Warsaw … a seventh visit

After spending a year in Warsaw, I am hesitant to return. I’m really enjoying playing in my own world. Where my friends live. Where I speak the language. Where I hear the sound of the sea or the bush at night, not police sirens, rattling trams or drunken shouting just outside the window.

Ten months after I come home I begin to get twinges. Suddenly in imagination I’m shopping across the road at the little Carrefour in Puławska Street, or picking Maja and Jaś up from pre-school, or struggling to get an elegant haircut by mime, or having lunch with my daughter, or fielding (courting?) the mischief of my son-in-law, or whipping off to the movies or a Chopin concert at night.

Still I resist actually travelling to the other side of the world. After all, my Warsaw family is coming to Australia in August.

Until …

… “Maja and Jaś are losing their English” says Marcin. “They even speak Polish to their mother.” That sets alarm bells ringing. They HAVE to maintain English, because I certainly can’t acquire Polish.

I find Airbnb accommodation and book for the first few weeks of a tentative 7-week stay

Then a setback. I call the plumber to sort out problems with my solar hot water. He finds a leak in the downstairs bathroom. It needs a $4000 renovation, with maybe added costs if the timber has seriously rotted.

I cancel my accommodation.

The timber news is good so I make tentative enquiries about air fares. Tentative you understand!

A sleepless night.

But such enquiries always end in a booking and this is no exception. One thing leads to another. Soon I have a departure date, an apartment for seven weeks 15 minutes from my Warsaw family’s new apartment, and an intention.

Don’t tell them I’m coming!

At this point delight sets in – and logistics begin.

Oops! I have to renew my passport. That’s easy, although my passport photo makes me look the 84-year-old I’ll be when it expires, and I have an uneasy moment when I realise that my passport name doesn’t match the name on my birth certificate.

I draw up a Gantt chart to monitor planning progress and begin to take action. I book the bus to get me to Sydney and overnight accommodation in Sydney. I notify the bank – they froze my bank account when I was in Cairns. Such a freeze would complicate Warsaw life.

I begin to collect ideas for experiencing a different Warsaw on this seventh trip. A mind-map grows. wanderessence appears in my blogosphere with her array of travelling challenges and ideas for writing a journey. Other ideas come from all sorts of sources: When history is personal by Mimi Schwartz; Shimmering in a transformed light: writing the still life by Rosemary Lloyd; online Brevityarticles about writing non-fiction; even G.K Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.

I decide I need a second pair of glasses. The optometrist says “It’s time for your annual check.” So my first pair of specs becomes my second and I get a new prescription, and new glasses. Two 120 km trips instead of one.

This is the beginning of duplications. I ask about immunisations, a routine question. No record of a HepB injection. So, suddenly, I’m having a blood test (three attempts before I can get in to the phlebotomist), followed by an injection. Three 60km round trips.

I reconnoitre new cameras in Canberra to replace my drowned one. I, timid, decide on a later model of the same. I order it online from a company offering a good price. It doesn’t arrive. I ring, and they’re not very helpful. I talk to a friend who coincidentally ordered a camera from the same place six weeks ago. It still hasn’t appeared. I cancel the order and I’m told “Your refund will take 28 days to process.” I order another camera. It arrives within four days.

I ring the doctor about a flu injection. Not available until after my departure, but try the chemist.

Now there’s only a week to go, and still a lot to do. Clear photos from the iPad; sort out phone (I seem to have chucked away the charging lead for my convenient and archaic little red phone in the pre Christmas cleanup); buy presents – a purple rock, beautifully painted, showing Gulaga and a night sky full of stars for Ola; a crooked spoon created from a lignotuber for Jurek; a touch and feel koala book for Hania, daughter of my friend Anię; grab a supply of blood pressure pills and 0.2 Artline pens, the only thing I can handwrite with; acquire a lip wax, an eyelash tint and a perm; book the car in for a service.

And pack. A lot of other things are sort of expendable, but I can’t avoid that. As I lay out wardrobe on the spare bed, my hopes of getting away with the smaller suitcase begin to fade. I’m travelling between seasons – a temperature range from 3° to 22°. As I scrutinise my clothes I realise they are all sombre black, garb for a Victorian widow. I rush out and buy a lurid magenta top with a fake-silver buckle.

Finally I get serious about weather: I note the high for every day I’m away, and realise it’ll be half cold and half summer. I plot the offerings of my wardrobe and begin to mix, match and roll. Check the weather again, and find the balance has shifted to more summer.

In the weekly Skype sessions with my daughter I harvest clues about their routine, so I can plot my presence-reveal to greatest effect. Now that I’m in full-on preparation mode, I’m terrified I’ll blurt out my plans. I need desperately to know whether Saturday 21st is just a normal Saturday, so I can roll up for breakfast rather than merely ring at breakfast time. If, that is, I can hold out from Tuesday.

It’s now really countdown. Bag is packed and soon I’ll lock it so I’m not tempted to add just one more thing. I’ve booked an aisle seat, and damn the expense ($AUD69 to London). I’m beginning the charging of devices – if they’re not charged at check-in I could find them confiscated and myself detained. I’ve emailed my Airbnb host to confirm my arrival: he’s hopeful I may be able to check in early, and offers me free weekly cleaning and laundry service. I ask J to record my greeting to him so I can listen and practice during the 40 hours of journeying: “Cześć Grzegorz” is not something that rolls off my tongue easily.

I check baggage allowance again. I am indeed free to take an astonishing 69 kilograms. Not a tempting thought, given that I have to lug it.

Getting ready for this journey includes something I haven’t experienced before: full-blown paranoia about my health and well-being. In the course of the lead-up I have a heart condition, blindness resulting from my eyelash tint, nose cancer, a dislocated back, a severe allergic reaction to a perm, a broken leg from rock-hopping, a twisted ankle from negotiating a steep slippery bush track, and a brain tumour.

None of which of course eventuate.

This post is linked to wanderessence, anticipation and preparation theme.