winter in warsaw

i have never fathomed traveling to poland and yet here i am in poland. in one of those intensive workshops that give you no opportunity to see anything about the place other than the hotel room.

so i'm not so disappointed.

i did try to be a little bit of a tourist though and attempted to book an evening city tour. they had many options: the jewish tour, the communist tour... in lovely classic Nysa 522s but they were only available on weekends and i was traveling back then.

and so i compensated by over-eating everything that was particularly polish and by "engaging" with local poles by messaging with my tinder swipes... or not. of course i didn't understand i thing they were saying in polish!

i thought of my one pole friend - who hasn't lived in poland for awhile - so i didn't try to call her.

it felt like russia to be honest.

it's the first time i ever really thought about eastern europe, about what life might have been like during communism. about the fickleness of nationalities. one of the conference girls i ended up spending a lot of time with, hates the question "where are you from?" she tells me her grandmother's nationality changed three or four times in her lifetime and yet she never moved.

when her grandmother was a little girl, it was called the austro-hungarian empire, and then czechoslovakia after world war 1 and then slovakia in '93. it was called the slovak republic under nazi germany and czechoslovakia under soviet rule and each time they were forbidden from speaking certain languages.

and so she doesn't feel much for nationality in much the same way her grandmother doesn't.

and i found this amusing, being a nomad who never grew roots too deep to find that even when you do, your surroundings can change so much and so frequently they render you the nomad.