Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Thursday, January 21, 2010

A year ago today, I was headed from my home in Mount Airy to Raleigh, North Carolina where the following day, I was scheduled to interview a woman named Nancy Murray about her pioneering work to save and recycle what are commonly referred to as “tear-down” houses. (The article I wrote about her organization, Builders of Hope, appears in the current, January-February 2010, issue of Natural Home magazine.)

Today, I put Nancy on the plane at Warsaw’s Chopin International Airport headed for JFK in New York. Nancy came to Warsaw last week for a working vacation — to explore an exotic, new-to-her foreign capitol while advancing work on the book on which we’re now collaborating. Nancy and I covered major ground here, in interviews, discussions and conceptualization for the book, which we are tentatively calling “ReBuilding Solutions in a Tear-Down World.” And we covered major ground in Warsaw, exploring a city that may well be the biggest renovation project in the world. (After World War II, Warsaw was 85 percent destroyed but has since been rebuilt into a bustling city of 2 million.)

Despite the sub-freezing temperatures, ubiquitous snow and ice, and tear-inducing winds, the two of us braved the streets of the historic, reconstructed Old Town; buzzed around town on its impressive three-tiered public transportation system (trams, buses and Metro); enjoyed conversation and cappucinos at the famed Hotel Bristol with Michal Borowski, the former vice president of building for the city, who was responsible for fast-tracking construction for the Rising ’44 Museum (a jewel among the city’s museums). Nancy and I visited an exhibit about the effect on Poland of Soviet totalitarianism. Twice, we met the deputy director for the now-under-construction Museum of the History of Polish Jews, a human dynamo named Ewa Wierzynska, who is busy organizing a major event February 15 to celebrate the birth of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic woman who saved the lives of an estimated 2,500 Jewish children during World War II.

Ewa Wierzynska, in turn, introduced us to a distinguished professor of art history at Warsaw University, Maria Poprzecka, who sat with a group of women at Cafe Blikle at Plac Wilsona, educating us about the progressive housing projects of the 1920s and 1930s in Zoliborz, her community growing up and now a fashionable (and expensive) part of the city, where we were at that moment sipping wine and eating cheese.

For the first four nights of her visit, Nancy slept Polish-style on a pull-out bed in the living room of the townhouse in which I’m staying. Then she moved to the centrally located Boutique Bed and Breakfast on Smolna Street (www.bbwarsaw.com). Predictably, the perpetually sunny Nancy felt right at home at this B&B, which specializes in local food, organic honey, eggs from free-range chickens and most of all friendly service. (Improbably, I’d first heard about this B&B from a friend in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; then, it was recommended by Ewa Wierzynska. Long ago, I decided that when you hear about a person, place or thing from multiple, unrelated sources, you need to pay attention!)

On Sunday, January 17th, the renowned Polish pianist Przemyslaw Lechowski offered a Chopin concert at the B&B on the occasion of my birthday. We all gathered round the grand piano in a salon at the B&B for his passionate rendition — “we” meaning Nancy, Henry, my landlady Malgosia, and a young German student named Daniel whom we’d met that morning at church services, along with several neighbors of the B&B.

Speaking of birthdays, here comes another serendipity. Last year, when I requested an interview with Nancy on January 22, she neglected to tell me that date happened to be her birthday. So it’s only fitting that this year, when scheduling her trip to Poland, Nancy decided to pay me a visit on my birthday — January 17.

Who knows what our next cycle of birthdays in 2011 will bring? Could it be a book signing party in America… on our own Capitol Hill?