Locked bike Kidnapped!!!!

Today I woke up to Dominika asking me where I had parked her bicycle. She seemed sad but with a little suspicious hope in her voice, like when you would know that the answer to a doubtful question is all but not a happy one, yet you still ask in case a miracle shall occur, long after miracles ceased from being all together credible ( we can't say, however, that Santa does not exist even if in a few years his home in the pole will be less white if the global warming keeps fast at work). The last time Dominika rode her bicycle was on Sunday, today is wednesday and that means it has been 3 days since we both last seen it, and I personally securely locked it to the heating pipe . We usually park it and lock it on the staircase between the 2nd and 3rd floors of our building. So my positive answer was as suspicious as any hope we both might have had, and even though I was still half asleep, I knew that the so much loved, e-bay great deal, Dominika's light green and cute and girly bike with the installable basket in the front was not on the stair case, but had been stolen who knows when, by who knows who, in the period between Sunday afternoon and wednesday morning. This was a sad wake up call by all means, and both our hearts sank in the mourning of the bike, I naturally was mad and started an investigation silently in my head to catch the thief( or thieves) and bring them to justice( whatever that means). In Warsaw like many other places,many people ride bicycles, and like many other places many eager thieves can thrive, and happily cease unwatched bicycles. Yet,how the hell can 2 bicycles disappear from inside of the building, where only residents have the key to get in and out. I say 2 bikes because there was another bicycle stolen in that same period. This brings to my mind the Italian film "bicycle thief" , although in the film the theft is almost pardonable if you follow carefully the protagonist's journey, I can't help but wonder about the person who stole the 2 bikes here. Anyway, in a sense you can't help but lose trust in locks, security, and law, when a thief must be living with you. UNFORTUNATELY THERE ARE NO PHOTOS OF THE BIKE:(

Music and grey clouds

There can be only some desperate measures to consider linking some happy tunes with grey clouds. The sun was hiding from the city of warsaw for many many many days, but finally today it shyly appeared and people rejoiced , well not literally, but you can see more flesh when the sun is out, the lush green parks are filled with white enthusiastic half naked people looking like shiny white spots from a distance, hoping to catch some tan, or stock up on some vitamin D that the sun helps provide. I am not sure what it is with the bad weather in this country but it sure does last for a long time, long enough over the decades that someone suggested that polish people would have been much nicer had they been gifted with a nicer weather( I agree, but I think of other cold dark places, and wonder if some eskimos are as rude as some polish people, because they are surrounded by snow a lot, or if some lebanese people are so friendly(mainly to tourists off course) because they are over exposed to the sunshine). However valid the debate may be,it is besides the point, the point is that I am becoming less attentive to the surrounding in cold weather, maybe with time I will change from the cheerful tourist with a camera, to a cold long faced citizen of warsaw, but until that happens I would like to find a way to keep this blog alive, since I noticed that the worst my condition in relativity to the weather, the less I tell stories of daily life in here. So what's the outcome? I am not sure, but one sure thing is that live music can sure break up cloudy weather. Just How? Well as the picture depicts, this man seen from our balcony amused us on this very grey weekend ( a few days ago) with his penetrating cheerful version of Besa me mucho. I had just come out of the shower, and the music filled the house, now I call that a good hang over treat. Hey mister accordion man play a song for warsaw.... Cheers Bob no one will sing it better:)

Mysterious Pigeons????

