In town yesterday for my first face-to-face business meeting of the year, lunch at the courtyard patio of the Bristol Hotel. This time, I afforded myself the luxury of a stroll around Śródmieście. My third visit to central Warsaw since last autumn - the first two being for my jabs. A mere three visits to town, compared to regular visits and stays on the działka, maybe 20 times so far this year. I suddenly realise that my perspective has become more rural than urban. I'm far more used to walking along footpaths between fields and orchards than along the main streets of a capital city.
The greatest shock was the people. A girl with pink hair, pink leather jacket and rainbow badge. A girl with long hair in a plait hanging down her back hunched over the handlebars of her racing bicycle. A guy dressed like a late-1970s punk, complete with nose piercing, Crass tee-shirt and spiky hair. Young folk on electric scooters rule the pavements. Man-buns. Black wet-look yoga pants. A bleached-blond guy driving a classic open-top sports car. Loud motorbikes costing as much as as a large second-hand SUV. These are people that one simply does not see in Chynów!
Back to Chynów then, I'm on my way to Top Market for provisions and then onto the hardware store to buy a wheelbarrow. An instant visible contrast between town and countryside (the Polish wieś) is obesity. The queue at the smoked-meat counter was some 20 people long; most of them were overweight or indeed obese; a sign of a well-to-do farmer who can provide for the family. Food is about quantity rather than exotic provenance. Clothing is more homogenous; no one stands out from the crowd in terms of what they're wearing. Mass still draws crowds to the church. Dads in suits, mums tottering around on high heels - it's big social gathering, a chance to don one's finery.
The city is a refuge for individualists; the countryside is for conformists. Individualists stand out less in a city in which individualists are nothing unusual, each in their own individual way.
This difference between town and country is visible in Poland's political make-up, the countryside being more conservative (zachowawczy) than its cities. The young people in the countryside - late-teens to early 20s, are making some attempt to look different by taking on the fashion of young urbanites, but in doing so, they all seem to be going about it in a similar way. Peering into a smart phone is the common factor that unites the young in town and country.
Am I an individualist or conformist? I've spent nearly all my life living ten miles from the centre of a capital city. Externally, I'm as conformist as possible, trying to be inconspicuous. As a consciousness moving about the face of the planet, I seek to be no more than a platform from which to observe - rather than wishing to be observed; as invisible as possible.
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| Krakowskie Przedmieście, and the Hotel Bristol |
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| Ulica Nowogrodzka, centre right my old offices (2011-13) |
This time last year:
Covid and economy recovery
Electric cars for hire by the minute
Mszczonów - another railway junction
This time nine years ago:
The Devil is in Doubt - short story, part I
This time ten years ago:
Stormclouds are raging all around my door
This time 11 years ago:
Floods endanger Warsaw
This time 12 years ago:
Coal line rarity
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