Manic Bookstore Cafe

We spent almost the entire day today in Łazienki Park. What a beautiful day, and a wonderful place to spend it. When we moved to Warsaw, we were told that we would live "a 15 minute walk from the largest, most beautiful park in the city." And it was true. Wide paths through trees; palaces and amphitheaters; museums and cafes. Throughout the winter we walked in the park every day. On Sundays we went to chamber music concerts in the "Palace on the Water," one of the old royal summer palaces. In unheated rooms we sat on hard clear plastic chairs, gazing at the bas-relief decorations on the walls and the statues crouching near huge fireplaces. While young musicians treated us to Schubert and Chopin and Shostakovich, we tried not to rustle with the plastic shoe coverings we had put on our feet to protect the parquet floors. Then the snows came. We discovered hot chocolate at the cafe next to the palace, and we continued to walk in the park, crunching along th...

I've just figured it out: one of the benefits for language learning of living in-country is that the entire place is your conversation partner. Wondering whether a film I've invited a friend to see has English subtitles, as it did when I saw it during a film festival a few weeks ago, I made a phone call: Kino Iluzjon, słucham .  Czy pani wie, dla filma "We mgle" napisy będą po polsku? będą też po angielsku? The renovated Kino Iluzjon -- very chic! Of course, she didn't actually know the answer, but still, I practiced asking a question. Trying to sort out my children's eyesight, I stopped by the NFZ: Mogę zapisać dzieci do okulista? Also no definitive answer, but I was able to find out what the complicated process is for trying to take advantage of this Polish health insurance I am paying for out of my salary, and I did it in Polish. Waiting miserably in the rain for the bus: To ne jest ładna pogoda, Czy pani wie, już był sto czternaście je...

Somehow this week I've had an extraordinary number of pedagogical experiences. Sure, I'm a professor and I teach every week here in Poland (yes, just one day a week -- what a luxury!), and I have learned quite a bit about myself as an instructor, as a lecturer, as a creator and coordinator of instructional materials over the course of the term. But I am also a student, taking Polish language lessons about once a week with my private teacher, Pani Paulina. And observing some classes and seminars recently has put me in the student seat, which gives one an entirely different perspective. At the unique Artes Liberales  college within the University of Warsaw I've been on both sides of the podium: I guest-lectured last week, and this week I observed "Academic Writing in English," taught by a young Polish PhD, and I attended an international interdisciplinary PhD program seminar. Finally, on Friday afternoon I sat and listened to my daughter's violin lesson w...

Last week my students at the University of Warsaw responded to my assignment and gave terrific presentations on war memorials: one in Warsaw, one in Moscow, one in Murmansk. (Tomorrow another student will speak about a memorial in Budapest.) The "Four Sleeping Soldiers" monument is currently again controversial, because the new metro line being built on the "Praga" side of Warsaw (the right bank of the Wisla or Vistula) runs right through its former location. The class was split. On the one hand, of course, this monument -- like the hated Palace of Cultures -- was a "gift" from the Soviets in 1945. The soldiers represent the Soviet military and economic influence over Poland after WWII, and the location of the statue makes the destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis after the Warsaw uprising of August 1944 that much more bitter -- everyone knows that the Soviets sat on the right bank and watched the Nazis dynamite Warsaw's downtown. The beautiful ...