The Flight to Krakow

"The world was full of blue cities, fragrant, mysterious."

Why am I in Poland? Why would I leave my cat and my friends to wander around by myself in Poland?

Beyond wanderlust and a love for Eastern Europe, there are three maybereasons.

1) Growing up, I was told our family fled from here, so it's had a romantic kind of appeal.
2) I lived for ten years in Greenpoint, the "Little Warsaw" of Brooklyn (and I miss it).
3) When I was goofing around in Budapest, I read that Wroclaw was the "New Budapest" (Budapest was formerly the"New Prague")

So, I'll use these as a kind of starting point for how I try and experience the country. It's a place with a lot of (violent/sad) history which I don't want to wallow in. Like, I think the big "epiphany" of my last trip was that I don't want to be a "misery tourist" anymore. I don't need to be surrounded by sad things to feel "normal.."

I don't intend to go to Auschwitz, for example. Though, apparently it's what one does when one is here. All the tourist maps and magazines have cheery ads with a smiling bus on them advertising transport there. You get a tour of a famous royal palace, an ancient cathedral, and the death camps all for one price shown in fat bubble letters.

I'm just going to explore and learn and discover. No real plans other than to drink as much coffee as I can see what kind of street art I run into.

The flight was long and I got a lot of reading done and watched a couple of movies. The man next to me lounged in a blue scarf and read "Das Lied von Eis und Feuer." He gasped in Teutonic surprise and grunted in appreciation as the left side of the book grew thicker than the right.

I was in the dreaded middle seat, but it wasn't so bad thanks to my parents having crate-trained me.

Lufthansa feeds you pretty well. Constant visits with free beer, wine, sparkling water, and hot towels. I was served pasta with zucchini, warm rolls with jam, and a little cup of melon and kiwi wedges.

A kid behind me was pretty drunk. He hit on the people in his row and hooted. He was going to Spain, he said. "You should come with," he told someone I couldn't see, "The owners are going to have a good time." When she asked him "owners of what?" He said, "Never mind" in a tone that meant, "You should mind, because it's excellent. This thing they own is so great."

The German flight attendant kept asking him to "be a compliant buddy, please."

The woman next to me said, "Vat vill happen iss, vee will haff to turn around and go to Calgary to get rid of him. I have seen it happen like this many times. Mein method would be to give him two pills I haff in mein bag. I crush them in his drink, he is out, vee go on flying."

Her TV screen showed we were over Canada. Calgary was noted with a little dot somewhere behind the floating plane cursor. The map pulled out and showed the "PAZIFISCHER OZEAN"

I smiled at her. She didn't speak again, but we were friends.

Drunky passed out somewhere near Baffin-Bucht. I saw him when I went to the restroom. In his green hoodie and white t-shirt, he looked like a pear with a bite taken out of it.

I've forgotten most of my German, but I still take pleasure in trying to translate signs before I read the English. I came up with "The toilets are behind you" for one, and though that is perfectly helpful, it also seems like a warning. So, when we get there, we'll.... don't move. What? Just keep still and don't move. The toilets are behind you.

A beer advertisement became "I am the king on top of a coaster," and that can't be what it really says.

Because we left during the day and were heading to a city 9 hours ahead of us, the sun never went down. There was a vivid stripe of orangeish pink outside the window. It looked like a peach smashed in the gutter. It was like we were dragging a key across a car. The sky was a beautiful blue Mercedes, and we were scratching the paint with our jagged wing to reveal the glowing rust underneath.

People slept. It was like a spell. It was like a curse. I pictured the cabin overgrown with heavy vines. Thorns. Mist.

Across the aisle, a woman near the window opened her eyes without any other movement of her body. She awakened like an actor in a film.

We landed in Frankfort where I had a long layover. I found an outlet, charged my laptop, and ate some salami on a baguette. There was a jewelry store called Christ Diamonds, which seemed like a complaint. They say they'll take us across the river, all of us, but they won't take money... we have to pay in diamonds. Christ! Diamonds?!

A little cart had a giant spool of baked pretzels. Blond boys slept on vinyl chairs with their heads in their sister's laps. People spoke every language. I finished the last 100 pages of A Sport and a Pastime, and the last 400 pages of Of Human Bondage. The latter was mesmerizing. A masterpiece.

Thank god there was no internet on the plane or I would have read about jaw-dropping baby animals doing things I wouldn't believe.

Short little connector to Krakow. Ate a weirdo tuna fish, ham, and cream cheese sandwich. It was like they were joking. It was bright pink, a clown's breakfast. Below, the farms were a succotash quilt of green vegetables and yellow rapeseed.

Thought about taking the bus to the city. The money here is called the zloty. Zloty da-di, we likes to party. One of 'em is worth about 33 cents, so it's three for a buck! Special today!

So... the bus costs 5 zloty and takes one hour, and the taxi costs 90 zloty and takes eight minutes. My face was heavy with sleep. The fairy queen had taken my eyes and replaced them with eyes of painted wood. My back was twisted with the weight of my books.

I summoned the cabriolet and paid the $30.

Very short ride past billboards advertising the price of fish and a beautiful, old brick building. Someone had painted some of the red bricks orange. It was like a child's abacus.

A tiny two-lane road, sloping and curving, canopied with gentle trees led us to the city. The approach was very mild. Wawel Castle rises with apologetic majesty as you approach. The radio played quiet club hits. The volume was set to 1. It was like a lover whispering to you as she passes out in a corner of the disco.

It's just about Easter here, so my hosts are absent. They left me the key in the gas meter. It worked. I'm on the fourth floor of a character-filled old Euro-building. It's gorgeous and ridiculous. I fell in immediate love with the tile and the color.

I expressed my love by falling asleep. Rain tickled the skylight on a slanting roof.

I woke up at 9pm local time and wandered the streets. Glorious hotel signs made red and blue neon sighs against the old walls they're soldered to. I saw churches in the dark, curving alleys, and a wet park. There was a carousel with wooden seals to ride.

An outdoor market was closing. I bought some hot pierogies wrapped once in ham and wrapped again in bacon. They were excellent. I murdered them and fled justice.

A little store was open, and I bought mineral water and a loaf of bread. Next to it, a cafe called Coffeeheaven was also open. It was full of drunks arguing over coins. The bone structure of their faces was so familiar. I was in Greenpoint again. Their swollen, red, unshaven jaws were my Brooklyn.

My heart swelled with love. I felt like I had died and gone to Coffeeheaven.