Coming out of Warsaw Central Station, or Dworzec

     The Warsaw Central Station received his curiosity like a birthing pain; it spilled out. Sleepless since at least Berlin, and before that, too, he, bleary eyed, glanced at signs which held their meanings from him. Better follow the flow of people past the tumbling tracks, escalator up, to lighter hallways and different smells (not burning oil and brake heated iron, but sickly sweet body odor, his own first, then stronger past the standing bag keepers, breezes wafting exhaust from open doors and cigarette smoke) through fricative and sibilant announcements. "Dong-Ding. Ishka. Hiss. Dvashets loodie. Terrace each a Poe Chong. Nack-oh nyets. Dong-Ding. The shape of the sound and the feel of the smell will be the signature of Poland for him. The endorsement on the check of an overdrawn account of experiences, which the tellers have not caught but keep providing.

Concrete colors filled his vision - light grey blocks, both of sidewalk and apartments, waves of black asphalt undulating under moving mountains of rubber bus tire. The bright white cloud cover cast shadows where no sun shines. Dirt muted car colors weave behind the billows of sooty particulant  clouds. Long plazas take his legs several thoughts away to reach the other side. This will become his mental map. But now it is still . . . . He looks with wide eyes.

Twin towers of the span of time framed the view. On the one hand, the Palace of Culture, paeon to Communism, filled with unseen iron behind a pressed and sculptures monotone of rock, and Stalin's gift, filled with unmentionable irony. On the other, the Hotel Marriott, rising streams of blue glass shimmering like clean water and money, so easy to see yet hard to find, proving the regime of the Washington Consensus, just out of reach. But at the moment he had a notion that he keep grab them both with his hands as he stood at the steps of the Warsaw Central Station. (From a memory of 1994)