Warsaw: Not a Beginner's Guide | Julia Krzeszowska

Warsaw: Not a Beginner’s Guide

The bus is stuck in a traffic jam on an entry road to Warsaw. 40 minutes pass and we don’t move. The bus driver steps outside and lights up a cigarette.

‘There’s really no need for smoking when the air’s so dirty here,’ says the lady sitting next to me. ‘I can feel a scratch in my lungs just now.’

Something stirs ahead and cars around us start moving. This is when I first hear the sound that in the following days I will come to associate with life in Warsaw – that long, angry car honk. From everywhere and at once. It doesn’t mean “watch out”. It’s a hostile “hurry up”. The bus driver stomps out his cigarette, and we drive off.

I feel a scratch in my lungs too, but it’s probably the air conditioning.

‘Where are you from again?’ she asks.

I tell her. South-east. Small town, that kind of place where everybody knows everyone. At 10 pm on a weekday it becomes a Wild West, tumbling weeds rolling down the main street. Crossing the park at night feels like walking through unclaimed land.

That evening I get the keys to my room in a shared flat. My flatmate is out and I aimlessly wander through the rooms, trying to familiarise myself with the place. There are leftover trinkets after the previous residents: chipped mugs, cutlery, stickers on the fridge, and messages scratched on the surface of the kitchen table. Nothing like what I saw in the photos. The flat feels unloved, but maybe it isn’t unlovable. I spent the first days scrubbing the grease off the bathroom tiles, scrubbing the grease off the cabinet doors, cleaning, vacuuming, coughing up the dust. And so here I am: in the midst of a real estate crisis, on my own, making a place for myself in this metropolis of 1.9 million.

In the past 15 years, housing prices in Poland more than doubled. The minimum wage tripled, though it doesn’t exactly mean Poles are three times richer. The standard of living in Poland is increasing, but it is also true that wages rise to even out the fallout of inflation.

However much can be said about the current situation in the housing market, my experience is that of a student. According to a recent survey by Forum Akademickie [The Academic Forum], 80% of students have taken up some kind of job during the past academic year. Still, students’ earnings make up about half of their budget. The other 50% is financial support from the outside, e.g. family or partners. The Polish Business Roundtable estimates that over 65% of students who work earn PLN 3000 net, or less, per month. The average monthly cost of renting a room in Warsaw is PLN 1500; double it and you have the cost of renting a studio flat. Not every student who leaves their hometown to go to university can be accommodated in a dormitory. Plus not everyone wants to.

The hours of scrolling the websites follow the hours of messaging the landlords and making arrangements on the phone. There is a pressure that comes with finding accommodation in due time. The clock is ticking, September is drawing to an end, and the most inviting offers turn out to be outof-date. Those who have been hesitating for too long have to settle for what is left. One can hardly negotiate. No pets. But maybe? No, no pets. 11 square metres, 2 rooms and a bathroom. Will rent immediately. Perfect location – 9th floor (no lift). Or: lift, but no heating. Looking for a roommate. After general renovation. Metro station, bus and tram stops nearby. Deposit required. Ready to move in. Bargain price. Bills not included. Interested in a long-term lease. THE AGENCY’S REMUNERATION IS COVERED BY THE SELLER ONLY!!! Quiet neighbourhood: elders and young mothers (think infants weeping through paper-thin walls and telenovelas on full blast). Too far. Too expensive. Too inconvenient. Too bad.

I discover that my neighbour has a taste for The Beatles and that he is renovating his flat, including the room adjacent to mine. At seven sharp he puts on the music and starts hammering the wall. By now I know the songs by heart. “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,” sings Paul McCartney, “Life goes on. La, la, how the life goes on”.

I still forget there’s no natural light source in the hall – unlike in my family house – and lock myself in the dark when I come back from the lectures. Sometimes it gets claustrophobic. The too-fresh, chemical smell of my cleaning spree holds for a few days. Airing the flat doesn’t help, and most of the time it’s too cold to keep the windows open for long. Small closed places, just like small towns, hold onto every past sensation; while open spaces, like large cities, are where change is always happening.

