One book equals two cheeses

Adventures in Poland

“Welcome to Kraków”

I left my jacket in Frankfurt.

Everyone in Poland told me it wasn’t that cold. They also told me it was much warmer two weeks ago. The schizophrenic nature of this response was mirrored by the way they dressed. Some people wore track suits and windbreakers while others were bundled up in hooded parkas.

My solution was to wear all of my clothes at the same time. I started with a t-shirt, layered it with a flannel shirt buttoned all the way to the top, covered by a zip-up hoodie, and finally a wool shirt, a knock-off Pendleton I bought in a surf shop that is incredibly warm.

I’d brought all these clothes with me to deal with the various temperatures I’d encounter in New York, Spain, Germany, and finally Poland. I didn’t expect to be wearing them all at once. And I was still cold.

Gabriel Fahrenheit, by the way, was Polish, and while 35 F isn’t technically freezing, I it’s still pretty fucking cold.

At the airport in Kraków I was met by a writer named Sebastian, who interviewed me for Booklips when the Polish edition of Do What You Want came out. Sebastian is a fan of contemporary writing from Spain and Latin America and we had a lot to talk about. Sebastian speaks very good English, as most young people in Poland do, but I struggled with his pronunciation of Polish place names and proper nouns, but we managed.

On the bus into the city, a person dealing with some kind of brain health issue confronted several people, asking them where they were from. If they said, “Germany,” for example, she’d yell, “Turn around! Go back to where you come from! Get out of my country now!”

She was quite small but severe. It didn’t seem to matter what the people she was yelling at looked like—she wasn’t targeting people of color as most everyone was white. She didn’t address me. It didn’t take long for the driver to kick her off the bus. “Welcome to, Kraków,” Sebastian said.

Man square, abandoned hotel, the castle

The Vistula Style

Sebastian took me to the main square, the largest in all of Europe, and then we walked by the castle that dates back to when Kraków was the capital of Poland. It was all very pretty and very old—except for the Soviet-era buildings, which are so ugly they are almost beautiful.

Because we had time to kill and we were nearby, we stopped in Massolit Books & Cafe, an English language bookstore that two readers recommended to me. (Hi Aug & Paul!) The name comes from Bulgakov’s Master and the Margarita. It’s the kind of place one rarely sees in the US anymore: a cozy, cluttered cafe with tables and benches tucked away here and there with mismatched furniture, some of it practically ancient by American standards. I could have stayed there all day.

After a bite to eat we crossed the river into the Podgórze district where my host for the night lives in a flat just steps from St. Paul’s Church, one of the most impressive places of worship I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen bigger and more grandiose churches, but this one struck me as both strange and wonderful.

I don’t like churches. I was raised Catholic and during the course of my life I’ve been a devout Catholic who wanted to be a priest (lol) to a hardcore atheist. I’m much more laidback now, a skeptical agnostic who accepts the possibilities of UFOs and ghosts and whatever the imagination can dream up. When it comes to explaining the mysteries of the universe, we’re just dogs howling poems at the shadows on the moon.

I am, however, opposed to organized religion, especially those engaged in the spiritual colonialism of missionary work. Believe what you want to believe, and I will support your right to believe it, but if you try to save me we’re going to have problems.

When I see a church, especially a big one in the center of an Irish village or Mexican town, I see resources that would been better spent elsewhere. I don’t like going into churches and avoid taking photos of them. It’s like passive brainwashing.

St. Joseph’s doesn’t look like a church. It looks like a magic castle, especially the part where the steeple gets broader than its base with all these odd doors and then keeps going. I couldn’t stop staring at it and taking photos of it. I felt enchanted by it. I think the clock has something to do with it, beaming like a porthole in a time machine.

In Barcelona, I had a dream about a house that keeps changing, like it occupied many times and many places at once. I wrote it all down and have been thinking about it ever since. Maybe there’s a story there. I don’t know yet. A few days later I visited one of the first houses that Antoni Gaudi designed, Casa Vicens, which is an absolute trip. I read a short book about Gaudi that I picked up at the gift shop and it reads like the biography of a mystic. It’s amazing he was ever put in charge of anything. He was such an uncompromising kook. I kind of love him.

I don’t know much about Jan Sas Zubrzycki, the guy who built St. Joseph’s, but he’s credited with inventing the Vistula style, which I don’t know anything about other than the name comes from the Vistula River.

I stayed with Wojciech (pronounced Voi-tek) who recently moved into a flat just steps away from St. Joseph’s and is visible from his kitchen window. (It was a little like being in an old film, the way the spires of the old church were visible from everywhere.) Wojciech is a writer who spent over a decade in London where he managed a bar and is an enthusiastic supporter of punk rock who loves Soulside and Hot Snakes, so we had plenty to talk about. He speaks English in a Polish accent that softens into a charming London lilt at the end of his sentences.

