Something colorful and happy to counteract all the people in the world who feel the need to freak out and shoot people.

I’ve been experimenting with ways to incorporate text, using illustrators I admire for inspiration… This is just a scrap of poetry from William Allingham.

What’s with all the black birds? They keep appearing…

Ok, I’m finally getting to part two of Poland. It’s been a few days. Sorry about that. I had things to do, like a clown to draw. (Don’t ask. Or let me just say, if you pay me, I’ll draw you *anything!* Or, more accurately, almost anything! Even I have my limits.)

Part two took place in Warsaw. We drove there from Radom, Wojciech’s family stuffed in the car, the trunk completely full of food. And I mean completely. Trays of hors d’oeuvres. Breads. Cheeses. Homemade spreads. Pickled Herring. Cakes. About 30 bottles of Lemon-flavored Vodka. The essentials!

It was raining the whole time, and some magic of the road and the rain and the warmth of the car made my eyelids really heavy, so I don’t remember much of the ride.

The whole purpose of this was a surprise party for the brother of Wojciech. (A bit of background: Wojciech is a contemporary artist and composer currently getting his Ph.D in music, who lives in Berlin, and Wojciech’s brother is a film producer, living in Warsaw.) There were about 50 people there for this surprise party, and while I suspect he had an idea something was up, he seemed genuinely surprised to find a veritable mob there waiting for him, as well as a new scooter.

The party was at this cafe: 

My Polish didn’t seem to be improving very quickly, so in lieu of conversation I spent the evening dancing. (That is, until I fell asleep on the couch.)

Here’s how it looks from outside, taken the next day. 

Pretty much in the exact spot where the above picture was taken, there is this memorial to the former wall of the Warsaw ghetto:

Pretty grim…

Moving on, here is a downtown scene, looking very metropolitan. The trams are everywhere. Berlin has them too, but only in the East. They didn’t really proliferate on the West side, just as they were removed in Los Angeles and many other cities, because cars were the future! But now everyone seems to regret removing/not adding them. 

We went to an art exhibition (what else would you expect?) Mostly it was video art, so I don’t have any pictures, but there was this piece on the stairs by the entrance:

Gave me a good laugh. While I was watching, two children approached it solemnly, looked around to see if any parents were watching, and then reached out to touch the shattered safety glass. I don’t know who the artist is, unfortunately.

The next morning we had to take off extremely early again, so I only really got a few impressions of Warsaw, as there wasn’t time to really explore. But I can tell you a few things:

1. There is a sculpture of a giant palm tree in the middle of a traffic circle.

2. The architecture is very inconsistent in styles, and there seem to be quite a few vacant lots interspersed.

3. There is a huge, impressive building in the middle of downtown that was a gift from Russia. It looks like this (Many thanks to this “Jan Egil Kirkebø” for taking this very gloomy and ominous picture that I found via a Google image search:)

4. Next to this giant building is an organically-shaped, glass-encased shopping mall (also of epic proportions), lest ye forget about capitalism.

5. There are lots of construction zones. It seems to be booming!

Today was the first snowfall of the year here in Berlin. I thought it a good idea to sit on the windowsill (conveniently above the radiator) and make today’s drawing. The snow seemed so enthusiastic as it fell as if it were excited to finally be back. But in the end it only made for a light dusting, and now it’s almost gone.

(Note: I am not sure exactly what this is)

There is some sort of challenge going on out on the internet to draw (and blog) something every day in November. Since it is the first of November (or it was…it’s now 1 am) it seems a good idea to begin. and so, the first drawing:

… but, Happy Halloween!

It started with a chilly, early-morning ride to the main train station, navigating through the sleepy commuters who were robotically going through their morning routine, clutching my thermos full of coffee, then finding an ATM where  I could get out a bit of money for the trip, not realizing that the ATM was charging me a € 7.50 fee, also not realizing that they don’t use the Euro in Poland, they have the “Zloty”, what was I doing? But it was six a.m., an ungodly hour at which I am not used to being awake, and more frequently find myself going to sleep, so I couldn’t expect to be thinking clearly. I made it to my train on time and burrowed down in the window seat to doze.

