On the way from Krakow to Auschwitz (which will always sound as 'Oswiencim' to my ears), the guide, a big and emotional Polish girl named Katarzyna, keeps asking trivia questions and talking about the economics and the eugenics of it. For the time being, we agree and we play along. After all, no amount of books, articles and films (no, not even my trip to Dachau a few years ago) can prepare me for what I am about to see. Because the scale is... well, there is no word in the English dictionary that could adequately explain the scale. 'Staggering' is nothing, and 'overwhelming' is weak. There is a point, after the stories of blood and guts and vomit scratched away from the floor of the gas chambers before a new group of prisoners is brought to the slaughter, when senses leave you and you look at the familiar trees and the mountains around the camp and you feel this is not just about the Jewish riches and the ethnic cleansing. This goes well beyond that, into the abyss that no one could ever explain, or even begin to make sense of... And the word? Well, perhaps 'unbearable' could do.
Hučna Fest is now an annual event - a development which is both wonderful and rather tragic. Held between the Vistula and the ever magnificent garden on the roof of the Warsaw Library, it is an event for immigrants. Mostly, it attracted me due to the conversation with Alhierd Bacharevič. Not always eloquent (good writers do not have to be good speakers; as Nabokov once put it, "I think like a genius, write like a master, and speak like a child"), he was nonetheless quite animated this afternoon and read out expressively from his recent autobiography. Still, I come away with a book of poems by Ángela Espinoza Ruiz who signed my copy of her Belarusian poetry with a child's hand and a memorable line. A true poet, then.
While I can take shopping malls in small doses, Stary Tarasy is the place in Warsaw I absolutely cannot stand. Literally everything about it deprives me of the will to live - the design of its roof, the wandering teens, the smell of Zara home, the inevitable fast food. Everything. And yet this was the place where I ended up watching Oppenheimer. The film is, of course, Chistopher Nolan at his overwhelming best, and a welcome return to form after the boring and impenetrable Tenet. For a short while (well, not too short, as the film lasts a whopping 3 hours), it seemed like I forgot all about the place where I was. And I am not too sure that Barbie would have done that.
I have long realised that going to Żoliborz is almost like going to a different town. As you get off the tram soon after Warszawa Gdańska, on Adama Mickiewicza street, you find yourself walking through a narrow park towards the Warsaw Citadel. It is a picturesque walk that culminates in an area that lives entirely in its own world. Old Żoliborz is one of the richest places in Warsaw and the part of it which is located between the circular square of Thomas Wilson and the snake-shaped alley of Andrzej Wojciechowski, houses a luxurious private sector with grape-covered balconies and stone sculptures in carved patios. In the summer, the sector looks especially attractive and blinds you with its lush greenery. Local residents can often be found in a Spanish wine bar nearby (WineTu), where they blissfully chill on the midday terrace to the sounds of American jazz and the clinking of Sunday glasses. It is a different Universe, and inevitably, you want some of it.
Finally, Krasiński Garden has to rank as one of the best parks in Warsaw. With its calm pond and the tasteful facade of the palace, it manages to be both striking a reserved, and steadies my nerves quite effortlessly as I hurry to Bonifraterska street for the wicked and cruel canal treatment.
