Transcripts For CSPAN3 Thomas 20240704

Welcome thomas swick to discuss his book falling place a story of love poland the making of a travel writer. Falling into place is the personal story of young mans discovery of the world. In his development, a travel writer. It is also a love story as he and hanya overcome cultural differences. Communist bureaucracy, unhealthy separations. Intertwined with both is the story of revolution that altered history with the worlds attention. Once again turned to Eastern Europe, a cold war reality. This memoir can help americans better understand both thomas swick, the travel editor of the south florida sunsentinel. From 1989 to 2008, during which time, the newspapers name appeared in the first nine editions of the best American Travel writing. He is author of four books and his work has appeared in National Newspapers and magazines, literary journals and anthologies. He currently lives with his wife in fort lauderdale, florida. And you can find at thomas swick dot com. Speck will be in conversation this evening with eric. Weiner is the author of four books including the New York Times bestseller the geography of bliss, which has been translated now into 24 languages. A former for npr and the New York Times, weiner has reported for more from more than dozen countries. His work appeared in the new republic slate, los angeles times, Washington Post policy. The New York Times management. The New York Times magazine. There we go. And the anthology, best American Travel writing. He divides his time between petes and the dan so you can read more at eric weiner books dot com. So further ado please join me in welcoming thomas swick and eric weiner. Hey, can you hear me . Okay. You know, although. Yeah. Now its mine. Okay. Well, welcome, everyone. Youre in for a real treat because i have read toms latest book and i really love it. And i am sure you will too. It is hard to classify. Is it a travelog . Yeah. Is it a cold history . Its that. But its also a love story. In fact, i think its primary only a love story. Whether its love for. The lovely hannah or love for a country or love books. Love for a way of being in the world. Its definitely those things. So bravo, tom. Theres a lot of a lot going on in these pages. And i think the best way to convey the flavor of the book is to give people a little a little taste, if you dont mind. Thanks, eric. Thanks for that. Nice introduction. Im going to read just a short section. This is from the Second Chapter and this is shortly after i arrive to warsaw for the first time and. It was just after hannahs mother died, hannah was an only child and their father had been in a motorcycle accident when she a teenager. This was years after he and helena had divorced. The marriage never ideal, had been irreparably damaged by imprisonment. In fact she had been she had given birth to in prison after being tried while pregnant for activities against state. Her crime was assistance to a man sent back to warsaw from the government in exile in london. Despite these early once on the visit to the prison, hannah screamed that the sight of a woman she to recognize as her mother. She claimed to have had a happy childhood. As a teenager, she had made the decision. Decision to in sherman of the all girls boarding school. Her mother had attended because she wanted an education of socialist propaganda. When hannah first told me this, i thought back painfully to my teenage concerns. Halina ash was buried in polanski cemetery, which is the warsaw with parallel shares is to paris. There was more of a heroic martial character. I was assigned to a motherly and after the casket had been lowered into the ground, i saw being escorted out by a band black, including a young man who leather on his arm. I an immediate tinge of jealousy until told myself he was probably a cousin. But that was a shock. After the exclusive idol of trenton seeing hannah in her world at the ex boyfriend stop by the apartment. He was a wellbuilt man with a dark goatee. He pulled me into the bedroom opened the polish english dictionary. After searching for a few seconds, he indicated the verb love cojudge. Next he moved to p and showed me gods help. Then looking me the eye, he pointed in the direction. The living room where hannah sat. I had just gotten my first lesson in polish gallantry. All conveyed with two words, basically. Thank you. Were going to back to warsaw. But first, as we know over, to poland, lead through trenton, new jersey. Apparently you are a son of new jersey. I am proudly so, yes. And so im a bit of a student of genius. I wrote book called the geography of genius and about these places around the world that produced an inordinate number of Brilliant Minds and great ideas. And in an oversight overlooked trenton, new jersey, because your work youre at the trenton times and this newspaper and the whole milieu there is produced writers and everyone in this room knows. David maraniss and, blaine harden. There was a Nobel Laureate affiliated with the newspaper. Indirectly, yes. So what was in the water and trenton, new jersey, at the time . Well, you know, the bridge over Delaware River in trenton says trenton makes the world takes. And it was it was true