Everything I’ve read or seen in movies has made Poland out to be a grey, dismal country where people hardly smile and the sun never shines.  But, I should know better than to believe Hollywood, especially when most of the movies made about the country are set during times of war or strife.  Warsaw is bright!  And cheery!  People are laughing and smiling all around me!  Cafes and coffeehouses (the real ones that actually serve coffee) inject themselves seamlessly between historical landmarks.  The sidewalks are clean and wide.  The buildings are painted light yellow and white.  Tall finance buildings reflect the sun down into the city off their big shiny windows.  Saxon Garden is crisp green from top to bottom.  The tulips are still in bloom: red and white petals tempting toddlers riding tricycles and scooters.  Every other person has an ice cream cone, be he or she a tourist, student, resident, or a middle schooler on a class trip. 

I would even say the city is somewhat whimsical.  Does anyone else have a fountain of a mermaid who is dedicated to protecting the city?  And I’ve never seen a city with musical benches.  That’s right: musical benches.  Chopin’s heart belongs to Warsaw, so he said, and when he died in Paris he had it returned to the city and buried in the Holy Cross Church near Old Town.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Realizing that he deserved more recognition outside the church, the city created musical benches, which can be found throughout Warsaw.  Press the small round button on the right side and you will hear a selection from one of his famed pieces.  Look at the center of the bench and you can find the locations of the other musical seats around town.  I saw kids taking turns pressing the button on the same bench over and over in the park.  I think it’s great they’re learning classical music at such a young age!  (And then when they left I made Eric video tape while I pressed it like five or six times at least.  Classical, country, or rock, musical benches are so much fun!)

Oh!  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the four foot tall beer toddling around the main square.  That’s right.  Sure, he’s foam and has sprouted two legs where the bar would normally hold him, but there he is!  Every day he’s just wandering around, not promoting a restaurant or bar, just promoting a pint wherever you can get one. 

And the food is AMAZING!  Mrs. T’s, you can no longer serve me pierogies from your sad little shelf in the freezer section of my nearest grocery store.  I’ve had the real thing and you know what they say…  Ok, I don’t think they have a saying about pierogies, so, um, once you’ve had real perogies in Poland you never go back?  I’ll have to work on the saying, but you get my drift.  Seriously.  Buttery dough covered cheese, potato, and onion melts together and then suddenly explodes with flavor in my mouth.  Ten perogies on a plate and I was stuffed by the end, but I finished every one.  And lest Eric should try to even angle his fork toward my plate?  Bad idea.  I nearly gave him a four-pronged tattoo on numerous occasions.  Yes, numerous occasions even though we were only there a few days.  I had perogies ever day, sometimes twice per day.  They are delicious. 

So where is the dark, sad city I thought I would see?  It’s there, underground.  I didn’t see it and you wouldn’t either.  Everything was so devastated by the Nazis – the buildings, the people, the life Warsaw knew prior to the 1930s – that they had no choice but to rebuild the entire city.  There is barely anything left from the era before and if you choose not to stray from the main path, you may not see it at all.  There is no trace of the blood that was shed, no bullet holes or bombed out buildings. 

And the former Warsaw Ghetto?  What of that?  Surely there must be something left of it, after all, it was the largest ghetto the Nazis created.  Banks.  And a Spanish restaurant.  A park.  And construction of something to come, but no condemned buildings, nothing to denote it in any largely visible way.  However, I did visit a synagogue that is situated in the former ghetto.  Somehow, it made it through the war needing only some repair.  It is small, but beautiful.  There is no tragedy in there though, as it is still a functioning house of prayer.  They are focused on moving forward.  Maybe they have to be. 

But in that park I mentioned, there were people sitting on every bench.  I would guess they were all in their 70s and 80s and they were just sitting there.  They must have seen this before it was a park.  Were they children in the ghetto and now they have come back to enjoy the freedom to sit in the park it has become?  Are they immigrants who came after the war and have lived here since?  Either way, they had to have seen it before.  They must know what the trees and grass now cover up.  The stench of death – thousands per month – the feeling of fear, despair, and hopelessness as friends and family were slowly taken to concentration camps.  Prominent people reduced to begging and stealing.  The head of the Jewish Council who walked a fine line between friend and betrayer to preserve his own well-being.  Sadness and terror where there are now banks, restaurants, and, most importantly to these people, the park they sit in.  We stayed for a little while and many of them didn’t move or talk much.  What are they thinking?  What do they see when they look around?  In the place of former evil, can you ever see good?  With the traumatic experience of imposed terror, can a change of landscape really change anything?

But Warsaw has changed.  It’s beautiful and the people are happy again.  That underlying tension I felt in Berlin wasn’t in this city.  Well, most of it.  What happens when the people aren’t there sitting on benches?  What happens when teenagers start flying through that park on skateboards and moms are pushing perfect strollers carrying smiling pink-cheeked babies?  With no monument, no gate, nothing to loudly denote what it was, will that part of the city be ignored or the atrocities that took place there forgotten?  Only time will tell.

For all its tragic history, Warsaw is beautiful.  The people are warm and welcoming.  The city feels oddly comfortable, when I didn’t think it would.  I respect Warsaw for taking a horrifying history and trying to make a hopeful future.  It seems to me that the city is trying to restore its place as an intellectually and culturally stimulating cosmopolitan. 

But as always, the only way to successfully move forward is with the full knowledge and understanding of the past.  Never forget.  Never again. 

Until tomorrow and the new adventure…

Rachel