social on weekends.

This is the rainbow at Plac Zbawiciela (Savior Square) where there are a number of bars.  Slava told me that fanatics have tried to burn it three times now because they think it is a sign of LGBT support when really, as he said, it was just supposed to be a sign of peace. Although there are plans to redo the rainbow again, it stands incomplete at the moment. This is another symbol of the struggle of queer people in Warsaw, where, as several people told me, things are better than in the smaller cities but still problematic. 

I have really just begun lurking around the KPH trying to be helpful and to meet as many queer and queer friendly people as possible, so I am going to focus next week's post on the organization and meeting members of the queer community.

Entering into my fifth week away from home, the reality of distance is becoming clear.  There is a seven hour time difference between Warsaw and home, so while it could be worse, the most convenient times for others to Skype or talk are generally late at night here.
I'm struck at times with how liberting it is to be able to walk down the street and be disconnected.  I have a phone for emergencies but I never use it.  There is nobody waiting on me to get home from the park or the grocery or the bar.  I can take my time and determine my own schedule.

A snail in the park, because it was cool.  Y'all I am really learning to slow down and look around these days.   I'm now the person who stops in the middle of the path to document a snail? Clearly, I laughed at myself after taking this, but why not?  

Sometimes this reality feels to me like the amazing opportunity it is: I get to live independently with a chance to explore something that means so much to me.  I get goofy face in the park when thinking about this, I'm sure.  Moreover, I am able to fill the rest of my days learning about the city or, not to sound too cheesy but, learning about myself and how I respond to living alone or being isolated in many ways, to being unable to communicate with many of my neighbors, to being totally unsure in any number of contexts.  I am already absolutely positive that this year will break me, in many ways, of the mindset that was carefully cultivated during my time at Rhodes.  I will have to move past the need to have an obsessively detailed and rigid schedule because it's an impossibility here.  I have to be flexible when relying on someone else's availability and needs and I have to set new standards for what it means to have a productive day.  That is not to say that I will not still want and value those things, but I am also going to learn to value differently, I think.  While I have moments of "geez this is awesome," I also have moments of loneliness and fear.  The idea of this year is, at times, terrifying in a real way and goes against almost every habit I built at Rhodes over the past four years.  The Watson  has, even just to this point, been an important learning experience for me, and I am both excited and nervous about what other things I will learn.

For the past few weeks I have been particularly thankful for:

1. Slava, Magda, and the very nice people in the community both from the KPH and not
2. The nice ladies at the grocery store
3. A kitchen
4. My balcony
5. As always, my family and friends at home

Thanks for reading and see y'all next week!