with the newspaper i got the job there in. 77 and the trenton times was owned then by the Washington Post. Something i didnt realize when i applied for the job and most of the people came there from other smaller newspapers. But they were generally young, bright, ambitious with really big of what they were going to do in the. Bigger than trenton, new jersey. Bigger. Trent. Yeah. And you know, it was just a great place to be. And it was shortly this i started working there in 77, so it was not that long after watergate and journalism was sexy then. Exactly right. Woodward and bernstein made it as sexy as it was going to get. I think and you know, we would i remember we would talk writing, you know, it was not just that we wanted to be a lot of them wanted to be investigative reporters. We were all interested in writing and we would read the latest yorker and wed look at, you know, Kenneth Tynan profiles. But the real hero of everyone there was john mcvie for his long narratives in the new yorker, and he lived just up the road in princeton, right . Right. So there something in the air back then . Yeah, there was. Now, youve always been throughout your life and career sort of journalism adjacent. I would call it, yeah. Some of your friends are journalists. You travel in similar circles, but youve never consider yourself a journalist. And it took you a long time to. Call yourself a writer as well. Can you talk a bit about your identity. Well, for one thing, i dont like coffee. Ive never drank. And that that eliminates me from it is a very quiet journalist. I you know, i never wanted to be a reporter. I got in the newspapers as you did back then because. It was an easy way to get a byline. It was an it was the way you would start writing. You know, you started a newspaper and then move on to hemingway. Was yeah. Newspaper. Yeah. Many people were. So thats what i did. And luckily, the people the trenton times had the good sense to hire me as a feature writer, not a reporter and feature writing was a perfect fit. I was going out spending a day or two with some interesting person and coming back and writing about it. I was not writing on daily deadline, which i never, never got used to doing. And i was it was really great training to be a travel, getting out in the world, meeting some of the interesting people in it. So i was very fortunate that regard. And then after a year and a half at the paper, i decided to leave and go to poland because i had met hanya. So lets stop there for a second. So pre hanya if you could. Yeah. Cast your mind then would you have said im going to go. It was poland on radar. No, no, not at all. Not all. Not at all. What did you know about poland then . I knew very little about poland, but i met hanya in london. And interestingly enough, i met her because i was carrying a book by v. S. Pritchett called find faces. And its a its a book. Its a very good travel book. His travels to Eastern Europe in sixties. And i bought it not i was interested in Eastern Europe, but i was interested in travel writing. I already had an idea then that i wanted to write travel and i like this it. So i bought the book and i went back to my hotel. She happened to be working in the bar that night. We started and she told me she was from poland. I showed her the chapter of the book i just bought set in poland and i lent her the book knowing shed have to see me again. That assuming she would return it, she did. Okay. Because apparently theres some people who borrow, but dont return them. Why . Why . Travel writer . Why not food writer . Why not novelist . Why not. Why not a historian . Although you have some of that in you clearly. And were talking now the 1970s. So lets kind of place herself in that time. What was going on . The genre . And what about intrigued you . Well, in 1975, paul theroux, many people here know that name. Theroux published a book called the Great Railway bazaar and its a book about his taking trains from london through through asia and back on the transsiberian express. And it was a huge, critical success and popular success. And that excuse me, that really put travel on the map and. I love the book, too. I mean, what i loved is that he he ignored the sights he wasnt typical travel by them lighting about you know the eiffel tower the taj mahal. He wrote about the interesting people. He met the characters and trains that he rode. And it just seemed to he actually he was a he was a novelist. Hed written some novels that had not terribly successful. That was his big hit, the travel book. But brought a novelist sensibility with this narrative arc. Was this colorful characters dialog, all that that made the travel book really come alive. So that that was the beginning of this really a heyday of travel that lasted for 15 years. Right. So your timing was good. Yeah. And what what can the travel do that the journalist cant . What freedoms do you have . What possibilities are there . Well, the nice thing i one of the things is that a reporter has to go and interview people and interviews. Ive always found are a bit like official in kind of mercenary. Youre looking for something from them and the person you is playing a game too. And not only so much right when you