One Year A Pole: Part II - Gingerbreadland

  My digital guidebook recommended Toruń as a charming medieval town famous as the home of Polish gingerbread. Say no more. I was sold. It was a sunny Friday afternoon when I arrived, walking the long bridge across the Vistula from the train station side to the old town. I checked into my hostel which was right on the square (rynek) to discover that I seemed to be the only occupant. 

   When I asked the receptionist Jan about it, he responded that they were open... for now. 

   “The boss says we might close on Monday” Jan told me.

    With only my $10 to show for a days work I could see why. 

    I found the town charming. Though I couldn’t quite get a bead on the gingerbread. I didn’t find any. And the two gingerbread museums were closed. In fact it seemed that everything was closing hour by hour. There’s always the river though! And I found the holy mass that evening a grounding reset for my soul. 

   Shortly after dinner I put down my phone, I had reached my self-imposed daily limit.  But another 40 minutes I went ‘bad’ and picked back up the internet. 

   It was then that I saw the news. Borders were closing... all over Eastern Europe. The time had come for my freak out moment. My brain racing, hands shaking, my only reaction “get out”. I devised a radical plan for Sunday, a 4am train to the airport, a mid-day flight to Ukraine. After paying out my dollars by the hundred I put down the phone. 

   I knew I need to calm down. A walk is always the right answer, no matter the question. Quiet midnight streets soothed. As did a few conversations with wise minds stateside. I got to sleep about an hour before dawn, what little sleep I could manage. 

   Waking up I knew I needed to take care of myself as best I could. I did my full morning routine, went for a run, and took a long shower. 

    Since my expensive escape plan seemed like a foolish endeavor, I decided that a better plan than ‘get out’ was ‘stay here’. If I couldn’t stay in normal touristic accommodations... and it’s a global pandemic, then a cabin in the woods seemed like the obvious solution. I searched google maps for most of the day, interrupted only by my panic shop of stamps, vegetables and a SIM card for my phone. 

   I had a few requirements, the cabin had to be within 5 miles of a train station, a church and a supermarket. That I’m way I could walk to everything I needed!

I lined up a few prospects, a dozen really, google can be quite a hole. But one stood out above the rest. I had a good feeling about it, maybe it helped that it had an English name listed next to its Polish one. 

    On Sunday I asked Jan the receptionist if he would call to try and make an arrangement for me, my Polish skills being nonexistent. 

   They picked up on the second ring and an energetic conversation began. Unaccustomed to the Slavic tongue, it sounded bad. Knowing I was an American they asked if I was sick with the virus. When he hung up, after the longest 6 minutes of my life, I found out to my surprise that all was set. 4 weeks at 200 zloty a night. A bit steep, but being a pandemic I figured I’d be spending zero on bars, restaurants, museums, transport etc. 

    * I knew the pandemic wasn’t going to be over in 4 weeks, but I didn’t want to scare off any potential hosts by asking for more. 

   A little later Jan helped me to find a taxi and discuss arrival details.

   Monday morning, closing down the hostel and hitting as many ATMs as I could I made my way to the train station, back the way I had come across the river. My rail journey was pleasant enough. A sunny day, windows that slid down for fresh air, a compartment to myself. But spoiling the pleasure was the fear and uncertainty that was in mind, for me, and I presume, everyone else on the train as well. It seemed as if the world might end tomorrow. 

    When I got to Węgierska Górka, my stop, it was after dark. Well after dark, heck it was after dinner. The station area was entirely deserted. I sent a text to the taxi man, I had made an arrangement, or so I thought. In this rural berg I was at the mercy of the lone taxi. What if he didn’t come, who could I call? I sat there waiting. 

   Eventually he arrived and we made our way up to the cabin. I followed along on google maps, the cell signal faded out. It’s a strange thing to ride through an unknown country in the black of night.  You are curious to know, but only shadows and floating lights come to you, hints, but nothing can be made out. 

  After a brief and somewhat awkward introduction to the cabin, I was... somewhere. After all the tension and travel it was hard to believe it was real.  

One Year a Pole: Part I

  To travel the world as an American in this day and age is still a privileged experience. The world is written in our alphabet. Our fashion is the fashion. And  our occasionally silly domestic affairs make news in every foreign land. 

   The reverse is of course not true. No one visiting New York is offended that signs aren’t written in Mandarin (it is spoken by over a billion people). 

  And so when I was asked what Americans think of Poland, I had to answer truthfully: “they don’t”. I guess for this reason I had no expectations, great or otherwise about this nation. 

   In fact I hadn’t any excitement at all coming here. It was simply an overland route from Scandinavia to the Balkans. I figured I might see a few sights along the way. 

Boy did I! 

  The global pandemic made me an unintentional resident of the land of John Paul II. 

  And you know what I found out? Poland is a pretty darn good place to live. 

   Put most simply it’s the perfect ‘half & half’ of Eastern and Western Europe. 

    I must confess though that my initial impression of this country was decidedly unfavorable. 

   A damp dark lifeless city. Concrete. Hostel guests smoking in the bathrooms amidst multifold signs to the contrary. 

   Daylight brought little change in this perspective. A dull town square, more concrete. 

   Once I got on the tourist trail, so to speak, things got better. Gdańsk is fascinating, even if the March weather was a blend of rain, sun and horizontal hailstorms. At this stage the pandemic panic was creeping into the back of everyone’s consciousness as we maintained our normalcy on the surface. 

  I shared my hostel room with a Pole on a bit of a do-nothing-and-relax vacation. He thought himself better at English than he actually was. Still we managed to converse. He kept insisting that everything was fine, it was all a big scare, and then would laugh the uneasiest laugh I have ever heard. His family must have been practicing that laugh for generations under communism. 

My third morning I awoke listening to a still-in-bed phone call from the next room over. An American, the kind of kid who runs away to Europe because Boston isn’t far enough, insisting to her parents that everything was fine. 

   At the tourist information center they told me that all the museums would be closed from... today. In fact they had already closed a few hours before. Just that morning I had gone to at least one museum in Poland, good thing. 

   The next day the panic hit the populace. I whiled away the hours waiting on the rain. When it finally cleared it was after dark and the moon was peeking it’s head above the horizon. I set out to see the old earthwork fortifications of the city, now a park along a waterway. 

  I walked past 6-story blocks of Soviet housing, across broken cement and past barking dogs. 

  I stopped at a supermarket to buy a donut. The locals were panic-shopping. I watched with serenity and amazement. Their panic shops were so tame, comparing them in my mind to ludicrous American behavior.

I walked into the park. The moon reflecting on the mirrored surface was so beautiful that I barely made it in before I just had to sit and meditate. I sat on a bench, closed my eyes and began to feel the presence of my breath. Then I felt something on my left foot. I startled to my feet. As my vision came to I perceived a fox, just as startled as I, moving away. I grabbed my backpack, said a few exclamations of shock, and carried on my way. 

  Fortunately the fox bite had been of the investigatory type and not an attack. Also I was wearing a shoe. 

  Surprisingly this incident neither rekindled my initial displeasure with this country nor inspired me to consider the spiritual significance of such an encounter. 

It was time to move on.