Wojciech has recently published a novel called Weltschmerz Hardcore about his punk rock experiences. (Wojciech: “Weltschmerz is a German world for the sadness of the world.”) He also reprinted his punk rock interviews he did for the zine he wrote for between 1986 and 1990 called Antena Krzyku. He showed me many books from his library I’ve never seen, including a book about punk rock in East Germany called Too Much Future that I must get my hands on. Fun fact: No Means No is huge in Poland and Germany because of they played here so often.

After a couple cups of coffee, Wojciech pointed me to Warsztat, a DIY space less than a mile away whose name means workshop, where I went to see a couple of very heavy bands: Yell. from Poland and Pilori from France. Like Au in Frankfurt, Warsztat is covered in antifascist symbols and slogans, which is reassuring, essential, and, frankly, pretty inspiring.

Yell. has a doomy groove that I liked and the excellent drumming kept it from descending into sludge (NTTAWWT). Pilori is D-beat blackened hardcore with ferocious vocals. I have no idea what either band was singing about, but I felt it. Whenever one of my earplugs came a little loose (like when I briefly collided with a powerfully proportioned Polish skinhead) it sounded like I was being sucked into a jet engine. Incredible.

Yell. & Pilori

New Market

The next morning Wojciech fed me and filled me with coffee and I went exploring for a few hours during which time I feel in love with every bookstore I went into. I’m so impressed with Polish graphic design. Every book I saw picked up was gorgeous. Hi lights included De Revolutionibus Books & Cafe, which has these beautiful little snugs where you can sit and read built into the shelves, and Lokator, a bookstore, publishing house, café and artist’s studio in the Jewish Quarter. I picked up an incredible edition of Fernando Pessoa’s poems mainly because it was illustrated with gorgeous lino-cut illustrations and included a print. An absolute steal.

I also stopped to gawk at an incredible art installation on the pedestrian bridge between Podgórze and the Jewish Quarter: lifelike figurative sculptures of circus performers that looked like they were balancing on wires above the river. A real show-stopper.

I could have wandered around all day but I had to catch a tram to the main train station and then take the bus to Novy Targ, a city of 30,000 twenty kilometers from the Slovakian border and north of the Tarta Mountains.

I went to Novy Targ to meet with Michal, who runs Nikt Nic Nie Wie, which means
”Nobody Knows Nothing” and is a label, a distro, and, possibly, a press. Remember Smierć? They’re on NNNW. Michal is a Polish punk rock lifer and educator who does a million different things that makes scenes thrive. In short, a really inspiring guy. My trip to Novy Targ was an opportunity to get out of the city and be in nature—even though it was colder in Novy Targ than it is in Kraków. We went for walks all over the city and along the river with his dog Coco.

In Novy Targ I had a day to do some work, catch up on email, and push some projects farther along—more on those developments soon. I ate some great vegetarian food and had the fluffiest gooseberry cheesecake I’ve ever tasted. Ok, it was the only gooseberry cheesecake I’ve ever had, but still.

After two days in the country, I felt like I finally caught up on my sleep—just in time to go back to Kraków, back to Barcelona, and then back to San Diego. Isn’t that the way it always goes?

Back in Kraków we returned to Warsztat for a last-minute book signing for Rób, Co Chcez and performances by a pair of bands from Vilnius, Lithuania: Kanalizacija, which mean sewage, and dr. Green, which you can probably figure out on your own. Both feature horns with the former being more experimental and the latter firmly in the ska punk category.

It was my first, final, and hopefully not the last gathering with Sebastian, Wojciech and Michal. Missing from our trifecta was Kuba, who was responsible for getting me to Poland in the first place and whose project End Forest continues to be a source of wonder and inspiration. While in Novy Targ, I received a package from Kuba that contained two large blocks of cheese, which I was able to fit in my backpack by gifting my last copy of Corporate Rock Sucks. Ergo, one book equals two cheeses.

Back in California

I’m writing this on Friday from an airline lounge in Stuttgart where I’m determined to get 32 euros worth of coffee, bottled water, and freshly baked pretzels. So far so good. I’ll format it on Saturday in Barcelona, whose airport is asking me to arrive four hours in advance of my flight. (Edit: it took 15 minutes to get through security and passport control.) I’m scheduling this for Sunday at which point if all goes as planned I’ll be driving up the California coast to Santa Cruz for a writing retreat. Wish me luck! I’ll see you at the regular time next week.

If you’re new to Message from the Underworld and you enjoyed this newsletter, you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, science, and killer whales.