Warsaw

Warsaw was really intense. A confused and still war torn city. Still wanting to recover from a war over 75 years ago, I doubt the scars will fade even after those who were there have long gone.  You have old buildings intact and restored (albeit poorly), old battle scarred buildings left with bullet and granade chunks riddling the facades as people live normal lives within the walls. Sky scrapers rise from patches of green, randomly dotting a non-skyline. You have remnants of pre war, war, communist post war, post communist free for all, and modern regulations. No city planning. It's an expression of the psychological history if its inhabitants, confused, trying to put themselves together, polluted by American fast food chains, electronics, shopping and auto companies boasting big signs, and "Stalin's gift" sitting mattter-of-factly beside the Warszawa Central Station where the British Starbucks, Costa Coffee, puts stickers over its flapjack bars, which have so much sugar they feel as Polish as the granola bars from the bodegas. I visited the Ghetto heroes monument and cried, then got lost/had a mini tour of a more respectable, lovely and quiet suburb of the city, had a zouk private where I connected this Brazilian dance to an Israeli modern dance technique, qigong, and American contact improvisation (inspired by Akido) by a Polish dancer in English, and I led, had lunch with a friend I met in Paris and stayed with in Amsterdam, attended a Zouk social where I discovered Polish "beginners" are North American intermediate dancers, and learned that you do not eat a plate of pierogis for lunch if you plan on eating dinner or breakfast the next morning.