travel by you, you dont interview people basically have conversations. You just sit down and talk with people as im you know from researching your books. Right. And i love about it. You really got, i think, a sense the person the sense of the place just by having a conversation and the conversation doesnt have to be linear in fact. Some of the best ones are circuitous. Right. Right. Then the story itself. It doesnt have to be direct. It can be nuanced it can. It can have. You know, it can atmosphere. Its its much i think its a much broader kind of writing. And thats what thats what i wanted to do. Right. Right. No, im totally on board with that. So you fall in love with hanya and she is sort of in love with you. Thats on this trade. Yes, she was. It took it took a while for her be fully on board. But shes here tonight so she must be fully on board and all of a sudden youre going to pick up, go to poland and lets just this is a different time this is you know. Theyre not using the euro theyre not part of anything theyre part of the eastern bloc. Theyre behind the iron curtain. Its not an easy place to get to. Its not a land of affluence. And you arrive not speaking a word of polish and describe as a helpless who is unable to buy groceries. What were those first days in in warsaw like you . Well, they were difficult obviously because of the death of his mother. It was a very hard time for for hanya and i was sometimes kind of left on my own to fend myself. And i remember i went out to buy some one day and i came back with a bottle of white vinegar instead. And thats why i, i was unable to even buy groceries if there were groceries to be had. There were shortages. Now, this was in 70, 78. So there were there were there were goods. And then the that just the shops were like the shops. I was used to in the united states, you know, it was kind of bare bones. The staff of the shops not friendly. There was no such thing as, you know, consumer people did say, have a nice day. No, no, they did not. But, you know, it was it was a shock seeing you know, my first Eastern European country at the same time. Thanks to hanya, i had access to the world in the i had access to what home life like in poland and that was completely different from life on street and that i found was really invigorating pulls, were very free to speak with the mind the you know at home with with and family. There were always these lively discussions there were long, you know, meals at, the dinner table. It was just a life at home was so different from life out in public. It was so casual traveler, even journalist will go to one word to describe poland and warsaw in particular and thats great. Thats the go to adjective it is and i confess i think ive used it myself and is it fair in a way, yes or no . Well, fair if youre describing as i, say, the physical world, just the exterior world, but what i found living there and getting to know the people, it was the opposite. It very colorful. It was very animated. And it was, as i say, invigorating was you have to get past the gray facade. Yeah, right. Yeah. You grow fond of the poles and of poland and you say at one point poles appeared to be in touch with the essentials the eternals. In a way, americans were not. Now we are were the richest, most powerful country in the world. Weve got, you know, happiness in our one of our founding documents. But you see that poland behind the iron curtain is in touch with the essentials. The eternals in a way americans were not. What do you by that . Well, that that sentence i think comes at the end of a description. Of november 1st, which is the day of the dead in poland. But it has nothing to do, very little to do with the mexican day of the dead, which many of us are familiar with. Everybody goes to the cemeteries, but its a very somber day. People clean the family graves. And then in main cemetery, which i mentioned in the section i read, polanski theres a large military section and people end up going there. And theres sometimes people lined up to pay tribute to. The soldiers who died in the wars, some of the some of the graves are marked by simple birch crosses. And then you read the names and the ages of the of the dead. And there are 18, 19 years old. And i admired was the way that poles them and kept in their hearts and in their minds. This was this is a huge holiday in poland. I mean. Well, how is that different from, say, veterans . They were memorial day here . Because we dont go in mass. We go shopping. We go shopping. Yeah. Yeah. And there were busses. People would be bused into the cemetery and then and then november 1st and poland is invariably kind of a gray, misty day. And so at dusk cemetery takes on this really otherworldly. The theres a mist falling. Then you see the smoke from the candles and its just the its a very moving experience. You also describe them as possessing a rebellious and a keen sense of the absurd. I think i get the rebellious spirit part given their resistance in 1939 and later against. Communist rule. Right. What about the of the absurd . What do you mean by that . Well, if you if you live in poland, you just develop this i think its its kind of an innate thing. They have i found a sense of humor, a