Saturday in Warsaw was Night of Museums. It's a night when every museum is open free to the public, with special exhibitions, concerts, meetings, etc. It's wonderful, but someone didn't think it through that by offering hundreds of options, many might become overwhelmed with having to choose just a few. Luckily for me, I felt obligated to attend Zachęta, seeing as it's my current employer and I need to be in their good graces, still.

But before then, I went to the National Museum, where my jaw even dropped a few time at seeing some of my favorite paintings in real life (I even returned to the Wyspiański room, having to ask a lady how to get back there, mispronouncing everything including his name... some days my Polish abandons me). It doesn't hurt that Wyspiański was a bit of a looker, too.


I also picked up a postcard of this work- I'm not really a big fan of his play Wesele, but I'm starting to be more curious after seeing this painting. In his play these stalks come to life and basically haunt a village wedding.

Chochoły (1898-1899)

I wish I had not been too shy to take pictures with Pasha (my nice camera) but didn't like the way the guard ladies were looking at people who were doing that. So I resorted to a few quick and discrete iPod shots. Again. The Matejko works are always impressive; I saw one of his most famous a few years ago back in Lublin. But this time I got a pleasant surprise to walk in and see Stańczyk off to the side, the poor guy (definitely bought a bookmark of him).

Stańczyk (1862)

Battle of Grunwald (1878)

At the bus stop back, I thought I'd take a picture of this, thinking you bargain shoppers in USA would like it.

T-K Maxx. Maybe "T-J" wouldn't make sense?

A lot of contemplation went into whether or not to return to the center for the night, as some looming clouds and rather aggressive wind was warning me otherwise, but it ended up being pretty nice. I had gone home to make some free lunch/dinner for myself (my home-maker skills are slightly improving, especially since I figured out I can use the vending machine across from my room, but P.S. how did the bananas I bought, unripe, go bad within a matter of hours?!), and after looking more closely at the schedule, decided to head back toward the center (in case I haven't mentioned this, it takes about 25 minutes by bus to get into town). I was lucky enough to sit next to a youngun' of about 17 years on the bus who decided to snort rather potent tobacco off the back of his hands. Classy, right?




So what I did was got off at a stop, walked to Old Town, and slowly made my way back towards the gallery in about an hour and a half, stopping at a museum along the way about the rebuilding of Warsaw after its destruction during the war. People were all over, concerts were going on, and performers were in costume.

I'm still not sure if this guy was with the tour group, or trying to mug every one of them.

There was music planned at the gallery, partly the motivation for me to risk the bad weather. This performer was particularly intriguing more on youtube than when I walked into the room with some of the interns before we hopped over to the Ethnographic museum while they were on a short break.

I'm glad I decided to call it quits because it took a very long time to get home, as the traffic looked like Boston after a Red Sox game... or any American town or city after a sporting event.

Also, Jože sent me some pictures of me from the other day, and I fear the wrath of relatives should I not post a few pictures with me in them. Sorry I tend to make a weird face whenever a camera is pointed at me.