Rested and refreshed the next morning, I rose early to visit the Lublin Cemetary before breakfast. I love cemetaries; they are extraordinarly peaceful places. Seeing the resting place of people just like me, who were once so vital and who laughed and loved and ate and made love and now are forever silent makes me mentally revisit what is important in life. The Lublin cemetary was exactly what I had hoped for - leafy, well-kept and almost deserted.
As I ambled I found myself wondering, as I usually do in cemetaries, about the people buried there, what they were like, who their families were, what they looked like, if they liked school, or sport, or building model aeroplanes, or never got a chance to do any of those things. I felt sorry for some of the people there who looked as if had been a few decades since anyone had last stopped by for a chat, so I bought some red orchids from a lady outside and laid them on one of the graves.
My serenity quotient now sufficiently high, I wandered into the heart of Lublin with breakfast on my mind. It wasn't yet 9am and Lublin was still revving up, and the streets crawled with Poles rushing to work and school. I was excited to find, on my way in to the city centre, a long pedestrian street crammed with cafés and bars with terraces just waiting to serve me ham, toast, sausages, cheese and tomatoes.
After some nutrition and coffee, I set out to explore Lublin:
Frederic Chopin street - a prerequisite of every Polish city:
A statue of Jósef Piłsudski, important figure in Poland's regaining of independence in 1918:
Some gorgeous Polish/Soviet style architecture in the main square:
Buildings in the main square with detailing and cozy looking bars underneath:
Me trying (unsuccessfully, again) to take an auto-portrait of myself with the town hall in the background:
Lublin castle, frequented by ye olde Polish kings and converted into a prison:
Courtyard inside Lublin Castle:
The lions, on guard against intruders:
There were gorgeous vibrant colours at the open air market. I spied a white shirt that I liked,but when I picked it up I realised it would only fit Naomi Campbell after a week of particularly aggressive dieting. I wanted to ask if they had a bigger one, but the only language I could manage was hand signals. I showed the man the shirt, and then put my hands wide apart. He pulled one out to fit Luciano Pavarotti. I laughed, and made a sign with my index finger and thumb, indicating small, and pointed to myself. He pulled out another one, more suitable to my size. "Tak, dziękuję". First hurdle overcome, but now how to pay? Usually I would just hand over a note large enough to be plenty, and wait for the change. But I was relaxed, and confident, and I decided to see if I could manage to create some cultural connections.
Me: "Cena, prosze?" (Price, please?)
Him: Something unintelligible in Polish that vaguely resembled "pięć", which is five.
Me: "Er, pięć?" (Hopeful look)
Him: "Nie, nie." More Polish.
I decided to change tack at this point. I held up five fingers, and said "Pięć?", and then 10 fingers, and said, "Pięć-pięć?" He smiled, flashed his hand three times, and said, "Pięć-pięć-pięć". Aha. Fifteen złoty. I took it out of my purse, and he smiled, and said in English, "Twenty-five?". "Nie," I replied, "Twenty-five: Pięć-pięć-pięć-pięć-pięć!"
Laughter all around (no doubt at my atrocious pronunciation), and I was glad that I had stretched my communication skills that little bit, although I shouldn't have been too surprised at my success. If there is a universal language, it is surely the language of commerce.
The simple things in life are often the best - in this case fresh, local, seasonal produce. If only we could get this kind of quality food so easily in Western Europe. Even Spain, supposedly more epicurianally traditional than other European nations, is falling prey to the food industrialisation and globalisation which means our oranges are more likely to come from Kenya than Valencia.
The pedestrian main street, later in the day:
But I had come to Lublin as a detour to Zamość, so it was time to head to the bus station and make my way. I very adventurously decided to abandon my reliance on my map (read: couldn't be arsed to get it out of my bag) and get back to the hostel only on memory, which is quite adventurous of me when you take into account my total geographical disorientation in all situations. Luckily, Lublin is not that big and I made it back to the hostel a) without incident and b) faster than planned. I said goodbye to the caretaker, loaded up my rucksack, my backpack on my front, and set off to the bus station.
As I was walking through the park I got a few admiring looks and nods from the Lubliners, as if to say, "A girl like you travelling alone carrying that heavy-looking bag is pretty brave, so goodonya!". I felt a real connection with them at that moment, like my energy and enthusiasm was the same as theirs, that they had felt that and wanted to acknowledge it, that we shared an appreciation for the out of the ordinary. Perhaps this is too much to read into a smile and a nod, but for once I can be sure they weren't just perving at my chest (backpack in the way). I sometimes think we are so used to relying on words that we underestimate how much an expression or gesture can communicate. Removing yourself from your verbal environment, and submitting yourself to an alien world where the writing is only pretty pictures and the conversations are jumbled syllables, there is no recourse but to pay attention to the other 90% of what people are saying. And it is saddening to realise how many messages pass you by, unheeded, most of the time.
Once at the station, the attendant managed to convey to me that I should wait at Peron 19 (thank goodness the Polish use arabic numerals!) but for all my wandering up and down the station, platform 19 was nowhere to be seen. Unable to ask for directions, I went back to the attendant and said, in my best clueless voice, "Autobusy, Zamość. Peron 19", to which the attendant replied, "Tak, peron 1", in a tone that conveyed her estimation of my intelligence (roughly that of a sedimentary rock). I tried again to get my point across. "Peron 19?" I asked, pointing one way. "Peron 19?" I repeated pointing in a different direction. The attendant finally got the drift and pointed me in the right direction, and off I went. Turns out if you keep going and going, seemingly out of the bus depot, you will find Peron 19. It didn't look as if Zamość was a very popular destination, but I had heard lots of wonderful things about it, so trying to dampen any expectations, I climbed into the minibus and commenced the soaking in of the rural Polish landscape.