sense of irony, dark kind of humor, dark humor. And and, you know, there are always political jokes. When i was there, they would come out. I mean, nobody knew who came up with them. But everybody was telling them and they were hilarious and they werent just they were they were illuminating about the situation. But the one thing i remember, i mean, as soon as i got to the tallest building in warsaw for years was a building, the palace of culture, and it was a gift from the soviets was one of these huge, ugly concrete towers that just lorded over the. Was it . I think it was gray. It was actually oak or yellow. But it took you a entire city to walk by it and hunyor told me early on the would walk by it when it completed, didnt look up and say its small but in good taste. That kind of humor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, not you. Dont laugh out loud. You smile knowingly knowingly. So i in reading the book and knowing that youre your home is new jersey and youre well you know where you came from and your adopted home was poland and i start to see similarities between the two because you wrote a book early on in your career called new jersey pleasures. And im suggesting you could have written poland unexpected pleasures. Theyre both underdog places. Neither place gets a of respect. Theyre jokes made at their expense but theyre very cultured places that are underappreciated. Is poland the new jersey of europe. Or is new jersey the whole of the u. S. . I dont know. Well, you know, in the book i make the comment that, you know, poland is cursed by its geographical location. Yeah, its its for centuries its been caught between germany, russia and the big sign that says invade me. I think pretty much. And if you think about it new jersey is kind of stuck between new york and pennsyl. Right. Though those are large, but theyve been theyve been happily nonaggressive except for the jokes emanating from manhattan. Right. About new jersey. So theres that i think they both share this kind of underdog status and theyve always been guess because i grew up in new jersey, i think, ive always been attracted to the underdog or the unsung. And as a travel writer, ive often focused on about those places, in part, thats where you get your best stories because they have been overlooked. So its easy to find new material because they havent been written to death. Right. And the people who live there rather than being fed up with visitors really of are happy to see you because its easier to write about poland than france, for instance much easier in a way. Yeah. Easier to write about of the cell. Thats the thing you have to get people interested in. I always that you know, a good travel writer needs one skill mainly which is to be lucky like luck a role. But as Louis Pasteur said, chance favors the prepared mind. So your mind was prepared. But you got lucky. This was a eastern bloc backwater that all of a sudden was thrust into the news with the Solidarity Movement and, the overthrow and the events took place. Do you feel that you got lucky . Yes, i do mean in terms of getting to write about. I always kept the journal since college in poland. It became a diary there was just so much happening and everything because of the one solid show they started in 1980 and then martial law declared in 81, its just ive never lived in the place where where everyday life had such meaning. It little place too close to the bone. Yes. And i would come and i just id have to write down the things that happened that day that so i had a lot of material and was in a good place. I was in a place that the world was. Interested in for a while. You know, when i was in poland from 80 to 82, poland was basically on the front pages of the worlds newspapers, a lot of the time. So when i came back in 1982, i thought, well, i have something, i have a book i have something to write about right . It wasnt all peaches and roses, though. Youre struggling there. The the small issue of the polish language, which you describe im pretty close to a quote here a of a language but the language is a. Yes. And you describe at one point reading a, attempting to read a polish poet and doing okay until you ran smack into, quote, a wall of consonant s which says, were you okay . Yeah, okay. Were it . Yeah. Polish this difficult language. You studied it. What . Like, i know, maybe its an obvious question. Your wife speaks beautiful english, refused to speak to you in polish. Actually. And a lot of poles either spoke english or wanted to learn english. Fact you were teaching english. Why wrestle with the of a language . Well, i wanted to learn as much as i could about the country, and i couldnt learn that much without speaking the language. And again, when i came back in 1980, solidarity had just started and were having these intense discussions and people were reading the newspaper. I wanted to know what they were talking about, what they were reading, and that spurred me to on to learn as quickly as i could. But yeah, the, the, the pronunciation was difficult and the grammar was difficult. And you describe resisting that grammar, fighting against it until one day you decided to stop fighting it and to embrace it, meaning this