Journey to Silesia

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

The apartment where I was staying in Krakow was a ten-minute walk from the main train station. You walk out into the street, cross a cute little blue bridge, and there you are. I had written ahead to my hosts in Wroclaw that I would be arriving at seventeen bells, and it's a five-hour journey, so I (does the math, carries the two...) I would need to leave at noon.

I woke up around 9 and finished off my spreadable cheese. My god. I've been trying new cheeses at home from the pricey bucket of blue molds and stuff at the expensive market, but no bold Roquefort gives me a tenth of the pleasure this garbage in the gold foil does. It's heaven! To think the shelves of the Greenpoint grocery stores held them as I passed by in ignorance.

The worried gurgling of the pigeons told me it was Smigus Dyngus Day, Wet Monday, where traditionally you throw a bucket of water on the chick you want to marry. The whole 'burg turns into a wet t-shirt contest. Spring Break forever! I figured, I'd pop over to the station, buy my ticket in advance, percolate over near Coffeeheaven for a farewell toast, and watch some dirndl-soaking tee hee splash splash action in the main square.

At the station, a dude was selling racks and racks of used science fiction novels in the original Klingon. Some real gemstones!

Tried to buy my ticket from machine, but the machine didn't even want to play, so I had to go see the mean old ladies at the counter. The counter is set so weirdly low in the ground, you literally have to go to your knees to order. You supplicate yourself. I confessed to the mean old lady that I wanted to go to Wroclaw, and she looked at me like, "I drew my eyebrows on for this?"

Walked off with a ticket for... 10:30. which meant... I had to run back to the apartment, pack and hurry right back. Could I have asked them to change it to 12? Sure. Did I figure, what the hell, I'm itchin' to get going? You bet.  So, back to the bird's nest, a quick shoveling of the goods, and a snappy return to the station.

Got there in time to feel the train's breath as it rushed past the platform. I bathed in it and boarded.

After the embarrassment of being chased all over that Romanian train, I've finally cracked the code of how they seat you on these things and got it right the first time. I was in a little cage with two other Americans. How did I know they were Americans? Skinny guys with beards.

They were students from Ohio studying in Dresden. They had taken Easter off to crush around in Krakow. We didn't speak much. I read Just Kids, one of them read Oscar Wao, and the other read some dumb thing. They both had working phones, so they apped a bunch too.

The first few days, I kept reaching for my phone at idle moments. Like, out of habit. I'm really glad it doesn't work here. I would absolutely have been on it instead of chasing birds with bread necklaces or looking at messy old paperbacks. 

Whenever I read a long book, I recognize I'm able to do it from long years of reading. Like, it's as much of a habit as reaching for the phone, and I wonder if teenagers have the patience to sit with a book. That's not a judgement. Like, I know I wouldn't have the habit if I'd had a phone my whole life. 

I get attached to books and the things I stick in them. For about a month, I've been using my Yeti Yogurt rewards card as a bookmark. It's been in Of Human Bondage on the bus and on my desk forever. When I finished that book, I stuck it in with a bunch of Polish books, but I saved the card. I keep almost losing it. I keep thinking how silly it is to carry it around here.

Speaking of kids, I saw Frozen on the plane and thought it was great. A few clunkersongs, but some good ones, and a very sweet story with some marvelous moments and some good laughs and cries. Lived up to the hype. Saw the second Hobbit movie and didn't like it. Cheesy effects, bad casting, weird subplots. Just a big cash grab.

Though not quite a pony ride to Mirkwood, my own journey was stirring. The Polish countryside is much more urban than Romania's was (in the area I'm in, anyway). Wroclaw is in a region called Silesia, and you glide past cities like Gogolin and Brzeg to get there. Neither of those showed up on my map.

Train travel is my favorite. Fast enough to get you where you want to go, slow enough to give you a quick taste of it, and you don't have to do anything but observe. I saw so many little scenes. Kids playing with a llama, orchards of slender birch trees, collapsed walls with "Rauchen Verboten!" written on them, men smoking by the riverside.

It's evocative of movies too, the false memories you get from a lifetime of films. It's impossible to see a closed factory and not think of its towers pumping out human ash. The woods all look like sets from movies where people in pea coats shoot people in rags.

There was a strange species of tree that looks like the ones the Lorax likes to protect. Normal looking, but then giant puff balls of leaves dotted throughout. Strange clusters. I thought I was seeing bird's nests at first, but it's some kind of... is it a parasite?

