A Polish friend messaged me this morning with the news that she’s presenting a paper at an academic conference and one of her co-panelists will be discussing my book. Looking at the program listing that she attached, I saw that a professor at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin will be talking about Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, as well as another book about Poland by another American. I googled this author and learned, with dismay, that she is an esteemed anthropologist, the recipient of numerous academic awards. Surely, she wrote a deep, well-researched, important study of Poland. My book, by contrast, is a mix of descriptions and anecdotes from the two and a half years I lived in Warsaw. I hope the professor is not too hard on me.
We gave up on The Four Seasons (the series, not the concerto) after two episodes, finding it silly and glib. Though I did enjoy the dinner scene when the three couples are discussing vacation ideas and someone suggests Warsaw. "The New York Times says Poland is the new Portugal."
I was delighted by this evidence that my favorite country is finally getting its due. (Even though a google search turned up no such quote from the Times.) And, naturally, I thought: the more interest in Poland, the better for my memoir. But I would not like Warsaw to be overrun with tourists the way that Lisbon now is. As a flat, often overcast city far from the sea - and close to Russia - it probably doesn't have to worry too much about massive popularity.
Today is Polonia Day, honoring the approximately 20 million Poles who live outside Poland. It is such a large and historic diaspora that it has not only its own name, but its own day.
from Falling into Place: A Story of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer:
"The morning of May 1st, as I dressed to go out, Hania once again urged me to be careful. A service was going to held in the cathedral, after which a protest march was planned, as a counter-May Day parade.
"On the street I passed a worker, a tragic figure in a comic book outfit: a soiled cloth cap; an ill-fitting grey suitcoat, shiny with age; purple bell-bottom trousers. He was walking away from the buses that would have transported him to the parade in his honor."
Later, after the service, marching through the city:
"We soon made a right turn, to avoid a paramilitary unit holding carbines. "ZOMO do domu!" (ZOMO go home!) people chanted. Also, "Who are you serving?" A young mother watched from a balcony with a baby in her arms; another woman leaned out of her window and clapped rhythmically as we passed. I took in my fellow marchers, the trees green with buds, a world awakened, and thought: Prague. Warsaw. The Eastern European spring."
Yesterday I watched Rick Steves’ PBS special about Poland. He starts in Krakow and follows the Vistula to Warsaw, Torun, and Gdansk. (A wonderful Rabanesque travel book could be written by someone sailing the length of the Vistula.) Steves covers the basics, most of which were familiar to me, and leaves out two of the things that appeal to me most about Poland: the humor and the folk art, much of which is touched by the humor. But I’m happy that he’s shed some light on what he justifiably calls “perhaps Europe’s most underrated and surprising country.”
I met a Ukrainian couple over the weekend, visiting from Boston. They came from western Ukraine, near Lviv, the part of the country that before the war was part of Poland. (The Polish writer Stanislaw Lem was born in Lviv.) They said that in their former town, schoolchildren are now taught Polish instead of Russian.