It's about time I spoke to those who don't live in Warsaw (like my friends in Beirut who don't have that many)about them. Yes these grey colored birds, with their particular noise(cooing) that are everywhere in Warszawa, along with the hundreds of Crows( but I will talk about the crows in the winter since they depress the shit out of me). They are "The pigeons"and, they are so many(too many perhaps) and they are not shy, or scared, and if you sit on a bench they are most likely able to approach you with their funny walk thinking that you may throw them something, so in the city they have developed a habit of being around us for obvious reasons. Yet so many seem to think that they are a real bother.For example the one you see in the picture, is one of many that land on our balcony early in the morning and coo croo(cooing cooing) until Dominika has to get up and shou them away. I was not aware of myself being uncomfortable with Pigeons since they are a kind of an attraction-where I come from, but that started to change since I moved here, many times pigeons flew right in my face and i had to duck at the very last second avoiding being (hit by a pigeon). In Lebanon people have them in cages on the roof, and they set them free several times each day to soar high above the city sky, in fact they are the only free flyers in the country and over the city(since we shot most of the birds, and have very few trees, so we ain't got no birds, or ducks, or anything better to fly above our heads, off course not counting the thousands bullets when we have any kind of celebration, or funerals, elections, football games in Kurdistan, come to think of it people shoot their guns in the air for so many reasons, it's hard to keep track). If you were to watch Beirut from far off, you would see different flocks of pigeons in different sides over the buildings going in circles. People who raise them hope to score,each time they fly, one new pigeon (female) from neighboring flying pigeons. The reason is the owners will buy a good looking male pigeon that has a certain qualities that make the other flying female pigeons from rivaling neighborhood follow him to his owners cage, and therefore gaining a free pigeon(off course easier said then done, since chances are not always good since both sides are trying the same thing). And there are these little wars all the time between the pigeon raisers, where the ones who lost a pigeon often will try to recover it by same method, or just showing up at the door where they know their pigeon is. One more thing that is silly I think is a certain Law in Lebanon that forbids pigeon raisers from witnessing in court for a crime, because they are always looking up, and the argument is that they could not have seen the crime. So anyhow, the pigeons in Warsaw are like in other places just grey and are out to eat, shit, and reproduce every chance they get and they sure are not locked in cages on the roofs of bulidings. I made a little research and would like to share this link with ( http://ehrweb.aaas.org/ehr/parents/Pigeons!.html ) you that will show us that what's known about pigeons is little and apparently these "mysterious" birds because of their abundance in the cities scientists have studied them less than other bird species (Ps. I am not sure how old the information on the link are). So in case you are fed up with the cooing you may look up this link and see what good these pigeons are good for, or just to learn some information about them. One info I can share is that " They have only 37 taste buds, while you have 9,000".

Po Polsku.

Yesterday I had my first real conversation in Polish.

Well maybe not in real Polish, but I used all the words I know and somehow it worked. I was waiting for a tram, and there was an old lady sitting there at the tram stop. She started talking to me and from what I gathered was that she was asking if I can check the tram schedule for her, I noticed she used a cane and I did not reply for the fear of exposing my bad Polish. It was a Sunday so trams don't run frequently.As I started looking at the schedule hanging on the display of the tram stop booth, I began thinking of my dilemma "how the hell do I tell the lady the actual time of the next tram in Polish" (by the way numbers are so far very hard to pronounce and memorized for me), "and even worst" I thought "how do I ask which tram she wanted to take because there were three of them?". So I submitted to failure and told the lady that I really didn't speak Polish sufficiently to help her (which luckily is a sentence you lear in language school, I think to save you from making a fool of yourself). She seemed a bit disappointed but she asked where I am from, and to my surprise remembering my classes well, I understood and answered her, and then my broken conversation started, she would asked a long question, and I would reply with very few words, eventually I was able to understand that she was waiting for number 18, and I said that it is coming TERAZ(which means NOW in Polish). The tram soon arrived and the lady got up, and before hoping in she said "Do widzenia" which is a Polish way of saying goodbye and it literally translates to " see you later". So I guess for the first time I noticed that this Language that used to sound very strange a month ago, is becoming more and more familiar. I won't get ahead of myself, but I am encouraged to start finally ordering my HERBATA(TEA) in Polish.

URBANISMOS!!!!