I remembered that my father always knew the names of plants. Like, growing up, that was one of his parental super powers. He could tell you what all the purple stalked and red veined flora of flora-da was. It was a comforting thought. I haven't thought about his love for plants in years. Train travel!

Every station plays out the same scene. A man with a ruined nose is waiting for a family. When the family exits, he places the smallest family member on his shoulders, and they all walk off together. There was no exception to this. There will also be a ruined brick customs house, enormous and old. It will be where the ticket men live. You see them in their smart blue uniforms.

Then you leave. The places are all fascinating. Just past the stations, you see apartments and buildings crammed right next to the tracks. Laundry and daughters hang out the windows. People live there and witness crimes there and punch the sides of their televisions there.

You pause there for a moment or crawl past them and there's a sense that they're places you'll be in but never go to. You're there, but you're not, and so many of them are heartstrokingly beautiful. Sad and wonderful. I groaned when I saw Katowice, like I made a noise like a horse being squeezed too hard. You pass by, and it seems like all the things you'll never do, all the plays you'll never write, all the men you'll never hold, all the everything you'll never adjective. 

And it's RIGHT THERE. You're IN IT, and you've PAID a train to take you out of it.  

Outside of Myslowice there was a destroyed tower that looked like something the Sheriff of Nottingham would have stashed a bunch of chicks and rabbits in. I wanted to climb it, wear Maid Marion's bones as a breastplate and run filming through the alleys. With the lens cap on.

I bought some coffee from a coffee cart. It was Nescafe crumbles with hot water. I can take the fake cheese, but not the fake coffee. I mean, I can, because I drank it, but... 

When I was coming back from the coffee cart, a drunk came charging through the door. The hallway is nowhere near wide enough for two people, so I had to smash myself against the window. Maybe he was counting on that, because I was SURE I felt his fingers in my back pocket. 

Like, my heart was pounding. I was certain I'd been robbed. Like, that was the perfect plan. Charge through the door, lift a wallet when the mark gets out of your way, and push on through. He may think the contact was incidental, and what's he going to do anyway? You're a mighty drunk! 

I wasn't sure what to do. I touched my pocket, and it was empty, empty, empty, and before I remembered I had put my wallet in my suitcase hours ago, I started to follow him, shaking. Then I was like, "It's in your bag, dude. You're fine, dude. Look at me. Look at me. You're fine." 

Also, my pocket wasn't empty. The Yeti Yogurt rewards card was in there. Cracked up thinking how he would have felt if he'd lifted it. 

Pulled into Wroclaw. The Ohio people slipped away without a word, dissipated into Middle American mist. Folks at the info booth were very friendly. Gave me maps and advice and pictures of the leading exports of Silesia by region.

I was two hours early, and my apartment wasn't ready. There was nobody there. The neighborhood is easily the creepiest I've stayed in since I started using Airbnb. The streak had to end sometime. The streets are paved with drunks floating in a swimming pool of liquor, and the only people without sidewalk scars on their faces were hurrying into cars with furtive glances.

Had to hump my lovely lady lumps over to the Old Square just to have something to do. It was stunning. A gorgeous contrast to where I'm staying. Fantastic "Old Europe"-type market area with intense buildings and unusual street performers. A dude did a heavily accented version of "Because the Night" and a strange mime policeman in a tutu did something else.

Kids blew bubbles and other kids popped them. A woman sold kababs with french fries. It was Richard Scarry's Busy Day.

There was also a Starbucks! BOOM! Did I go to it? Fuuuuck yes! Oh, he loves coffee and also embraces commercial imperialism and the slow disintegration of distinct cultures. How amusing. How relatable.

Trudged back to the apartment. I was on time now. Nobody answered the bell. People on balconies across the street checked me out. I asked a nice lady if she knew Dominika my host. Man, she didn't know shit!

Just read on the stoop and a hot, Polish Kristy McNichol chick came up on a bicycle and let me in. The room is basically a couch with Wi-Fi.  That's what $40 gets you in Sketchistan. She gave me the keys and went back to the hardware store or wherever dreamlike Silesian tomboys go, and I washed my face, took off my backpack, and went back out to eat. A man's got to eat.

It was nice to walk around without the "tyranny" of feeling like I had to photograph anything. A woman told me she had two babies and did I have any coins. I had some coins and then I didn't. She had them. 

You know I ate a kebab with french fries. If you know one thing, you know that.

Came back, showered and crashed. I woke up and found the Mets on the radio. I love when they win, and the announcer yells: "PUT IT IN THE BOOKS!" I closed my eyes and thought of how many evenings in Greenpoint I would listen to that voice.

Now I am hearing it in Poland.