Blossoming Brooklyn trips - Easter

I know that it’s pretty overdue but… well during Easter we did go to Brooklyn and it was very nice and interesting so why not write about it now? Do not worry, it was not the only time. In fact it’s almost every week when we go there. To Brooklyn I mean. After all it’s such a fascinating, diverse and huge city, this Brooklyn.

First we went to Greenpoint, the old Polish neighborhood. It was Easter Saturday and after the fast of Friday I was hungry for some Polish Easter specials. We planned that we would shop the ingredients for some dishes I had plan to prepare for Sunday. And the climax would have been a lunch in a restaurant recommended by New York Times (Yeah, I’m sorry to say, but I needed to check NYT to know where to eat there). That was the plan, but as usual we went out later than we had planned. And then we spent almost one hour in the subway. When we finally got off at the Manhattan Av. we were starving and I realized that I didn’t note the exact address of the Lomzynianka restaurant.

Meanwhile, in the middle of Brooklyn, just few a blocks away from Williamsburg – hip nightlife area, we found ourselves on the street that looked like a main street in some country town in the central Poland. The same kind of stores, the same window decorations, the same bills. The stores were full of Polish products, starting with some specialty sausages, sweets or liquors… ending with “Polish”: coffee, tea, black pepper or Nivea cream. Beside groceries there were also Polish pharmacies, boutiques, bakeries, butchers, bookstores, beauty salons, and of course churches.

Because we spoke French between us neither the salesmen or the passers by recognized me as a Pole. Undiscovered I could hear few commentaries in my mother tongue… fortunately rather nice. It’s always fun to observe your own countryman when you have an opportunity to do it from some distance. It can be also annoying. But the strongest feeling then in Greenpoint was astonishment how it is possible in the middle of the New York City. Even the people where the same as in some small Polish town: they looked the same, they wore the same kind of anonymous clothes and haircuts, they used the very same jokes. And as at the Polish countryside only some of them spoke any English. As if it would be enough to turn around the corner and you could find open fields and farms. It was truly amazing to see that kind of a pill of your homeland. Somehow the essence, the very feeling of it, the very taste, and at the same time the very bitter caricature of it. Because this tiny, declining area appeared to me as a depressing place, a disappearing ghetto though the festive mood of Easter Saturday.

Finally we found all products we needed for cooking, and much much more. After all it’s not every day that we go shopping to Greenpoint. We passed nearly all neighborhood, by then really starving for some lunch and we couldn’t find Lomzynianka. When at last we were at the doors, discovering that we had passed already few times this small, not-looking-good but known-for-its-cuisine place, the waitress told us that they are closing. Well, Easter Saturday afternoon isn’t probably the best time to go out to the Polish traditional, family own restaurant. So we ate in the next one, and it wasn’t so good.

Sunday, after the Easter breakfast and some skyping, not discouraged by the previous day experience, we made our trip to Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Once more the reality of more than an hour spent underground in the middle of a sunny festive day was not exactly what we had imagined for the day. But once we got out all irritation at the traffic and the on going renovations was paid back by blossoming cherries and magnolias.

The Botanic Garden is a part of Prospect Park – peaceful English style park done by the same architects as Central Park. And it is a marvel. Not because of the beauty of the garden arrangement – which is rather conventional nineteenth century public park. The impressive thing is the splendid collection of plants. In the Easter time there were more different types of cherries and magnolias, all blooming one beside the other, more than I could ever guess that exist. Really fascinating to discover them all at once, in addition at their best. Maybe that’s why it took us a while to realize that there is no point in photographing every single type of bud, flower or twig. Even if all of them were screaming to us as to the bees: look at me!

But the Botanic Garden is in Brooklyn, in addition near by the Prospect Heights.Besides flowers and bees there were also old Russian ladies chatting in the shadows of the trees. However the most remarkable visitors were serious orthodox Jewish parents and grandparents surrounded by the running and playing groups of kids. All in black and white shaking their traditional curls.

