In times of sky-rocketing real estate prices, it can be extremely pleasing to discover that your living space has suddenly grown overnight.
Especially if the extension comes with a cascading fountain, swathes of wildflowers, and a newly restored synagogue as the extravagant detail.
..NOT BAD!
When you're one of the Warsaw non-natives with minimal chances of acquiring any scrap of real estate in the city within your lifetime, you really have three options:
a. Pretend you're a long-lost heir to one of the many disputed plots of land in the city centre where a townhouse stood before the war. Next, wait 86973 years and you just might get it back.
b. Set up camp with the hobos in Las Kabacki.
c. Take out a bank loan of 500,000PLN. Pay back twice as much, and in 40 years you will be a proud lord at your very own 60m2 mansion!
d. Screw it all, stick to your rental, and come to love the city so that it begins to feel like one big extension of your living room. Wandering the streets, seeing them change, is owning them. Just like in a giant game of Monopoly.
I have yet to try the first three, but d. has been working fine for me so far. The perks are multiple, including the fact that all maintenance and renovation is done - and paid for - by somebody else.
So that places like this:
can be turned into something like this. Solely for your viewing pleasure:
(c) gazeta.pl
NICE! Thanks, Warsaw!
The name of this recently refurbished corner of the city is Plac Grzybowski. Surrounded by towering corporate fortresses, it's an earthy enclave, constructed out of wood, granite, trickling water, lots and lots and lots of wildflowers, and benches on rails that can be moved from one end of the square to the other. Get this: you can move furniture around as you like. What else do you need to feel more at home?
This kind of environment fosters growth of little quaint cafes, just as the forest floor fosters the springing up of mushrooms in autumn. And sure enough, as we wandered into this area for the first time in a long while, the first door we stumbled upon was this:
Two cosily worn-out armchairs and the word Cafe above them.. cue myself & my coffee-starved husband!
Cafe Na Placu is the cafe your favourite granny would open if she knew about organic foods and was worldly enough to know of exotic drinks such as cider (strange how little known cider is in a country that counts apples as its most widely grown fruit). They stock the Savanna Dry cider from South Africa that I remember from Holland, which at 15PLN per bottle is an exotic treat... but so worth it!). They also have a few local brews, and a daily selection of cakes and desserts.
Lattes (9PLN) are hearty and frothy, and espresso (8PLN, double 11PLN) is pleasant even on the demanding palate that I have married.
You can sit outside, or pick your favourite chair in the granny lounge. There's plenty of board games to choose from and stacks of magazines, too.
I was intrigued by what resembled a maturing wheel of cheese with orange peel and turned out to be Pascha, a traditional - but now sadly forgotten - Easter dessert, which, as Wikipedia puts it, combines "those foods that are fobidden during Lent". After tasting it, I can confirm that it's a proper Lent rebound, with each small triangular slice containing something around a bucket of cream and six sticks of butter. But it's better not to know it, for Pascha is a delicious treat, more delicate than any cheesecake and richer than ice-cream. No wonder that in these days of cholesterol terror, housewives have had to bump it off their Easter menu.
See you, Na Placu Cafe! I hope next time we see each other, you will have gotten yourself a nice fat cafe cat.
Na Placu Cafe
Plac Grzybowski 2, Warsaw
Ambience: 4.5/5 beans
Coffee: 4/5 beans