just the way it is. And im either going to look, im going to change the grammar. Ive got to learn it. Just just accept it. And some of the words and polish it just beautifully descriptive and just the sound of them. You know, the word for rain is best. And it just it kind of sounds rain falling and then if its a cold rain, you get shivers. Those are dressed. Oh, thats good. And that, you know, youre just shivering when you say that word. Yeah thats thats. And you are teaching english call teaching english overseas last refuge of the expat and they hired you back because of your education skills. No, because you spoke english, right . Yeah. That was the qualification. There werent a lot of us. Yeah. You know, theres not a pedagogical test for us. Its just none. Speaks english. Yeah. Lets hire them. And you struggle at first. But you seem to really get into it and really enjoy getting to know your students and you seemed like you were a good teacher. I hope i was. My students were wonderful and i think. They spoiled me for teaching. Perhaps in this country. They were very well. You said they wanted learn english, right . And they came to the school. This was a private one of the few private schools in in warsaw. They came there in the evening from three to we had classes 3 to 9. So they they already had a day of school. And then in the evening they came to the to study english and they were so eager and so talented. I mean, they the way they learned and studied it was very impressive again, because i was struggling to learn their language at the same time they were they were studying my language. So it was kind of a fun to see how i was making more progress, obviously, because i was in their country and, but i really enjoy it and theres a certain i dont know if anybody here has ever taught your own language. First of all, you learn a lot about your own language. You teach it things you never even thought about because you have to explain why do we do this . You learn insane english is to like you do. Makes no sense. Exactly. So yeah, you learn about your own language and then you get this wonderful satisfaction on seeing a face. Just light up with understanding and and thats kind of like almost instant and i got very attached to my students, i really i really have stayed in touch with any of them. I have just was back in warsaw, september and i met with of my students who became a journalist who. Oh, there you go. So the worst thing that can happen, i think, for a travel, the absolute worst is when everything goes perfectly and according to plan, mean thats death for a travel writer. Right . You agree with that . Yeah. Well, you know, the saying the worst trips make the best stories. Yes. Also heard bad choices. Good stories, too. Theres theres theres that same idea. So you meet one of these perfect travelers. Hes a young american. Think you met him in . Athens . Actually, yeah. He had spent time in poland as well. He seemed, you him as cool and unfazed while you tom were a pathetic amateur. And at first i think this bothers you. But then and im going to read this because i think just lovely, you sort of embrace your kind of tortured approach to place. By contrast, sensitivity to my surroundings, my capacity for all my livewire imagination, at least in the realm of personal calamity, all caused me to experience life more as a drama, sometimes comic, than a breeze, and qualified me to be a chronicler of my travels the beauty of being impressionable a word usually used pejoratively is that it leaves with a lot of impressions. I thought that was great. Thank you. Because you want you want bad things to happen so that you change and grow as a person. Is that more or less true . Yeah. But i mean, i wrote the after what happened, i took trains from warsaw to athens when i left poland the first time and it was a really harrowing journey, at least for me it was overnight. Trains warsaw to budapest. Budapest to bucharest. Bucharest the sofia to athens and. I slept sitting up. I hardly at the stations were you know, in bucharest it was a horrible station at night i just felt not threatened but in way just completely out of place. Something could have happened to. Me and i just felt i was kind of like a a quibi quivering traveler and all alone and you meet it. Then you meet this caucus and i met this american in athens who did the same trip and he was so blase about it. It was a breeze. And i thought, what am i doing . As i cant be a travel writer because i everything is kind of more of an ordeal. Me but then i realized that fact, it is a deal, it makes an impression, gives me something to write about. Absolutely. So there are lots of characters, wonderful characters in this book. One of the characters in the book is the book, not this book per say, but all books you read lot in poland on trains. I reading on trains is one of the lifes greatest pleasures. Personally and, you Say Something very interesting. You say our reactions to books can be determined as much by we read them as by when how does the location of where you read a book affect what you get out of it. Well then i wrote after reading about reading v. S. Naipaul for a house for mr. Biswas one of my favorite novels in warsaw