Celebrating with friends

When I visit Poland these days, Gdansk is my town, but I was a Warsaw girl before I left the country many years ago. I studied in Warsaw, I got my first job there and I worked there and I loved there. Warsaw was my home town for some good and eventful years. Then the time came for the western chapters of my life and I stopped being a Warsaw girl. Sydney and busy work life took over and I became an Aussie for many years. Now I stopped identifying with any particular town and I am at times confused not feeling a true Pole or a true Aussie. For a true Aussie, I always had a funny accent but I felt a Sydney-sider 100% for many years.

Last week I went to Warsaw to visit my family and friends. The friends, I stayed with, live in a suburb good few kilometers from Warsaw, sort of the Parramatta-Sydney distance. I spent most of my time with them and went to Warsaw only a couple of times. 

In Poland one celebrates name-days rather than birthdays and mine is the 26^th of July. Last few years I celebrated the day in Warsaw. One point of the celebration is a lunch with my two student friends. I hope it will become our tradition and continue for many years.

Warsaw has changed so much that this is not my Warsaw any more. The changes are for the better, but naturally and fortunately the town moved on with times but my memories stand still. Thanks God that my favourite historic street Nowy Swiat (New World) has only improved their restaurants and shops but the character of the street is still the same.

We started with coffee and cakes at the A.Blikle cafe which originated in 1869. The name of the place and the décor of dark hardwood and mirrored walls are the same as they were in the old times even if the place has been beautifully rejuvenated since my old Warsaw days.

There is one sad change in the atmosphere of the place since the last year. Tadeusz Konwicki and his friends do not show up at 11:00 for coffee, as it was their custom. This literary, artistic small circle of famous people will not meet any more and one of the Nowy Swiat tradition became a memory. There will be no need anymore to break non smoking rules for anyone at Blikle's.  I think that the next year we will move to the neighbouring patisserie also run by the Blikle family.                       

Tadeusz Konwicki, in the past integral part of Nowy Świat 

After coffee and fantastic cakes, the best cakes in the world (at least for me), we went for a stroll down Nowy Swiat looking for a suitable restaurant and to have a look at the gates of University of Warsaw, our old university.

I went for a few moments of meditation to the Holly Cross Church opposite the university. Chopin’s heart is buried there. Instead of becoming peaceful I became annoyed. Polish Catholic Church has a lot of money and plenty of claims for more. Some of the money was turned into gilding the church interior. To me, the church lost its spiritual atmosphere and became ostentatious. This is bad taste and bad judgment.   

It was time for my name-day lunch so I quickly moved into a festive frame of mind. We went to The Culinary Traditions of Poland (Dawne Smaki). Part of the restaurant is situated in the old garden behind buildings of Nowy Swiat. We decided to take a table there. This was a new, rather decadent Warsaw but I could take the change with ease this time. Since the place reminded me of Italian restaurants I saw on films about the high society, we ordered prosecco. Maybe not the most elegant of bubblies but in sympathy with my Italian associations.  

Entrance to the garden part of the restaurant

It was a great name-day lunch, a lunch to remember.