When the Garden closed we sat by its entrance gate, in front of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Under the group of decorative cherry trees, in the light blushing shadow. Under the clouds of rosy petals shined through the golden light of the sunset. I thought how it is, that when you visit an ethnic neighborhood you can so easily enjoy it. You can taste a bit of its exotic flavor, get an image of its origins but you still can feel safe. You aren’t at “their” place. You are still home: in your big diverse but familiar city. I needed to go to “my” neighborhood to find out that it is not always so smooth, and that maybe those colorful Chinatown, little Brazil or small Odessa are not only entertaining decorations. That maybe they also are in a way a bit nostalgic or just sad. As maybe always the immigrants’ districts are.

At this time we were already riding toward “our” Harlem.

L.

Busy in Seattle

A SASS (The Society for Advancement of Scandinavian Studies) conference made me wake up very early on one Thursday morning and fly to the other side of the country. After this 6-hour flight you wouldn't necessarily think that you're still in the same country. But there I was, in Seattle, Washington, with the merciful -3 hours time difference.

The first impression of the city was that it's like Helsinki with its windy straight streets, rainy weather and many people with a deep interest in music. (I read from LonelyPlanet that the suicide rates are also very high in that part of the country.) The architecture in the city is outstanding and brave, and new. Like the building below, it stands on one massive concrete foot and makes you think how steadily can one do that?

But the pride of the city must be this remarkable building here, one of the Seattle Public Libraries, the Seattle Central Library. We went there to listen to the interesting lecture about using film in language teaching by Mikko Taurama and Sirpa Tuomainen from Berkeley University.



The interior of the library made me think of some modern art museum.

In addition to the buildings there are many sculptors in the Seattle streetview.

Jimmy Hendrix has his own, since he came from Seattle.

Seafood is known to be very good in Seattle (one more link to the Helsinki likeness). We tried one of the fanciest seafood restaurants, which was maybe visible on the bill but it wasn't That extraordinary. Sealife has also inspired the designers in the city...



Many people bike in the city, which people like us, who love to take their red folding bikes and speed in the Central Park, find really nice.



After a 3-day trip I think I prefer the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. They have lots of small record stores and second hand shops. Plus this lovely Bauhaus café.


Public Market is the place to get fresh flowers, fish, wild cherries covered with chocolate or a pair of earrings made by a guy who had a Finnish girlfriend in the 70's and spent three weeks studying Russian in Finland. Kitos palion!


One cannot avoid noticing the Space needle, which has a restaurant on the top of it. Although one salesman told us not to eat there. So we just took a picture of it.


Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum are located in this interestingly glowing building. One member of our group visited it and told that the EMP really gave the chance to try and experience all the instruments. So all the parents who are hesitating which instrument to choose for their kid to play, make a visit there before!


There were many photogenic persons around the International Fountain. No one got wet though.




I like the idea how Seattlers seem to appreciate art, design and nature. This Olympic Sculpture Park is situated right next to a noisy motorway, but still one can relax walking or resting there.


And finally, the store windows revealed some interesting details, like this butterfly dress


or these whippets!


This is for dad, who had his birthday in April. The police officer sends his greetings.


As on our trip to SF, so did the airplane trip give now a glimps on some American countryside that we haven't really experienced here. Those round man-made fields look attractive.

Dear reader, if you're interested in what I learned in the conference, just make a comment and ask. Now, we're off to bike in Central park!

E.

Weekly routines

There are things you do every week (or almost every week, or several times a week) and you can never really know how much time they will take...

