It’s hard to know where to start with Lublin.
Maybe this picture of people swarming the street “bazar”…
Aleje Tysiąclecia market, on a Wednesday morning.
Or this picture of Birds Gone Wild in the Saxon Gardens, swirling and diving and showing off for an indulgent woman with birdseed.
Or this wagon full of lumps of coal–yes, really, a wagon full of lumps of coal— that was outside my hostel as I walked to the bus stop, in the morning, on ul. Lubartowska.
There is nothing I can say about this image that speaks better for it than the image itself. WAGON. COAL. Witamy w Lublinie, folks.
Or all these images of my second day in Lublin, from the hostel breakfast to the morning bus-ride to Brama Krakowska to the Old Town, to the Saxon Gardens.
After this trip around town, I visited the campus of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie University, where I was on a mission to locate a) the library b) my friend A. My map led me to the wrong library–the public library–first, but I have images of both.
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- Aleje Tysiąclecia market, on a Wednesday morning.
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- There is nothing I can say about this image that speaks better for it than the image itself. WAGON. COAL. Witamy w Lublinie, folks.
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- Hostel breakfast: bread, jam, margarine, and all the tea you can drink.
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- Hostel front room.
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- View across the Lublin rooftops. Looks sunny, but is actually very cold.
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- Out the hostel window, down onto sleepy ul. Lubartowska.
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- The next few pictures are all of ul. Lubartowska–electric buses, coal wagon, slanted streets, etc.
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- (this one is on al. tysiaclecia, on the bus ride into town)
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- Getting closer to the Stare Miasto (Old Town) now.
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- The next few photos are all of the Stare Miasto (Old Town) and the churches, buildings, and ruins around it.
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- Stare Miasto-adjacent churches.
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- My bus let me off across the street from the square brick Brama Krakowska.
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- Town hall, Lublin. Note the Kongres Kultury–that’s why the theater festival is happening…
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- Brama Krakowska–the most popular meeting place (and bus stop) in Lublin.
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- You go through the gate…
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- and you end up here!
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- Back on the bus along Aleja Solidarności, at Plac Litewski…
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- I kept getting off the bus along Aleja Solidarności to take pictures. Here’s the fountain in Plac Litewski.
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- Plac Litewski.
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- The entrance to the Ogród Saski (Saxon Gardens). Check out that tree. Yikes. Been through a lot. If that isn’t the Tree of Symbolism for Poland, I don’t know what is.
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- Gardens! Birds!
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- Birds…in flight. This scene happened moments after I entered the gardens.
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- Birds! More birds!
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- The used-book market by the entrance to the garden.
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- The beginnings of the gardens.
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- Along Aleja Solidarności.
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- A tree growing along the ground near the campus of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie University.
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- Just off the MSC University campus.
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- MSC campus buildings; covered walkways for cold weather.
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- Ladies drink free! Every Thursday! Advertising billboards rolled onto campus and parked.
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- See the graffiti on this building near the north edge of campus? See it?
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- Hmmm..is *this* the MSC University Library?
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- Here’s that graffiti again! Marx!
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- Fryzjer (hairdresser) “Dara,” on one wall of what I still thought was the MSC library at this point.
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- Er…no, this would be the public Lublin library. Tiny. Let’s look at that map again.
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- Back to the covered walkways…
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- Okay. This looks more like the MSC University library.
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- And it is!
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- Complete with museum reconstruction of MSC’s lab…
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- More Old Town pictures now–different location from the university. Lublin’s Stare Miasto is closely buit, like the streets of the reconstructed one in Warsaw. The buildings shadow each other.
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- More of the stones of old Lublin…
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- One open area happens where what appear to be the foundations of an older building remain–thick stone walls, or what’s left of them.
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- From that stone-filled clearing you can look out over the city. The tight-knit Old Town opens up into a valley and a view of all Lublin. Hilly terrain.
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- Looking out over Lublin.
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- I think this is a little metal reconstruction of the building that once stood on these stone foundations. But I’m not sure.
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- Back outside the Brama Krakowska again, getting ready to get back on a bus heading into Lublin–a poster for a dance festival coming up in November.
I did eventually connect with A., and we crashed an Erasmus student mixer for the free food. After leaving A. on her campus, I returned to the Warstaty Kultury for a play by a Czech theater company, also on the subject of climate change and its effects on the African continent.
The Czech play, like the German one, relied heavily on caricature. I was able to understand it half through the Polish supertitles, half through the spoken Czech (which sounds an awful lot like Polish) and half through the helpful whispered notes of my German friend sitting next to me.
I sat with actor friends in the lobby afterwards for some time, but was too wiped out to go out. I went back to the hostel.
The next morning, to leave Lublin, I had to get on one bus that said its destination was Majdanek (the Lublin-area concentration camp, very close to the town itself–and also just the name of part of the town) to transfer to another bus to go to my train station.
The bus was a reminder of a history I was trying to have my time in Lublin not be about, but some reminders of that history were, I think, inevitable. (There was also a moment in a Stare Miasto tourist shop where I went to buy a postcard and accidentally picked up one with images of barbed wire and human bones on it.)
The more time I spent in Lublin, the more I loved it, but the sadder I became about what had been lost. Singer’s Lublin was something I sensed around every corner in this place, but to sense something is not the same as having it be present.
At any rate, I was happy to get off that bus to Majdanek, and to board a train heading back to Warsaw, to my present life, to the present day, and to set history aside for the moment–and to crash in Praga for 24 hours, before the next train, to Lodz.
Dara Weinberg 