Around each corner we may find a happy picture in a sad moment,a great moment in a weird corner. Warsaw connects with buses, trams and one tube(subway) line. People seem, like in other big URBANISMOS(or cities), very focused on getting to where ever they are heading without looking left or right. I hate the rush. Sometimes I am late for my Polish class and I feel just like a machine, I function like one. My route becomes a series of making my way in the dark, or sniffing my pace in the wood like a bloodhound, at one point as a photographer I hate it, I feel like a sponge in the middle of the mad 5 p.m. rush hour. Because our job as photographers,I think, is to be very distant and engaged at once, but not trapped with the same rhythm, so I tell myself that the driving force in the human nature has to be a one way street to the center of an infinite circular repetitious daily life. So Warsaw's daily life can be like New York, or Delhi for all I care. That is off course looking from inside the transportation web. The life of people here have all the stories that have been shaping human existence for centuries, the times might have changed, but the emotions remain. Those annoying teens, lovers, bums, grandmas, corporate,aristocrats,beggars,losers,winners,sex in the city,artists,thieves,merchants,stores,sellers,brands,chains,McDonald,coffee heaven,corner-shops,dairy products,fresh veggies,tulips,soda can collectors,drunks,junkies,skate borders,and nerds, all the walks of life can be found here. I decided to tell from now on stories on this blog and also some observations , that can reveal a bit of the average situational comedy or disaster in the daily life of people or just mine. Like once I was in the tube and a guy eating a huge Kebab sandwich(Kebab places are very popular, cheap and common in Poland) he was standing up near the subway door, devouring the kebab like a beast, then a piece of meat comes out his sandwich and lands on a guy sitting on a bench next to him, the sitting man looked up thinking it was raining kebab, then realized that cheap lunch in public places can be shared:). Now I leave the photo this time to your imagination. That was funny. YOU GOTTA LOVE URBANISMOS(THE ART OF LIVING IN THE BIG URBANISMO).

Places, traces, and a few lost faces.

I am not inspired to write, I am wondering if it is the weather? I thought it was spring time, but it turns out that today(for example) it was really close to snowing. I am not nagging for I know that the people here have suffered almost 6 long dreadful cold and grey months. However, it feels a bit embarassing when you don't know what to wear when you are leaving the house. Have you ever anticipated a wrong tempreture and gone out dressed like a stuffed teddy bear ? Anyhow It is not really what I want to write about. I found this picture that I snapped a few weeks ago, and I love these faces looking at the lady, when in reality they are actors, and this mural is near a theater here in warsaw. But think about it for a moment. I am also a face in the crowd here. I know about 6 people including Dominika. It has been great to walk and feel free, but after a while it gets to you that if you are not made out of stone, then people can be a bit friendlier. But again I am told it is just the Polish way of doing things, being not so friendly. So I put that behind me and I bake really good Oat meal and raisins cookies. Hoping to seduce the neighbors with the smell. So far no one came knocking:))) I will see you on a brighter day.

Don't eat your fingers!!

We have a Lebanese saying that goes like this: " it's so good you will eat your fingers when you are done". That is just the metaphor about how good a dish is, mainly I am guessing it started as a trick for mom's to convince their kids to eat that green stuff they never like, or husbands to satisfy their wives, or it is just true. In warsaw and for totally different reasons, there is a restaurant that serves food in edible plates( yeah! really the food does come in plates made out of some kind of wheat, that you can eat). As usual I am the last to understand things here since it always has to be translated, and it took a while for me to get it(really). Dominika did explain that the plate was made out of dry stuff that you could eat. So I looked at it and it had the texture of wood, then I took a little piece, and I chewed on it, but it was terribly dry, the kind of things that you would give for a horse, or a cow, unless you let it sit over night in tea or water. The food on the other hand was good, but the plate business I think was a bit extreme for my taste. The good thing about the restaurant is that it is an environmentally friendly place, and so not wasting water and soap on washing dishes is good for nature, maybe next time I take my edible plate to the park and feed it to the pigeons, they seem to eat anything. In the end I got to thinking that maybe eating your fingers after a good meal,would not be tastier than the edible plate either. In any case, I am keeping my fingers, and won't chew on edible plates again. SAVE THE PLANET EAT ALIENS:)