Gradually we chugged eastward, and the dark reluctantly gave way to gray, foggy landscape. Fields of cabbages and small apple trees were interspersed with patches of forest and occasional towns. I spotted a few groups of deer, and pheasants picking their way through the stubble of a recent harvest. Chickens pecked around farmyards. The trees were starting to turn, and the long autumn grass was clumped in wet tangles along the tracks.

This video is sadly very short. I meant to take a longer one but somehow messed it up. But it is at least enough to get a bit of the idea:

On the train to Warsaw from Jessica Lanan on Vimeo.

Here’s a building we passed at a train station somewhere. 

At about noon we arrived in Warsaw, where we had to change trains for the trip south to Radom. People were everywhere, the station was confusing and busy, rather dirty, and suddenly everything was incomprehensible. We made our way through some sort of system of subterranean tunnels filled with small shops and yellow lighting that reminded me of Russia, in search of some flowers our friend wanted to buy for his mother. He chose some tulips, dark red; the edges were ruffled with just a hint of yellow. There wasn’t much time for any more impressions of Warsaw, however, because we immediately ran for the platform, jumping on the train just in time.

Instead of rows of seats like a bus, this second train had small compartments that could hold perhaps six people at the most, with glass doors opening onto a very narrow aisle that ran the length of the car. It was akin to the more expensive seats on the German trains. All of these compartments were bursting with Polish teenagers, who were spilling out into the narrow aisles, and the lights were out in most of the cars, so we bungled our way through the dark, claustrophobic train trying to find a place that we could stand comfortably and not be surrounded by rowdy 16-year-olds drinking vodka. We ended up in the very front of the train, just behind the engine, next to the bathroom, where things were decidedly more mellow (that is, until an accident at one stop where a woman fell into the gap between the train and the platform, injuring her leg. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but it was clear that she was pretty unhappy about that.)

It was early afternoon when we arrived in the city of Radom. I’m not sure what I was expecting, some country house with smoke coming from the chimney or something, but when we neared the city I saw my friend point to the giant soviet apartment buildings looming on the horizon, faceless gray blocks with ten stories of identical windows, I knew that was where we were going.

These sorts of buildings have always looked so depressing to me from a distance, so it was nice to go inside one, and be welcomed into a warm, small but comfortable home, and come to understand why these giant apartment blocks are not thought of with gloom but with a sense of nostalgia. Everything works, it’s comfortable, and everyone has a space of their own. It’s nothing fancy, but does a home really need to be? Perhaps they are not ideal, but neither are sprawling American suburbs where beige boxes line rivers of Asphalt and everyone owns three cars.

As soon as we arrived, we were fed. There seemed to be a warm, home-cooked meal coming our way every two hours or so, such was the level of hospitality we were receiving. We had to escape in order to digest, so we went to a nearby sculpture park outside the city to have a look around.

It was very picturesque in the sculpture park, so much so that there seemed to be about a dozen couples hanging around getting wedding photographs taken. We were marveling at their fortitude as they stood around in the 40-degree weather in sleeveless wedding dresses. It was also kind of amusing to see them hike up their skirts and tromp around in the wet leaves and mud to get to a particularly picturesque spot.

This was a strange building, all windows and glass, filled with curvaceous chunks of stone.

A small chapel converted into an art space.

This is just a picture of pond weeds. Look at how green it is! This is exciting stuff when you are used to dry climates.

Timur and Wojciech pose before a giant, strange ear sculpture. Artist unknown. To be continued…

I dug these out of the sketchbook. Pictures of Poland coming soon!

The last one had a cropping problem because it was too big for the scanner and I was too lazy to stitch it together. And then I gave it away to an inquiring 13-year-old who fished it out of my recycling bin, so I can’t re-scan it. There was a spaceship on the right, going in for a landing.