The source of the chatter in the night is evident in the breakfast room, young people take over, filling the tables; they are not where I’m from; their words unfamiliar, they don’t speak in my tongue.  But still the same: the excitement of being somewhere unencumbered, no one to guide their lives, their choices.  Their appetites voracious.

I retreat to the patio, waiting.

Lillian on the train from Vienna tells me that children in Israel come here on school trips, visiting a different camp each day.  No chance to be free to do what they want.  On their last night, they explore Krakow, a city filled with history and beauty, light and age.  The mornings are cool and crisp and bright even in June.  It seems to me filled with promise of what the day might bring: anything could happen, anything might be.

After the Salt Mines I will hop on one of the wagons surrounding the square waiting for people like me to tour the Jewish Quarter, hear the guide’s version of history; this is different than my stroll at dusk after my day: my slow meander to the Stare Miasto.  In the morning I rush, my fast fast New Yorker’s walk; I focus on arriving, of not being left behind.  Only in evening do I laze, swelling with the day.  I  search for street food where I can take it to go, gesturing with my hands, looking for something familiar, a picture I can point to I want that; and then make my way to a bench or crumbling wall and eat my dinner with beer or wine or something else to dull or enhance and watch the people, the scene unfolding before dark.

One night I shared it with Lindsay as we made our way to places I wouldn’t go alone, across the bridge with the trapeze sculptures suspended, figures flying in inconceivable poses.  I think of Emma at trapeze school in New York, at nine, so many years ago, flying fearless above while I tried to capture it, watching down below, heart somewhere out of my body.

We take pictures of each other, leaning against the bridge, people and sky in the background avoiding the selfies of the solo traveler, tonight together we are not alone.  The next day we venture to Adam’s temporary apartment where everything is arranged just so by someone else, complete with someone who comes in and cleans while he’s gone, straightens whatever messes he may have left behind.  He makes a pasta dish with jarred sauce that could have been gotten at any grocer back home.  Lindsay admires the modern architecture of the building standing out from everything else, but I long for something older, the creaky stairs of my temporary home, where my things are spread out, the clutter already littering the dresser; where a clock ticks announcing the wrong time; where I hit my head on the wooden beam every time I look out the window to see what might be there.

Always the sloping roofline, the sound of the world waking.

Warsaw follows after Krakow.  I want to see–what did they keep or abandon?  A chance to start again, to redefine.

I go inside and get a plate for breakfast.  The young people are gone, disappeared to the rooms above me named for different spices or colors (The Lavender Lounge and others) something to flavor their day.  They are here still; I did not see them leave from my place on the patio.

I think of privilege for me and for them.  I envision the time it will take to pay for it all, the sacrifices to avoid the mistakes of my past: struggling not to drown, trying to accumulate what everyone else has or had, what I thought I needed, never considering what it’s worth; how quickly it all dissipates.

In a place now teeming with people I sit apart, although my refrain is different:  I’m alone, I’m alone, listening to the bells in the distance marking the sameness of years.

The train’s whistle, the green outside, the sky, the clouds.