Regényes vándorutam: Diary about my trip to Łódz

--Today I got some feedback about my blog, so I decided to translate this post, too, even if it takes a lot of time and I didn’t want to do that. So, everyone, feel free to give me feedbacks because it encourage me to continue writing! J ---

I am sitting on the top of my backpack in the crowded train. I am going home, to my Polish home, Warsaw. Another weekend has gone and I have had another colourful adventures. This time I went to Łódz, to the old textile industry town, to visit Réka (who’s already visited me in Warsaw).

Saturday morning (21.03.) I travelled by train to Łódz and Réka was waiting for me at the train station. She advised a long trip with a lot of interesting places. Firstly, we went to Piłsudski Park and we saw the abandoned Luna Park (amusement park) and then we walked to the Manufaktura. The Manufaktura is one of the biggest shopping centre in Europe. Here we met with Réka’s mentor, Alexandra. We had lunch together and we went to the Piotrkowska Street, which is a famous and long street in Łódz. Our Polish guide talked about the town, the buildings and about her life. The meaning of Łódz is boat and below the town you can find water. The water is the best here all over Poland. In the old town a lot of old houses are situated and a lot of industrial buildings can be found. The town has a real industrial city feeling. But the streets are very dirty, the houses are grey. The parks are the opposite, because they are clean and nice. On some houses there are modern “paintings”, called murals. They are really interesting, they belong to a project. The artists would like to make an open-air museum and they welcome the visitors to admire their paintings. Réka’s aim to find a lot of mural and take photos of them. http://www.galeriaurbanforms.org/

Besides the paintings we found some smaller and bigger statutes. During our trip we made photos with the local ’celebrities’ (with their statutes). And we tried to feel what these statutes’ atmosphere had, but sometimes I failed this task. Once we visited a strange café with strange metal things. At the end of the street we said goodbye to Alexandra. Although we couldn’t go into museums, Réka and me decided to go to the famous places in Łódz. First we took a look to the Herbst palace and made a photo of the garden behind the fence. After that we admired the Orangery from outside again and we passed a nice park where there were free Wi-Fi. Then we visited the gate of the Cinematography Museum and finally we’d like to find the Se-ma-for museum. It’s about Polish cartoons. After some difficulties (strange house numbers and local citizens) we found the door of the museum, but it was disappointing for us. Probably the exhibition is better than its door.

While I’m writing these words, I am travelling by train and sometimes I jump up and down to give way to the people in the corridor. The sun is going down and it makes the sky pink and the landscape with pines becomes beautiful. This trip is both adventures and absurd as well. Me and my mates are sitting in front of the cabins in the corridor and jumping up to give way to the controller. I’m sure that I’m not going to be lazy during this travelling.

Back to our trip in Łódz, I can tell you that we visited the whole town and it was a really long trip. Finally, we reached Réka’s place where she’s working and living now. I’ve already heard something about this amazing hotel with big apartments, but what I found there, it was much more than my expectations. The foundation, where Réka has her traineeship, has big floors with a lot of rooms and offices. Originally it works with children but nowadays making money is the main goal of this foundation. When I was there, I realized this is a dying organization. The offices were messy, everything was dirty. In a big gathering room tasteless furniture and paintings about cartoons can be seen and unfriendly puppets scary the visitors. There are a lot of toys and costumes in some rooms and everywhere story motives can be seen but they are not so cheerful as once they were. Every room and places are neglected and uncared. So, the whole place looks bad but against this situation Réka is still cheerful. Although it wasn’t the best place where I have ever stayed a night, we enjoyed our time. No one bothered us, we didn’t meet any ghosts, only two windows opened mysteriously during the night. The whole house were ours and our saying goodnight would have been a scene in a movie if we went to sleep to a real apartment in a real hotel (probably this sentence is not correct. I’m sorry.). We had a small party with beer and Hungarian music. It was a good evening, but I’d never like to live here.

On the next day we made pancakes and we compared our frying techniques and we tried to make better shapes in the big frying pan. After this breakfast we managed to talk to our friend, Dóri via Skype. She was my roommate and she’s also studying psychology.

After that we went to the Poznanski palace (inside). The palace belonged to the Jewish Poznanski family. They were a famous family from Łódz and Izrael Poznanski revived his father’s textile industry. We visited their rooms but there are some rooms about other people from Łódz. For example, we saw a lot of interesting photos and objects of Rubinstein, the world famous pianist. He was a really sensitive artist with a lot of prices, awards and he had a long life. There is a documentary film about his concert trip in 1969 and it won an Oscar award. (Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life).

After the museum we went back to the Manufacture, we drunk hot chocolate. Then I bought a ticket to Warsaw, and we realized again that no one speaks English. Finally I said Goodbye to Réka and I found my comfortable place in the corridor. That’s how another weekend’s gone and another weekend when I used my mother tongue.