As I ambled I found myself wondering, as I usually do in cemetaries, about the people buried there, what they were like, who their families were, what they looked like, if they liked school, or sport, or building model aeroplanes, or never got a chance to do any of those things. I felt sorry for some of the people there who looked as if had been a few decades since anyone had last stopped by for a chat, so I bought some red orchids from a lady outside and laid them on one of the graves.
My serenity quotient now sufficiently high, I wandered into the heart of Lublin with breakfast on my mind. It wasn't yet 9am and Lublin was still revving up, and the streets crawled with Poles rushing to work and school. I was excited to find, on my way in to the city centre, a long pedestrian street crammed with cafés and bars with terraces just waiting to serve me ham, toast, sausages, cheese and tomatoes.
After some nutrition and coffee, I set out to explore Lublin:
Frederic Chopin street - a prerequisite of every Polish city:
A statue of Jósef Piłsudski, important figure in Poland's regaining of independence in 1918:
Some gorgeous Polish/Soviet style architecture in the main square:
Buildings in the main square with detailing and cozy looking bars underneath:
Me trying (unsuccessfully, again) to take an auto-portrait of myself with the town hall in the background:
Lublin castle, frequented by ye olde Polish kings and converted into a prison:
Courtyard inside Lublin Castle:
The lions, on guard against intruders:
There were gorgeous vibrant colours at the open air market. I spied a white shirt that I liked,but when I picked it up I realised it would only fit Naomi Campbell after a week of particularly aggressive dieting. I wanted to ask if they had a bigger one, but the only language I could manage was hand signals. I showed the man the shirt, and then put my hands wide apart. He pulled one out to fit Luciano Pavarotti. I laughed, and made a sign with my index finger and thumb, indicating small, and pointed to myself. He pulled out another one, more suitable to my size. "Tak, dziękuję". First hurdle overcome, but now how to pay? Usually I would just hand over a note large enough to be plenty, and wait for the change. But I was relaxed, and confident, and I decided to see if I could manage to create some cultural connections.
Me: "Cena, prosze?" (Price, please?)
Him: Something unintelligible in Polish that vaguely resembled "pięć", which is five.
Me: "Er, pięć?" (Hopeful look)
Him: "Nie, nie." More Polish.
I decided to change tack at this point. I held up five fingers, and said "Pięć?", and then 10 fingers, and said, "Pięć-pięć?" He smiled, flashed his hand three times, and said, "Pięć-pięć-pięć". Aha. Fifteen złoty. I took it out of my purse, and he smiled, and said in English, "Twenty-five?". "Nie," I replied, "Twenty-five: Pięć-pięć-pięć-pięć-pięć!"
Laughter all around (no doubt at my atrocious pronunciation), and I was glad that I had stretched my communication skills that little bit, although I shouldn't have been too surprised at my success. If there is a universal language, it is surely the language of commerce.
The simple things in life are often the best - in this case fresh, local, seasonal produce. If only we could get this kind of quality food so easily in Western Europe. Even Spain, supposedly more epicurianally traditional than other European nations, is falling prey to the food industrialisation and globalisation which means our oranges are more likely to come from Kenya than Valencia.
The pedestrian main street, later in the day:
But I had come to Lublin as a detour to Zamość, so it was time to head to the bus station and make my way. I very adventurously decided to abandon my reliance on my map (read: couldn't be arsed to get it out of my bag) and get back to the hostel only on memory, which is quite adventurous of me when you take into account my total geographical disorientation in all situations. Luckily, Lublin is not that big and I made it back to the hostel a) without incident and b) faster than planned. I said goodbye to the caretaker, loaded up my rucksack, my backpack on my front, and set off to the bus station.
As I was walking through the park I got a few admiring looks and nods from the Lubliners, as if to say, "A girl like you travelling alone carrying that heavy-looking bag is pretty brave, so goodonya!". I felt a real connection with them at that moment, like my energy and enthusiasm was the same as theirs, that they had felt that and wanted to acknowledge it, that we shared an appreciation for the out of the ordinary. Perhaps this is too much to read into a smile and a nod, but for once I can be sure they weren't just perving at my chest (backpack in the way). I sometimes think we are so used to relying on words that we underestimate how much an expression or gesture can communicate. Removing yourself from your verbal environment, and submitting yourself to an alien world where the writing is only pretty pictures and the conversations are jumbled syllables, there is no recourse but to pay attention to the other 90% of what people are saying. And it is saddening to realise how many messages pass you by, unheeded, most of the time.
Once at the station, the attendant managed to convey to me that I should wait at Peron 19 (thank goodness the Polish use arabic numerals!) but for all my wandering up and down the station, platform 19 was nowhere to be seen. Unable to ask for directions, I went back to the attendant and said, in my best clueless voice, "Autobusy, Zamość. Peron 19", to which the attendant replied, "Tak, peron 1", in a tone that conveyed her estimation of my intelligence (roughly that of a sedimentary rock). I tried again to get my point across. "Peron 19?" I asked, pointing one way. "Peron 19?" I repeated pointing in a different direction. The attendant finally got the drift and pointed me in the right direction, and off I went. Turns out if you keep going and going, seemingly out of the bus depot, you will find Peron 19. It didn't look as if Zamość was a very popular destination, but I had heard lots of wonderful things about it, so trying to dampen any expectations, I climbed into the minibus and commenced the soaking in of the rural Polish landscape.
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