Without the car in California

It seems much more urgent to drive a car when you are in San Francisco than in New York City. Nonetheless the good public transportation system in the city, when you talk with locals about a trip outside the city they can’t imagine it without a car. At least the most of them. Yet it was indeed possible, and despite that several times we considered to rent the car we managed without it. Probably that way was even more adventure. So we get to know the bunch of Californian buses and ferries. Sure, we were also walking a lot. And it was because of this walking that we discovered an impressive popularity of the old and bizarre cars keeping among the habitants of San Francisco…

Because the lack of our own driving experience I allow myself to quote here a fragment from Milosz’s book to show you the style of a guy who caused some of our adventures there, and to present you the portrait of America which I found accurate:

"If the goal is not sufficiently distinguished from what surrounds it, the pursuit of that goal is valid only as a decision arrived at, map in hand, but since no changes can be expected, the trip becomes no more than persistent montion, which at the same time makes it unclear whether we are moving or are immobile witnesses of a moving space dotted whit identical gas stations, roadside restaurants, and motels. The cities: the band of freeway takes us over their symmetrical rectangles, or else they are simply obstacles, for they force us to slow down and stop at their traffic lights. The trip takes place inside the car, the only ultimate contact is with the car, and the trip is measured by the speedometer's needle and the numbers crawling past on the odometer; everything outside flashes by, appears and disappears, silvery, unreal, a screen. Perhaps the passangers on long-disstance express train and planes are also severed from reality in the same manner, but their passivity was accepted in advance and written into the contract, the ticket. The owner of an automobile is actively passive, with a constant desire for activity, for an activity other than holding a wheel, but he is continually being cast into passivity again.

In the deserts of southern California and Arizona, the very thought of stopping for anything but gas or food seems absurd - why bother when you can see everything you need to out the window? There is nothing out there beside stunted, prickly vegeration. Though the coniferous forests in the Sierras is attractive, with its greenery and shade, it too, after a few steps, kills any desire for a walk amid its scree-covered tracts, rocks, inaccessible thickets. But our active passivity is also felt in relation to people. We pass them, busy with their daily work, immersed in their houses and little towns. We converse with them when we stop - in stores, restaurants, motels - but differently from the way people did when they traveled by camel, horse, or stagecoach. They do not bring us into their tents, they don't set out feasts in honor of their guests, who are precious because they are rare. The banal ritual of greetings and goodbyes, so smooth that we pass each other like pebbles roundes by a stream, puts a distance between us and them, and so their eyes, mouths, movements are all the more disturbing to us. They are enigmatically self-enclosed, and haunt our minds as if we were from another planet, staring at humans" - C. Milosz Visions from San Francisco Bay 1969

L

in California with Milosz

I traveled to California with Czeslaw Milosz. This Polish poet and essayist had spent over forty years in Berkeley as a professor at the California University and that’s where he wrote his best works (at least the most important for me). I have used his writings as the guide to the unknown. Or maybe in a way he was my reason for this journey and in practice whole trip was kind of a strange pilgrimage in footsteps of a dead writer. What ever it was I liked and enjoyed it.

Milosz the most openly described his impressions from San Francisco Bay in the end of sixties. For a fresh refugee from the postwar Europe the reality of California and most of all the specificity of San Francisco Area at that time (the hippie, gay and so on movements’ center) appeared so alien that it allowed him to observe his own everyday’s live from a distance of the botanist. Today for me NYC is not so strange, probably even for Milosz it wouldn’t be - after all East Cost is much closer to Europe. However I do have some difficulties in finding the vocabulary to describe my experience of being here, in US, and Milosz’s writings became an irreplaceable dictionary and manual for my understanding of the situation. So, when we went to California I finally got a chance to compare in very detail Milosz’s and mine observations, to find and to point all the differences, to check how the landscapes described by him will resonate in my imagination.

It was an intriguing experience to go there with him. First of all a religious or better a theological poet is not the most obvious guide to the place. But his unyielding attitude toward all the authority turn out to be an efficient pass to this rebellious city. His descriptions and opinions from sixties and seventies outlined for me a sort of the place mythology, a genius loci, and gave an useful key to the place that looks at first as a reverse of the stereotype of America.

