Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Painted Village of Zalipie

"It is well worth to remember when judging the behavior of modern Poland that on the evening of VE Day, 8 May 1945, as hostilities ceased 'London, liberated from more than a year of blackout, glowed with light...In other European capitals - Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Oslo, Prague - lights also blazed brightly, as people sang, kissed, and danced in the streets. In the graveyard that was Warsaw, there was only darkness and silence.'" - Country in the Moon

"A travel diary should be full of sensations, a guidebook devoid of them." - Stendhal


One thing I didn't do in Gdansk was look at amber. The city is famous for it and there are many shops and museums dedicated to the art of its collection and manipulation. You're supposed to buy some there, since it's the best in the world. So, I have amber regrets.

On the train to Krakow, I thought Amber Regrets would make a great stage name.

I also, somehow, missed the Monument to the Evacuated Children, which I also have amber regrets over. The story goes that when the winds of WWII were starting to blow darkly in Poland, over 10,000 Jewish children were sent to England to live with foster families there.

They were like 10,000 Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucies sent away to avoid the war and almost certain extermination. Most of their parents were murdered, and one imagines it gave some comfort to them in the gas chamber that the kids were going to live.

And what fertile plot material that all is. Little outcast orphans with different religions and languages living in London? Please sir, I should like some kielbasa. You'll get a scone with jam and like it! There are probably 20 books and plays about this and there need to be 70.

I mean, it's got everything, right? Children. War. Culture clash. Tragedy. Fish-out-of-water.


And those were my trainthoughts as that beautiful, fast engine shot smoothly to Krakow. So quickly and efficiently is this line, it actually stops by Warsaw first, so I got to see that familiar skyline once more (and will again when I leave for home in a few weeks).

I finished that Country in the Moon memoir and felt close to the author, as one does. He loves Poland too! I started a novel about a Romanian student who gets pushed around. I only pack books I'm sure I'll struggle to read at home.

Enjoyed piecing together little country scenes out the window. A girl in red, at the end of a long rock pier, fishing, her bicycle on its side behind her.

Arrived in Krakow after a long blink, and walked out into the giant three-story shopping mall that is also the main train station.


A radically different energy than Warsaw and Gdansk immediately. Gorgeous Europeans running around with energy and laughter. Sunny and bright. Every woman looked like she'd fallen off of a cosmetics billboard, and every man looked like the mad violin professor who'd pushed her.

I grabbed a pretzel ring like a knight at a tournament and made my way through the twisty streets to the apartment. Which was suitable. Nothing's going to beat that stripey fantasy in Gdansk.

Could have jumped out to photograph the famous square, but the point of Krakow (this time) is recovery. I also had to put in what would look like a day's work. Still two more days of being on the clock.

Wrote some material, sent some emails, responded to some emails, video conferenced with the boss (she said I looked tired), and passed out.

Woke up and went back to bed. No dinner. Didn't need it. I had my sights set on seeing the Painted Village of Zalipie in the morning.



Zalipie was something I saw online on one of those clickbait sites. A breezy gallery painted a dazzling picture of a tiny folk village where the peasants keep to traditional ways and decorate their cottages with bright images from a simpler time.

It's remote, but not crazy remote, and you can get there if you can get to Tarnow. Tarnow is just an hour away from Krakow, so... it made the list. It still wasn't exactly clear how you get there, but it seemed reasonable to assume someone in Tarnow would know which bus to take.

A woman online wanted $200 to drive you there from Krakow, and I was like... the train to T-town is $2.50, a bus from T to Z is probably .75 cents. I don't think I'll spend $200 this day. Lady.

Got up, got some of that crayon water they call coffee, caught the early train.


The train was a junker, and I was in heaven. Beat-up old vinyl seats. Cracked plastic floors. Old newspapers everywhere. Thick, cloudy windows.

Two dudes were chattering like otters on holiday. They talked over one another, a Venn diagram of overlapping speech bubbles. Politics? Household hints? Arguing about the ending of Lost? Whatever it was, they were having the best time, and it was nice to hear.

Outside, ragged uncultivated fields were as overgrown as my unshaven vacation face. I should return with a beard full of sour green berries.

An old man wanted me to close the window, and though neither of us spoke a word the other could understand, he was a master of pantomime and even taught me how to use the Brezhnev-era window lock.

People boarded at the various stops. Places like Szarow (which made me sing David Bowie's cover of Sorrow). In the city, everyone looks like a third-chair oboist. On the train, the same men look like your out-of-work uncle.


Tarnow was pleasant enough. You can tell by the enormous cemetery that it was once a center of Polish Jewry. Nice little medieval square and there was some sort of film festival going on. The people were the usual combination of stout copper-haired woman with shopping bags and young people with salon-catalog haircuts slinking around in sexy packs.

At the tourist center I asked how to get to Zalipie.

