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I learn a lot on my trips, about myself and other people, as well as this crazy world we live in. Some trips have been a pure delight, like my pilgrimage to New York in 1978, which was the first time I was more than 100 miles from home.

Poland 1999

Tony
2004-01-28 10:17:31

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Birch Forests

I learn a lot on my trips, about myself and other people, as well as this crazy world we live in. Some trips have been a pure delight, like my pilgrimage to New York in 1978, which was the first time I was more than 100 miles from home. Another life-changing trip was when I first went to Amsterdam in 1984. I learned a lot about enjoying myself on those voyages of discovery. Other trips have provided valuable life lessons, sometimes harshly learned, like the last time I went to the Netherlands a few years back. My visit to Warsaw in early 1999 was a sobering trip. I learned something about the connection between geography and history with cruelty, and how that affects the ways people treat one another. There were times when I felt really frightened, and longed for the familiarity of home, but most of the time I was my usual wide-eyed self, clumsily stumbling into situations that by turn amused or baffled me.

Things got off on the wrong foot (literally), when I hurt my leg getting off the plane in Frankfurt. During my one day in Berlin I hobbled around with quite a bruised shin, and when I hit the sack rather early at 9:00 pm, it was a relief beyond imagining that I was at last horizontal.

All day long I'd been humming a tune I'd listened to on the plane on the way over: "Valse Triste" by Sibelius. I hadn't heard it since college, but I remember playing it over and over on the cheap stereo I'd bought back in 1978 just so I could listen to classical music. I fell asleep humming it, and next morning as I waited for my train to Warsaw, I was some sort of walking (limping) broken record. It's a morose piece, and I would soon discover that my entry into Poland would be a bit downbeat. Perhaps that couldn't be helped: it's a haunted land, with more sadness per square mile than most places in the world.

I thought a train-ride through birch forests ...