Holly-Lodz

"I'll sail this ship alone. Between the pain and the pleasure. I'll sail this ship alone. Between the sharks and the treasure."

Pretty exhausted. The wooden hut I'm staying in doesn't have Wi-Fi, so the time I usually use to sort of decompress, I used instead to walk all over the damn place. Which I'm glad I did, but now I'm at a place that sells wheat grass, since it's the only way to check my fantasy baseball scores.

Woke up early and did some press materials for a play I'm writing called Tulips of Fury. It felt good to be productive in that way. Quick little walk to make sure I didn't miss nothin', and then said a nice fare-thee-well to the fairy fays at the Hanza Cafe on Pieraky Street.

They took back the Princess Key, and gave me a nice piece of coffee. I drank it and found some of that gingerbread Torun is famous for. It sure was spicy!

The morning was so gorgeous, I walked across a giant blue bridge. It sure was spicy! I was treated to some beautiful panoramic views of this old, walled medieval town. It dodged the Great War and the War to End All Wars, so keep sticking and moving, Torun, and you'll stay hot forever.

It was a seriously long walk, and my mind started to play tricks on me like, "You aint gonna make it! You read the schedule wrong! You're going to the wrong station! You can't win! You play the black and the red comes up!"

But it was the RIGHT station, and I was invigorated by the walk. Winner, winner, pierogi dinner. I was set up in a train car with three sweet old ladies. One of them was an enormous marble slab of a person. Just an immovable seeming force of grandmotherness. She read romance novels with one eyebrow raised.

I arranged and edited some pictures, and I read An Appointment in Samarra.

Torun was in Pomerania, and Lodz is in Western Mazovia in case I want to make an Indiana Jones-style map later with a moving red line.

We passed so many junkyards. Piles of cubed aluminum, coils of wire, mountains of reflective waste. I pictured robot seagulls circling, red lights flashing on their antennae.

At all the crosswalks, the people of the towns waited for us to pass. The bar was down, and it was our fault. They idled on their bicycles and held bouquets of fresh flowers in their arms.

I drank mineral water and listened to Cat Stevens. Every now and again, I would see one of those crows in the grey cardigans. They're really noble seeming.

Nuns moved up and down the train corridor. They wore little ropes around their waists. A modest order!

Cows ate yellow flowers to give color to their butter.

A scene in Appt. in Samarra reminded me of something, and I couldn't... and then remembered it was Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. I really enjoyed that thing.

Lodz was coming up. Wootch!

I cracked myself up thinking about some kind of alphabet authority being like. We gave you a W, Poland, and you wasted it on a V sound. Now you want a W sound, and we're all out of letters. You can have this L with a line through it. There, that's your W.

A woman named Ergaya met me at the train station. She's a musician/singer who rents out a bunch of apartments. She was very nice, but this place is... I am... I have been in nicer places. The key doesn't work. There's no wi-fi, there's no light bulb in my room, the sheets are dirty, and the pump don't work, cos the vandals stole the handle.

But, whatever. I wanted to pay $16 and not $160, so I got what I paid for.

Dumped off my stuff in the Ergaynomic room, said good-bye to Ergaya, and hit the town.  Finally, a real city! None of your fruity squares selling magnets and wooden shields. This is a place where people work for a goddamn living.

I walked for miles. There's street art everywhere. Tough-looking girls with long braids drank beer in the street, kids kicked colorful balls around filthy alleys. I got some pierogis in a place that wasn't expecting a honky to come honking in. I just pointed, and they gave them to me. They were good.

I couldn't find my way into the Old Cemetery, so I went all the way to the Radagast train station.

A sad place, the departure point for the Jews sent off to the death camps. This place had the biggest ghetto in Europe and when the Nazis kept asking for more "workers," the rabbi in charge suggested they give up their kids first. The parents refused. I guess he thought that was a good idea. Maybe it looked good on paper.

Anyway, the order didn't end up mattering. They put them all on trains one way or another and they went to the place where work would make them free.

There were three old train cars there. The signs said they had been used for this purpose. A tour group from Israel prayed and rocked in front of them. I waited for them to leave before I took the picture, and then I wondered why I took the picture.

Sober walk back. I found an enormous mall called Manufactura, which was just insane. It's pretty stunning. Massive old mill converted into a big shopping area, and it's bigger than anything. Mall of America, meet the Mill of Lodz. Hard to describe how cool and red the shops were. People held one another's sunglasses and took selfies in front of expensive restaurants.

Sprung for a cab and went back to the hot plate. Key didn't work. Sat in the hallway for thirty minutes, exhausted. Calmed myself with sweet thoughts of home. I also thought about kicking the door in and paying the thirty cents it would cost to replace it. My other keys are a pair of Doc Martens.

But some goofy dude who also lives there showed up and opened the door. So, I can save my thirty cents to open my own hotel out here.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up very early, find some more street art and hightail it back to Cracow. My time here is winding down. I miss my cat. I wish the cat lady would send me a pic or something. Dear Ruggles. The dear, dear thing.