and. If youve read naipaul or that novel in particular know its set in trinidad, and i was in warsaw. Gray was all right. It was called the complete opposite of trinidad stamp, and i was reading his lust descriptions of this indian family in trinidad and i kind of some aspects of the book like the fact that the the main well the kid that is based on naipaul is kind of a and very unsympathetic character but which i discovered rereading the work many years later. But but because i was taken i was so transported by his his descriptions of trinidad that kind of got lost on me. Warsaw, i always tell i teach writing occasionally some workshops. I always tell my students, there are only two things you need to do to be a writer. You need to read. You need to, right . Yeah. And is that how you learned travel writing by not just travel writing, but you read. Yeah. And i never a travel writing course the only course i took was a short story writing course that was given in college back in and in the seventies. Yeah, i just learned by reading other other writers and then like a place like the trenton times where i was surrounded by by people who were going, they were reporters and journalists at the time. But many of them were going to become writers. And we talked we talked about articles we were reading and, books we were reading. And then we got that, you know, that that community of writers together and was that was very helpful. The epigraph for the book is from freya stark. She talks about the distinction between real versus. Travel. What is the difference . What is real travel . What is bogus travel in your mind . Yeah, im not quite sure exactly what she means. I think, you know, you know, when done, you know, you take a trip and you know, when it was a real good trip that you really you got to know the people you learn new things. Ideally you had an experience the average tourist or the average traveler doesnt have in that thats to me is real travel bogus travel. You know you somewhere you kind of Wander Around maybe you talk have a brief conversation with people. You see a lot of things, but nothing really sticks and nothing really you leave it. I used to say were two kinds of countries, a id visit the places come home, id write the story and not think about much again. And then those places that i went through, i came home, i wrote about them and they stayed with me. I just felt i still do very emotionally attached to those places. So theres that wonderful quote from henry miller, which youre familiar with, which i love about travel. He said ones destination and is never a place, but a new way of looking at things which, i think, is what freya stark is talking about. Real . Yeah. Did your time in poland and europe or did it change youre a young man then. Did it change your way of looking at this, at the world and has it stuck to this . Im sure it did. Id be a very different person if i hadnt had those experiences and done that. And i think even my reading changed, changed the way i things and see people. Hmm. So come home after a few years, a couple of years in in warsaw, pivotal years. And youre returning to america in the 1980s, t. S. Eliot famously talks about the end of our exploring. We had to write it down. We showed nazis from exploration and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Did you view america . Philadelphia . I think you were in at the time. New jersey. Any of this differently . Do you did you feel differently about america not only differently about poland when you got home . Yeah. And as i think everybody whos been abroad has experience. You come back, things look different you see things differently. One, i have one vivid memory. I came from poland on an ocean liner. The stuff on the toi polish ship that sailed in those between gdynia and montreal. This is still sailing because i wanted to. No, no, no. Its long gone. But my parents drove up to pick me up in montreal and then we drove down back to new jersey. And the thing i remember is listening to the radio and it seemed like every advertisement had to do about had to do with money. You know, there was ads for you, savings and sales and money and i had two years in poland. I had not heard anybody talk about money. Nobody had much. So it wasnt there wasnt much to talk about. You know, it wasnt people talked about books and and movies and things like that, but this focus on money and realized, yeah, that thats thats big here. Yeah i remember when i was living in india, i had a sort of equally transformative experience. About a decade later in new delhi and coming back home, and going to whole foods and being overwhelmed by a the abundance and the choice paralyzed me. I spent 45 minutes in the bread aisle in paralyzed within decisiveness and left and that famous scene from moscow, the hudson when Robin Williams goes to buy coffee as a russian immigrant. Right. It just all these brands of coffee. He has no idea the what the right and i had that feeling when i came home. But then its like dissipates. Thats the problem. Yeah. Then you get used to it. Oh yeah. Theres 27 million types of bread. Okay, couple more questions then were going to go to to your questions so you get to travel writers together