Before I moved in there, I knew Warsaw from books. A city with the quality of a legend or a folk tale told through the works of Polish writers: Prus, Żeromski, Tuwim or Twardoch, to name but a few. It turns out Canaletto’s paintings were a suggestion on how to rebuild the city after WW2, not a blueprint. That city isn’t there anymore. There is a different city with the same name, standing in the place of the old one.

The best way to get to know a place, my friend used to say, is to get lost in it. So I take walks around the neighbourhood. I pocket my phone and let the landmarks choose my route. The red-brick facade of Hala Mirowska [Mirów Market Hall] catches my attention. Here, the protagonist of Twardoch’s Morfina [Morphine], Konstanty, goes to buy food. It’s the year 1939, the 14th day of the German occupation, and Warsaw is a rubble dump. Torn-away pavement slabs clutter the street. “Crazy prices, a kilo of bread for one-seventy zloty,” he notes. PLN 1.70 was something different back then, almost a century of inflation and deflation cycles ago. Still, I wish I could see bread for that price on a supermarket shelf today.

Konstanty buys some chocolate – 12 zloty for a bar – and wanders off. I wander off too. Somewhere between Hala Mirowska and the Mint of Poland building on Grzybowska, I spot the sign: CIEPŁA STREET. “Papa was from Ciepła,” Żeromski’s doctor Judym tells the Polish-speaking women he meets in Louvre. Not without shame and disgust: “My father was a shoemaker, a bad shoemaker on Ciepła street.”

But where was I? Where am I now? In the maze of skyscrapers that grow bigger the closer I approach them, glass walls close over me. I was going straight ahead, I know, following the spike of the Palace of Culture, but I ended up on the wrong side of the city centre. I am confused, look around, and spot a tram stop. I hop on the next tram that arrives, paying no attention to where it is headed.

“What happens in my head: / The rush, the dash, the sparks, the links,/ Merry in the top and the heels,/ The merrier on the turns!” marvels the speaker of Tuwim’s poem To the Critics, as he rides the front platform of a tram. The city is in bloom, booming with life at every corner. Although it’s May for him and October for me, I understand the thrill of a new beginning. The joy of a beautiful day. Autumn does its own wonders to the cityscape. “The city transfixes me to the core!” Tuwim writes.

Night falls quickly and the neon signs begin to speak. They beckon, “Come! Don’t think twice, Happy Hour is whenever you visit.” Oh, the glitz. A firework shower of colours. Only the brightest stars turn up in the night sky. Cars smudge, and red brake lights jump on the speed bumps. A group of elderly men on electric scooters speeds down the street. An ambulance blares in the distance. It gets closer, and the noise overwhelms the scene for a moment. A flash of blue flits past me and slips into the traffic. The silhouettes of the trees turn plain black, and the dark silhouettes of pedestrians seem so eerie when they’re deprived of all the usual detail.

I turn around to see who’s walking behind me. It’s my shadow, split in the lamplight –fooled me again. The wind is getting colder, the hour is late, and I feel I’ve had enough.

I walk in circles searching for the entrance to my apartment block. My phone is dead and I grow uneasy. Memory is fleeting, the streets are plenty, and they seem to change their layout on a day-to-day basis. I pass the flower seller perched on a park bench for the fourth time and he gives me a look.

Finally, I find the right door. From the light-up staircase to my flat, my shadow walks in first, and I follow.

At night, I toss in bed. I haven’t slept well since I moved here. It’s the noise. The city never stops its conversation. Electric drill speaks to the wall. One wayward dog outshouts another. Tabby cats yowl in the dumpster. Cars pass by my window. Their headlights sweep over the ceiling and disappear as if they were waving me a quick goodbye. It gets so late it’s early again. Cue: the sun. My neighbour plays The Beatles and Paul McCartney sings. “Life goes on. La, la, how the life goes on.”