The nostalgia that normally accompanies a return to a former home is magnificently tempered when that home was formally communist. (One of many lines cut from my story about Warsaw that appears in the August-September issue of National Geographic Traveler.)
Every time I return to the city it looks better than it did the last time I saw it, with the exception of the carved wooden figures at Cepelia. The themes are still the same - angels, saints, nativity scenes, wedding parties, Christ worrying - but the execution seems a bit mass produced. They've lost a little of the naive quality that made them so attractive. I'm glad I collected when the collecting was good.