and invariably the topic comes up of is travel writing dead travel writing has been people have been declaring it dead for as long as ive been travel writers like the novel like the novel. But when i was reading about particular that you said at one point, we finally got a phone and im thinking, oh, they got a cell phone . No, no, not a cell phone. Just a landline. There was no phone in. Your apartment in warsaw and you there was no texting there, no email. You had a fully immersive in warsaw. You were there right and you were nowhere else. If young thomas swick, 28, 29 years old. However old you were, were to go over to warsaw in 2023 and try to replicate that experience. Could you do it . Would it be quite different. No, no, not like that. No. The worlds changed so much. And you, you just know. And i think that was that was an advantage that. I had that opportunity to just really be in the place and and id spent a year in france, a few years before that. And i, i spent a year without talking my parents. I mean, just the idea of a transatlantic telephone call to say hello to my parents, just it wasnt it was unthinkable. So some people would say thats now you can call and text your parents ten times a day, which teenagers do when they even when they go to europe or go away to college. So whats whats the advantage of, not talking to your parents for a year, assuming you had a Good Relationship with them . Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, wasnt just my parents. I mean, now you can call your parents. You could call your friends, and then you talk about things back home and that, you know, pulls you away. That pulls you away from the place. Yes. Speaking of places, for the last several decades now, actually, you have lived in what i think, at least climate wise, is the polar opposite of warsaw, and that is fort lauderdale, florida. Yeah, it is not gray, you know. Its not gray. It is not gray. It is not cold. You say at one point i am attracted to southern climates and northern mentalities. Definitely a southern climate in fort lauderdale. Is there a northern mentality . There is, actually, because all the all the transplants, the snowbirds who come from new york and new jersey and new england, so it turns out that, is maybe my ideal place, but i wrote that i had idea i have to in greece after i left. And i found that i love the climate in greece. In fact, i was there in winter, but generally sunshine. I mean, every day there was sun. I love i love seeing the world the illuminated by by sun. But i like the i got a little more better with the poles. The poles seem more maybe because of the climate and they were indoors more often, but they they were breathers and they were, you know, they were interested in the life of the mind a little more than i experience though in i should say in greece. I was not in athens. I was in a small city in the north. It was a different, different. Greece does have a history of active it does go back on. So finally a little known well somewhat little known fact about you because i you know i follow in various social media that didnt exist back then and all of a sudden i started noticing that these drawings are popping up, sort of like new yorker cartoons. Then like at first i thought this true story, tom, is reposting a new yorker cartoon or some cartoons. You know, people do that. And then i look at the little signature at the bottom, its thomas swick and these are your cartoons. Most writers can either write or artists can draw, but you can both. And where did that come from . I dont know. Im left handed if that maybe explains anything, but i dont draw very well. Thats the thing. Theyre pretty, though. Theyre well, thats the writer. Okay, thats the writer. But i just started doing them during the pandemic, you know because people who do them before i know well, just not on social media anymore. But the pandemic started and people were posting photos of the sour dough bread they baked or dance videos. And i cant do any of that stuff. But i just started doing some cartoons and i just and then every monday, every week, i just started posting one. And ive been doing it since then. So and i enjoy are they polish they strike me as a little polish a little dark you theres a fantastic polish this much go and hes still going but he was very popular when i was there the eighties and if you want to if you want to experience polish absurdity look at some of fletch goes cartoons he is he is one there are some of them understandable learning. No you know usually captions so we would have to learn polish and yeah okay yeah. All right. You know, im going to stick yours, tom. Just going to stick with yours. Thank you very much. We are going to go. Audience questions. I promised tom there would be at least one question. So there will be at least two. All right, there we go. And i would say, by the way, that if you want to see a great city in this country, go to chicago. All great buildings, great lake guy. Anyway, poland. Im jewish. And i think before war two, poland was like 30 jewish and. Thats where the germans wanted to put the concentration camps. And there are hardly any left, although the things youre talking, the sense of humor that came