There is a place in Warsaw that genuinely scares me. It is located behind Ujazdowski park, between the Embassy of France and the Embassy of Germany. It is not even a place, really, just a spot. An object. An installation. A telephone booth. It is white in colour and in order to reach it you need to walk on the wooden footpath platform that leads you over the green lawn. The actual door to the booth is quite rigid and it takes an effort to get it open. Once inside, there is a heavy thud and an odd feeling of anxiety that intensifies as you pick up the receiver and hear the whooshing sound of wind. Then you notice a memorial book, and some strange dots of instinct and imagination start to connect. I have once dreamed this place up, I have seen it in several of my nightmares. The idea comes from Japan, from a man who had built a phone booth just like that in order to talk to his dead cousin. It is with a heavy heart that I put down the receiver and leave the telephone booth. Not because there is no one. But, rather, because there are too many, and the wind is not loud enough.
In Mochnackiego St., in the centre of Old Ochota, lies the best cafe in Warsaw. It is called La Buvette and it was opened a few years ago by a French immigrant from Alsace. The man looks like a less glamorous Johnny Depp and you can often see him in the cafe cutting bread or talking to someone about Strasbourg. The menu is brief but to the point: French wine, warm tartines (for which we are willing to come every day), cheese, baguettes and ham. The place offers authentic snails and even desserts, but that is not why you are here in late September. You come because the evenings are already cool, but you still want to sit on the small terrace surrounded by historical architecture of Kolonia Lubeckiego. Because all you want to do in autumn is to defy autumn. La Buvette is one of the best kept secrets of Warsaw, and the ideal place to do it.
Saska Kępa is special. While I will never prefer it to Kolonia Lubeckiego, it is an absolute thrill to come here on a warm Sunday in early October. Interestingly, there is little to no striking architecture here. As you walk away from the National Stadium and Rondo Washyngtona and enter Francuska St. with its small cafes, hanging umbrellas and broad terraces, you notice square-shaped houses that strongly resemble one another. They should look dull but they don't. Infused with the bohemian past of the area, they appear substantial rather than bland. Besides, there is a man nearby carrying a huge painting. A plaque with the name of a local artist. Two young men shooting black and white photos. There are streets stretching in different directions away from Francuska St., and they reveal local wonders. Saska Kępa looks like a world unto itself - but a generous world, ready to host you on any given Sunday in the middle of Indian Summer.
While I missed the Warsaw Film Festival due to a sudden vacation, there was still time for the ultimate cinema experience of watching the three and a half hours of Scorsese's latest film. Four, in fact, as apparently there is nothing that can make Polish cinemas cut back on trailers and advertisements. Still, the film could go on for a couple of more hours for all I care as the quiet acting of Lily Gladstone gripped me like nothing else in recent memory.
On Halloween, there is a knock on the door, and it catches me off-guard. Because I am not thinking about the kids. I am not thinking about anything as I open the door and see the six of them - in elaborate make-up, dressed as witches. "Cukierek albo psikus!" And oh my God, I'm not prepared. I have nothing, and they are waiting with a sinister kind of patience. I tell them to hang on for a minute, return to the apartment and grope for cupboards seeking desperately - seeking anything that remotely resembles sweets. Nothing! Will apples do? Black tea? Avocado? In the end, there is a cautious sigh of relief as my fingers detect a cardboard box at the back of a top shelf. Belarusian sweets, two years old, abandoned and probably stale. But they are my only hope - and soon I reemerge from behind the door and hand them over to the little witches. There is an uncomfortable pause. Apparently, they had been expecting something else. Still, they take the box, mutter their collective gratitude and vanish on the dark landing. Halloween is big in Poland. I have to remember it next year.
The Central Station in Warsaw is a lonesome place. Or it can be when the evening settles down, crowds disappear and you wait for someone. My old professor of English Literature emerges from behind a faceless railway bakery and we embrace and try to cram a million words into a brief meeting. There is so much to say, in English, in Belarusian, in Russian and even in Polish, before his train to Poznań and before the station is switched off (because it has to be switched off, at some point), that we often say nothing. "Do not come back to Belarus", he insists before we say our goodbyes. "Do not even think about coming back". The Central Station, meanwhile, is empty but never entirely dark.