Milosz vision of America is apocalyptic and surprisingly Proustian. The immensity, potency and diversity of this country make him speechless, its beauty make him defenseless. But in Americans, also in himself there, he found the basic complex of the Marcel Proust’s heroes. They had escaped to America for sake of the freedom, prosperity and self-sufficiency. They had desired it so badly that this passion pushed them through the endless oceans, deserts, mountains, and forests. Finally the strongest ones got here and succeed to conquer the land, its inhabitants and the concurrent conquerors. Already in first, second or third generation they got what they desired at the beginning, often far more that they could ever imagine in their villages in Europe or Asia. In addition at one point, some of them sooner some later on, they got something they had abandoned when they had started to move – the sense of safeness. And then they, their children, us find themselves at the very same starting point. Fulfillment of the original desire don’t bring the satisfaction. To the contrary – it causes the inevitable disappointment and only very rarely the conscious disillusionment. So the children of the cowboys become hippies and the children of hippies become … and so on. At the end of every turn we always find this same disgust and emptiness. The apocalyptical difference is only that by reaching this place the conquerors had discovered a totally new scale. Wherever they will turn now their footsteps will left far deeper marks and their march will trample more then ever before. Berkeley seemed a great spot for those observations – an intellectual center in the westernmost part of the country – at the place where human urge found a natural limit – the ocean shore; where the ideas and passions which pushed people until here have to be reverse. The very turning point, or at least quite often the one. Probably fifty years ago it was more evident then today, but the political, social or cultural agitation can be still felt on the Telegraph avenue.

We spent whole day in Berkeley. Beside visiting the University Campus and downtown (when the rest of the group went to prepare St Urho’s day) I wanted to see the house where Milosz had lived until nineties. Far more important than the building was an area, the garden and above all the famous view from his windows to the San Francisco Bay, which found its way to so many of his poems. Irresponsibly I rejected the idea of getting there by the city bus. The distance to the address given by a Milosz’s friend didn’t seem too long… His house was at the Grizzly Peak Blvd, a long scenic drive running along of the top of the hill. And I thought that it will be enough to climb the hill behind the campus. I tried and it went nicely. I passed the Greek amphitheatre, the stadium and many university buildings. The road twisted up the hill by a large park. Sometimes in place of twirl by the drive one could shorten the way by climbing up the handy stairs. When I was almost on the top, passing by some anonymous laboratories, I was stopped by the university guard. Apparently to get where I was one needed to have a special pass: the area was supposed to be strictly guarded and the laboratories were top secret. When they were carrying me downtown to the guards station they couldn’t understand how it had happened that I hadn’t seen/pass any of the numerous gates and that no one had notice me before them. At the station they checked my passport and visa, were almost about to contact Polish Consulate. I can’t clearly recall how I managed to convince them that whole affair wasn’t so serious and that it will be enough if they remove from my camera the photos of the protected areas. Finally they let me go. I was once more down the hill. They showed me which way I can take if I want to go to the Grizzly Peak – of course few times longer than my first one. After all there was nothing else to do than climb once more. At the beginning of the sunset, after few kilometers of hiking I reach the Peak at last. The weather was wonderful: worm, even hot day was going to end. The golden rose air was moving in the heat. Since few hours I had anything to drink, I started to be hungry and tired of walking. And there it was: the splendid view to the Bay immersed in the folly of the gold, violets and grey, full of the scent of the blossoming trees. The number of the first house on the way was 1679, I needed to get to the one on 978… Well, it took a while, but the way was just beautiful. On both sides more or less fancy houses hidden in the blooming gardens, and the never-ending view to the bay, to the skyline of San Francisco, to the Golden Gate bridge, to the green and red hills, above all to the gray gloomy ocean.

When I stood in front of the gate number 978 there was the last moment of the spectacular sunset – as if everything was just as it should be. There was no one inside. The house was one of the older, modest and smaller then all the others. It was also probably the most neglected in the whole area. From the drive there is first the house and then to the west descend the garden opening the view to the bay. Longing for the Lithuanian forest Milosz had planted many trees there. In unkept garden they grew really tall, and today are a hallmark of the place. Apparently neighbors didn’t follow Milosz example and simply didn’t interrupt their views. On the sunny and chic Californian hill the house of Polish poet looks like a common forester‘s lodge.

When I turned there was a bus stop on the other side of the drive. After few minutes in the darkening twilight I rode the bus downtown to get some freshly made munkki.

L.