Flowers, everywhere.  A smiling young nun leans into a bouquet of roses as orange as an Ipanema sunset. The equivalent of two dollars a splendid dozen. If I lived in Warsaw, I’d buy flowers twice a week.

Nuns, everywhere. Ditto priests. Okay, maybe not everywhere, but the last time I saw nuns in Chicago  in traditional sisterly garb—long skirts and headgear  like The Flying Nun used to wear—I was back in grade school. And Jan Pawel’s face is plastered on every single church in Warsaw; apparently no one got the memo that he’s no longer Pope.

The architecture ranges from the sublime (the Chopin Museum) to the slightly ridiculous (the Soviet built Palace of Culture and Science.)  Mostly sublime. The Old Town is much bigger  than I had expected. Although most of it was restored after its almost total destruction by the Nazis, it has none of that faux touristy look of places that are, in fact, hundreds of years old (Heidelberg comes to mind.)

I try to visit the Holy Cross Church to see the sepulcher that holds the heart of Chopin, but there’s a funeral mass going on. The church is packed.

Posters of Chopin everywhere advertising Chopin concerts. You can buy little bottles of vodka with Chopin’s picture. The airport in Warsaw is called the Chopin Airport. The airport in Krakow is the Pope John Paul the Second airport.

Bakeries, everywhere. And cafes—kawernias—where you can get a delicious cup of coffee and a slice of apple cake for less than four dollars. Who needs Starbucks? If I lived in Warsaw, I’d have coffee and apple cake every day.

I know what I’d like my final meal to be. Pierogis stuffed with wild mushrooms, sour cream on the side.

People speak English less here than they do in many other parts of Europe, but that’s not a problem. It’s easy to navigate the city—the hop-on, hop-off trams are inexpensive and the conductor never asks for tickets. My husbands suggests that maybe we don’t have to actually buy tickets. I’ll visit you in jail, I tell my husband.

Too many pigeons.

The National Museum is closed. So much for admiring Matejko’s The Battle of Grunwald, which depicts the downfall of the Teutonic Knights at the hands of the Lithuanian-Polish army in 1410, a date that every Polish and Lithuanian child knows by heart.

Lazienki Park seems sad in the rain. Plus, it’s cold. In the heart of the park stands a larger-than-life sculpture of Chopin.

I see my mother everywhere: carefully coifed hair, a good fall coat in a flattering neutral color, makeup that is neither piled on nor so minimal as to be ineffective.  My mother always made an effort; no sweatpants, weekly trips to the salon, and, always, lipstick.  Sometimes my mother is wearing a beret, and sometimes she is holding hands with a man who is my father.

In preparation for my trip to Poland I’ve been listening to a lot of Chopin and Gorecki, reciting Milosz on my way to school, and reading James Michener’s surprisingly entertaining and, so far, seemingly accurate novel about the country, simply titled Poland.  What I know of Polish history is inextricably bound with what I know of Lithuanian history. We battled the same enemies, whether they were the Teutonic Knights or the Russian czars or the Nazis or the Soviets. Our major religion was, still is, a Catholicism steeped in the veneration of the Virgin Mary.  We share a national saint—Casimir. Kazimierz. Kazimieras. (In reading about Casimir, I discovered he’s the patron saint of bachelors. Hmmmm.) Even our cuisines are similar. Stuffed cabbage, borscht, cranberry pudding (on Christmas Eve) and krustai, the powder-drenched angel’s wings that are as lovely to look at as they are to eat, are just a few of the delicacies we share. I could say something about the Polish and Lithuanian love of liquor, but writing about alcohol has gotten me into trouble before, so I will refrain.

As with any close sibling relationship, there are rifts, misunderstandings, jealousies both petty and grand. I could never understand the jokes about the dumb Poles that I sometimes heard as a young girl because in my Lithuanian family and community the labels we applied fell on the opposite side of the proverbial continuum.  Poles were smart, they were clever, even wily. You had to watch your back or else they’d filch your best writers, taking credit for Adam Mickiewicz, for example. And they might very well deny that Pope John Paul II was part Lithuanian.

Speaking of his Holiness—no matter what your views of Catholicism are, you have to admit he was one of the smartest individuals of the twentieth century, a well-read, accomplished, highly educated man (a decent poet and a good athlete), an influential world leader who was a fierce, determined critic of the Soviet regime, which had besieged his beloved country and its neighbors to the north, the Baltic States, bringing decades of economic devastation and severe restrictions of national and religious liberties. He was instrumental in the downfall of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe; he met or corresponded with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, among many others. As important as his diplomatic dealings were, his personal connections to people will remain a strong part of his legacy; his simple admonition, “Do not be afraid,” served (and continues to serve) as inspiration for millions of oppressed individuals.

As intelligent as his Holiness was, I don’t think he could have held a candle to my Polish-American friend, Cindy Zikowski.  Cindy was the smartest person in all of Morton East.  I had irrevocable evidence of this since I worked part-time in the counseling office where I had access to student records. I was unsupervised most of the time; I shamelessly and unethically spent my free time there perusing the test scores of friends and foes alike.  Cindy’s IQ was off-the-charts, higher even than Harold Smith’s (that most Anglo of names). I was always glad to be in the same math or science class as Cindy, because, well, you know, we were friends.

Cindy was also gorgeous. She still is, with flaming red hair and a figure that a centerfold model would envy. I never associated her beauty as specifically Polish until a Lithuanian boyfriend and I had a discussion of feminine beauty, a conversation that did not end well. He had traveled Europe widely and had come to the conclusion that Polish women were the most attractive on the continent.

“More so than Lithuanian women?” I asked.

“Oh, definitely,” he answered.

I was twenty-four at the time, and did not take to his ethnographic observations kindly.

I’m sure that Poles have their own stereotypes of Lithuanians. A Polish boyfriend admitted this once, stating that he grew up with the notion that Lithuanians were basically peasants who had much to be grateful for to the Poles. He redeemed himself, however, by stating that Lithuanian women, though somewhat bossy, were beautiful, good-natured, and generally fine companions.