Day 79 – 81, Warsaw, March 28th – 30th 2012

Tea 80, Loads of Yunnan Green Superior for study support!, the apartment, Warsaw

Tea 81, Sencha Sakura, the magic teapot (above), Warsaw

Day 79, well, what happened on this day?  I guess not a great deal, we did go and pick Marta’s coat up from the dry cleaners and then wandered around in the sunshine, it was a little windy today so much of our time was spent trying to avoid the wind tunnels between buildings.  We wandered around Jana Pawla for a while visiting the places we didn’t manage to go to the night before, the little tea shop, which is a bit expensive, then into the XX1 gallery to see the show that is on at the minute, although I think it might be shut now.  ‘Transfusion’ by Pavel Novak, apparently the Polish version of a super common name such as my own!  He had presented a few paintings alongside a sculptural glass installation of clear glass heart casts.  The work looked good in the space, especially with the sun beating through the window, glistening from and through the glass casts.  They weren’t exactly presented perfectly in the space though, somewhat ‘plonked’ on the end of white poles.  The press release seemed to say they should appear to be floating at heart level, but they weren’t floating.

Day 80, Thursday, we didn’t really leave until late, later than we had intended really.  Marta was studying for a job interview most of the day, I did pop to Galleria Mokotow for a short while to buy some eye moisturizer stuff from the pharmacy, as I had managed to lose my other one somewhere between Torun and Warsaw.  When we did eventually leave we headed straight to central and to a photo development shop where we dropped off Marta’s first ever medium format Holga film!  That was very exciting, and they had it ready in an hour, which amazed me, stuff like that in the UK usually takes about 2 weeks!  While we waited we went back to Zacheta, to see the newly installed sculptural installation show called ‘New Sculpture?’.  The show is good, I’m glad I got to see the other spaces in this gallery.  There were various large scale works by a number of artists including Martin Boyce (giving me a sentimental thought of Glasgow) and  Mai-Thu Perret, as well as others.  We wandered around in there for a while, attracting various suspicious glances from the guards.  The security guards in Poland are pretty hardcore, even more so in the health and beauty stores, Rossman’s is the worst, they may as well handcuff you as you walk through the door, and don’t even think about going in for a simple browse, not unless you are a massive fan of the serial voyeur!

Show seen we headed back outside, then had a whistlestop run around the old town to try to find a shop we had been to before that sells a great almond cake, we found the shop but sadly no almond cake!  Then we had to rush back to the photo shop to collect the film, but not without a quick diversion to the donut place on Chmielna to fulfill our sweet cravings.  We were both quite excited about the Holga results.  We really didn’t know what to expect, especially as the film that Marta had bought was such a cheap one that we didn’t even know if we had put it in around the right way to begin with!  But we were not disappointed!  The results were very pleasing, though we both realised that we had been a bit foolish, Marta had been using the different colours of the flash when she had taken the photos.  But it turned out we had both totally forgotten the film was black and white!  Needless to say coloured flashes are utterly pointless in this case!  Two of the photos are below, so I must credit Marta for them!

Day 81, the last day of employment for Marta!  And also a job interview for her too!  She had headed for this very early in the morning, I just about remembered to wake up and wish her good luck, before crashing back into sleep again.  When I eventually awoke I spent some time on the computer before deciding to head into town.  This was made a little difficult, I had been locked in!  Marta had accidentally taken the keys with her to work.  I sent her a message asking where they were, she looked in her bag and there they were.  Luckily she managed to get permission from her work to come back and free me.  Once that fiasco was sorted I went into town and walked around the shops for a while.  The biggest thing on my mind was (and is) a hunt for this camera, a DIY lomo (yes, Marta’s Holga experience has inspired me).  But this is a little different, one you build yourself from total scratch and that uses standard 35mm film.  It’s called a DIY Recesky Twin Lens Reflex (or TLR), and looks like it could be good fun.  I spent a lot of time searching around in the camera and gadget and toy shops, but to no avail.  I think I am going to have to buy it online when I am in Berlin, the problem is the delivery times, but I will still keep looking for the next few days I think.

After the fruitless search I went and met Marta outside her work.  She arrived carrying a load of stuff including some leftover cake from her goodbye cake collection and a goodbye present she had been bought, the fantastic teapot you can see above.  The cups are double-walled to keep the tea warm for longer!  A really great present, in my opinion!  We christened it with some Sencha Sakura, a floral, delicately flavoured tea (she had been bought this as well as some Chinese Sencha and two flower teas).  The tea was good, delicate and green, a very good sencha, and the flavoured aspect was very well balanced and didn’t take away from the tea too much!