My final-hurrah-last-farewell-tour with my dad through Britannia was over! It was an epic ride, not soon to be forgotten, but now I was heading to Ukraine to get back in the action. After a year away, I was feeling antsy to return to where great things are happening, where everyday people are heroes. Now there was only one thing between me and my destination: Warsaw.
Well, that and the highly chaotic and variable Polish-Ukrainian border.
I had a hiccup in Poland (although really in London), where my bag didn’t get on my connecting flight because they had to rebook me on a later flight due to their own malfeasance. London Heathrow Airport is literally designed and maintained by the Devil. It was so deja vu missing another connecting flight there due to their logistical errors. Riley and I had the same thing happen on our way to Portugal last year. It’s like they just don’t know how to operate connecting flights. I’m never going back through there unless I have to. And now this baggage bullshit went down on top of every else!
God bless British Airways! Lord knows they need it…
So I had to wait an extra day in Warsaw. Thanks to the saving grace of the angels, I was reunited with my pack the next day, but I still had booked a couple extra days in Warsaw.
I love Poland, but I’m not sure Poland loves me. Polish people are very kind, but they have a tendency towards strictness that obviously is not going to work for me. Watching Polish people walk their streets is evidence that this world really is a simulation. Everyone acts like AI is such a radical new thing, but authoritarian governments learned how to create and mass-produce artificial intelligence years ago! Sure there’s occasional glitches in the system, but those units just need to be reprogrammed or disposed of. Simple.
The beauty of Old Town Warsaw is surreal. It’s like a little fairyland of culture hidden in the heart of one of the world’s most modern cities. It had to be totally and painstakingly restored after being completely destroyed by the Germans in WWII, as Old Uncle Adolf had a particular animosity for the people of Warsaw due to their tendency to fight to the death for their friends and families. I even saw in one dedication that German soldiers had gunned down all the elderly women in a nursing home there.
The destruction was fierce.
Before that Warsaw had been one of the gems of Europe. That they were able to restore even a whisper of what once was, through public dedication and donation against the forces of totalitarianism and the backdrop of the Soviet era, is a testament to the will of the people of Warsaw.
There is a romantic sadness here underneath the surface of everything. Similarly to Ukraine, much of the history of Poland could be recorded in sad violin music, with brutality and deprivation being consistent themes throughout the performance. That longing for something that will never come back: that’s a really special feeling isn’t it? That temptation towards tragedy pulls at our heart strings, even after our hearts stop beating. Maybe that’s why the youth of Eastern Europe are so focused on the future, while their elders drift increasingly to the past.
Hell, maybe it’s a global phenomenon…
I missed my train to Kyiv due to all the British nonsense. British nonsense can be explained thusly: Let’s make everything needlessly complicated and just force everyone to be compliant because they have to listen to us! Therefore, I was forced to do something I swore I would never do again: ride a goddamn bus through the Ukrainian border.
In the words of Pat Thompson, as relayed to me by my father, “Is it never again already?”
Riding a bus across the border is like playing logistical Russian Roulette. You might make it, or you might be stuck there for like 20-fucking-hours. No mortal timeline can survive that kind of blow without the need for serious revision. Luckily for me, I have all the time in the world, and my timeline was shot to hell already.
But I made it across perfectly on time.
We headed West with the setting sun at our backs. Its promise to return filled the world with fiery radiance, as our bus roared ever closer to Kyiv. As night fell across the land, a half-moon came to check in on us, its hallowed light guiding our way through the dark. With such good omens and guardians as these, it’s no wonder that we made it to Kyiv perfectly on time at about 8-in-the-morning.
I was back in Ukraine, alive and unspoiled!
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