"Ah, yes, Zalipie. The painted village."

Yes, how do I get there.

"You take, ah, you take bus."

Great. Which bus?

"Bus is by cathedral."

Thank you. What time does it go to Zalipie?

"Oh, all time, but is not big place and driver may skip."

How do I keep that from happening? Do I just tell him?

"Yes, but he might forget."

Is there... how will I know when I'm close?

She took a piece of paper and wrote the letter G on it.

"G is town of gibberishgobble. This is close to Zalipie."

When I'm in Zalipie, is it easy to walk around. Are the houses close to one another?

She drew a large circle on the paper.

"This is village, You walk in circle to see houses."

I left for the bus stop with a circle and a G. And I wasn't sure what the G stood for.

It looked like a hydrogen atom.


Not useless exactly, but not... I went down to the bus stop. The buses were minivans. I wrote ZALIPIE on a piece of paper and showed it to each driver. They all shook their heads no and waved me away.

About an hour passed. I watched the golden hands of the cathedral clock turn. I listened to the bells. Old men fed pigeons. Buses came and left. None going to Zalipie. I decided the G Spot must be key and studied the hieroglyphics of the schedule.

One side of the Rosetta Stone in the shelter had something called Gręboszów on it. Could this be the mysterious city of gold that would lead to the folksy painted village?

If so, it wasn't leaving for another two hours.

There was some tension, because I had to get back to work. Being nine hours ahead of the office is cool, but it's not an eternity. In any case, I was determined to see this dumb-ass place, so I limped back to the main square of Tarnow to kill two hours.

On the way, I did the math - Two hours til bus leaves, maybe one hour to Z... one hour to walk the circle... one hour back... one hour back to Krakow.... should still only be 8:30 am in Seattle.


Puked around in a little market, went to a sad Gypsy Museum. Turns out those people had it pretty rough too. The museum itself had seen better days. The curator ran around turning the lights on. It was clear I was the only person who had been there that day.

Great poster that said: 1) A Gypsy is a Slave. 2) Anyone born to a slave is a slave 3) Slave owners may trade or sell their slaves 4) Unowned slaves are the property of the prince.

Those happy fortune tellers and accordion players were all burnt in Hitler's ovens.

There were some very beautiful old cards on display and four old painted wagons in the back.

Got a dumb coffee and went back to the bus stop. A bus with Gręboszów printed on a sign in the front window sat there. I jumped on and showed him my paper. He rolled his eyes, took my thirty cents and waved me into the back. I had done it.


Unremarkable ride there other than the great feeling that I was on my way, that it was really happening, and that the bus got totally packed. Eventually, folks just melted away, I was worried the dude would speed by the Z, but he stopped.

I walked out into a suburb. Road and sky stretched out for miles around. There was a modern-looking house in the distance. Was this the right place?

A sign with a flower on it pointed in a direction, so I followed it. Long, hot walk down a paved road with no one around. I wondered which part of the circle I was on. Held out hope that once I got there, it would be a sweet little fairy ring of happy homes.

After a while (and the whole time, I was like, I gave myself an hour for this place, and it's taking half an hour to find the first homely house, which means a half hour back... oh, bother).

Farmland stretched out on either side. I heard the whine of a power saw.

The arrow led to a house with another arrow in it. It was encouraging, though, because the house was painted all crazy. An old dog wasn't happy with me.


Kept walking. Long stretch of nothing. I sang Chris Bell songs to myself and headed for the shape of houses in the distance. Another painted arrow was nailed to a post. When I got there, the houses were just houses.

There were more houses far away. I took off some layers, stuffed them in my camera bag and headed toward them.

One was the museum. It was the house of the loony old lady who painted her spoons and her light bulbs and who started this whole crazy myth of a painted village. The curator was very nice about showing me around. It was very pretty and legitimately charming.

Across the street, a woman was harassing her gardener. Zalipie isn't really a painted folksy village. It's a suburb for rich people, a few of whom have the leisure to paint their mailboxes in the manner of an old woman from a hundred years ago.

You need a car if you're going to visit.

I wasn't entirely disillusioned, but it wasn't the experience I had imagined, or been led to expect, really. Then I felt guilty for wanting that experience. Like, it seemed very privileged and touristy to be out there looking for "authentic" "crafts" from "peasants."

Pushed myself to one more cluster of houses (some were very well decorated) and turned around for the looong walk back to the stop. More dogs decided they hated me, and I was yapped out of town.



On the way back to the stop, a car heading to where I had just been stopped to ask if I knew where Zalipie was. German family, car full of kids. They had probably read all the same things I'd read and were excited. Full of hope.

"Keep going," I said, "It's straight ahead. And it's incredible!"

1 comment:

  1. Wow, what a letdown. The distant whine of a power saw is never a good omen, is it?

    ReplyDelete