Mixed feelings about visiting Poland

I am already planning to go to Poland. This time it was going to be a fun trip. At least in parts. I have unfinished business there requiring me doing things which I am not keen on but I organised the trip in such a way to mix duty and pleasure. I am going to have a couple of nice trips while in Poland. 

One trip will be with my best friend I met the first day at uni. Being with Basia is fun  wherever we are and whatever we do. We  seem to talk as if in shorthand. We share jokes which we know very well and still find it funny. We do not have to tell them in full to laugh. A word or two is enough to bring the jokes to our memories. This is the special value of old friendship, I guess. We went our own ways years ago. We both got married and had our lives which did not overlap. But we kept in touch and each time we meet it is as if there was no break between our meetings even if in the past there were many years between them. I am looking forward to the time with Basia.

The other trip will be to Florence. I have never been there. And I am going with my niece, who I feel a very special connection with. She is quite artistic and some time ago was thinking about studying art. It is a shame, in a way, that she decided against it as she would have fulfilled my mother’s dreams of being a painter. My niece studied philosophy  instead and she just recently did her PhD. Impressive girl. It was some years ago when we did our first trip with main goal to visit art galleries. We then went to Holland. We stayed some days in Amsterdam and did a trip to The Hage. I think that we must have visited then most of the Duch galleries. From the beginning I was wondering how I could spend time in my favourite galleries without Martyna, being only 18 then, getting bored with looking at so many paintings.  How wrong I was! She may have had then a stud in her lower lip, she may have been only 18 but she loved the paintings. She did not have enough. Often, I was waiting for her in coffee places, tired and happy to leave the place when Martyna came running towards me to share her impressions and asking for yet another half an hour as she was not done yet. I always thought that galleries are the places to go without a company and see things at my own pace. Martyna and another  friend of mine are an exception. So I am very much looking forward to see art in Florence in a company of the like-minded person.

A lot of fun and pleasure to look forward to even if my mood has been seriously dampened by Mr. Putin’s activities rocking my feeling of safety in Eastern Europe. From Australia the political situation in Crimea does not seem to be directly threatening but listening to Polish radio I have developed different point of view and I hope this is only silliness and unnecessary panic. 

Trust there are no more courses in this dinner