As we drive into Łódź late in the evening, on a glum Sunday, Tricky starts playing one of his recent songs. "Take It There" is the perfect soundtrack for the city whose unnerving charm has long become legendary. And it is all true. All of it. The abandoned buildings with punctured eyes, the sinister looks of drunk teenagers, the trams that move in disgusting slow-motion, the dim Sunday shops that look permanently closed. "How far are we from the centre?" I ask a friend. The friend grins: "This is the centre". Indeed. Behind it all, however, there is a rich history of Polish film-making (Wajda, Munk, Kieslowski and Polanski all studied here) that barely even teases your senses. Increasingly, though, as we trudge through the twilight fog, I start to notice the small details: a girl in pink, a red glimmer in an abandoned window, a bizarre similarity between the main square and Piazza San Marco in Venice. The square in Łódź, however, is broken, dismantled, permanently taken apart. David Lynch's favourite city, no less.
Before Łódź, however, there is the OFF Festival in Katowice and a threat of rain. A resourceful young man at the entrance is shouting something about the quality of his ponchos and the impending showers. The ponchos, the young man insists through his roaring mouthpiece, could save our lives. Indeed: the forecast is implacable. Still, it does not prevent desperate festival-goers, Silesians and tourists alike, from getting in. The OFF Festival is one of the biggest festivals in Poland, and this year's line-up is a sizzling proposition. While I have not yet caught on to the brilliance of Jockstrap and King Krule, I am here for Spiritualized and Slowdive. And it is all worth it. The crowd is manageable, and the toilets do not make you lose hope in humanity. Most importantly, though, there is a lot of great music. Via electrifying American gospel, via Brazilian folk from Belarus, via The Strokes' Is This It performed in its entirety by a very capable Polish band, we will all get to see the pixie-like figure of Slowdive's Rachel Goswell who will be as amazed as everyone else: because it will be long after midnight, and the rain will not have started.
The sad thing about Belarusian Kupalauski Theatre is that they do not have a venue of their own. This time, in mid-August, they are performing in an experimental music theatre in the north of Warsaw. Worse, the said theatre is located inside a shopping mall, by a local multiplex cinema. Do we really care, though, as we walk through a very long hall and enter a rather small room filled to the brim with people who look intelligent, hungry and somewhat ill at ease (among them: artists, journalists, book publishers, politicians). We are all here to see the new stage production by this great theatre-in-exile: "Geese-People-Swans" by Alhierd Baharevich. It is, in fact, an adaptation of the second part of Baharevich's celebrated novel Dogs of Europe, and they do it faithfully, with slight changes that seem warranted and to the point (the bizarre sci-fi ending, for instance, is all but gone; the tinkering with dates also works). As the actors walk on to the stage for the final bow, everyone in the room is in tears. Still hungry, still intelligent - but no longer ill at ease.
The National Museum in Warsaw is currently holding an exhibition of art which it has acquired over the last couple of years. The room that I am most interested in is, of course, the room with a dozen or so Marc Chagall's painting. This is actually my second time at the exhibition: I am starting to fall in love with Chagall as I get older. All of a sudden, I see great warmth in the colours and elaborate child-like lines. The highlight, to me, is My Life Between Vitebsk and Paris from 1954. In the center of the picture, in the hands of those unfading lovers of Chagall (one of whom has the eyes of the artist, inevitably), there is a bouquet of flowers dividing the canvas into two halves. Above, there is Paris with its breathtaking rooftops and the obligatory steel tower. Below, there is Vitebsk, which I have never been to, but which I recognise at a glance.
Bielany, while not exactly the most mind-blowing district in Warsaw, is still worth a visit. Old Bielany in particular has two streets that are among my favourite places in the city: Płatnicza and Kleczewska. Quaint old architecture, cobblestoned road, gas lanterns, rose gardens and a bakery called Dej (one of the best in Warsaw).