with the immigrants, i think in poland, always a sort of it was behind the iron curtain. I was born in the forties, but it was always a place that we sort of had a sense of, and i was never quite sure what was real and what was storybook or what we were being told. Did you have any sense of the Jewish Community that was there . You know, i write about that one section of the the fifth chapter there was very talk of. I was there in eighties. People were focused on solidarity and, you know, some of solidaritys most brilliant strategies were jewish. I didnt know that. Yes. Michnik brothers wife. Good mc and they you know, the thing is, laurence wexler wrote the new yorker some wonderful articles about poland at that time and. He made the observation that they were not , they were jewish and poles that time were united, you know, it was solidarity, not just the Free Trade Union had become a political movement. It was also a societal ideal. And there was a real sense of solid parity in those years. And thats thats what it was like then. And it was was good to see whats happened since. Youll find a real interest in jewish culture among young poles. Theres festival in krakow every year that thats gets bigger every year of of culture theres now one in warsaw because of the success of the one in krakow. Krakows old jewish neighborhood is still intact, whereas the one in warsaw was destroyed because of the, you know, the ghetto uprising. But its very heartening to see that these young poles are trying find out about this aspect of polish life thats no longer there. But once very vibrant and very old. Yeah. Centuries, yeah. Thank you. Yes thank you. Next, when i was a college student, i went on a vacation to. Puerto rico and the people that i was with went to a casino one night and i decided to do something a little different. There was a recital at a school where. Their students were playing the piano with and their families were there. And i thought id go there and watch it and talk with some of the families. And i learned an awful lot. The local people, the culture. And this is something that you would consider to be like real travel. Yes. I think any thats one thing i always tell people. Go, go with the locals. Go and, you know, try to get away from from the tourists and and to have an experience that the locals have. Yeah. When you mentioned that you worked at the times i happened to recall that the one of the coowners of this bookstore, brad graham, worked there perhaps around that time. So did your working careers overlap at all . No, unfortunately, he had gone the post by the time i got to the trenton times, but i met him warsaw because when i there he was the posts warsaw correspondent small world indeed. Yeah. Next. Thank you for your question. I think poland had a used to enjoy a reputation a little bit different from the one that sort of life of the mind and endure the sort of indoor culture youre talking about. It had an a reputation energy almost recklessness that tradition of cavalry a musical tradition you can hear in chopin the mazurkas and you see these portraits of of old polish noblemen with in their ears and that kind of that of panache. Did that all go underground did you sense that when youre in poland, its still that you find people, you find individual poles who who remind you of that . Its not its not widespread. But everyone once in a while youll meet this very kind of accent trick, kind of just somebody who just stands out from the crowd. And ive always when i do meet somebody like that. Im always im always delighted because it reminds me of exactly what youre talking about. Its still yeah, its still there in. Some individuals definitely. And yeah. During the communist era it did not completely wipe that out. No thank you. Thank you. Next, its so your book is like travel writing about not just a place, but a place a certain time, like both with new jersey and with with poland. And i wonder like, are there places you . What are they like . Whats a you regret . Most of not having being able to visit as a travel writer during that specific time that now is gone . And are there places feel like that are top of your list that . You feel like, oh, i to go there now and this is the most interesting place i regret not being able to or not having gone to oh i would say iran so. I would love to to iran. And i just, i just find something fascinating about persian culture and, and i just, you know, thats really not possible right now. But its possible. But not advisable. Yeah. Yeah. Take the. Thank you. Yeah yeah. Um, well, the thing is this. We cant, we cant be in. This is my theory. We cant know every place and every place any more than we can know every person and love every person i think invariably were drawn to certain places. For me it was india for you. It was it poland. Do you think looking back at it now, there was there was chance involved. There was hannah and love involved, definitely. But was there something about your personal quality and polands National Personality that were either complementary or enmeshed together . Hmm. Um. I dont know. No, i dont think im. I there are a lot of things. Polish culture that i dont necessarily relate to. I think sense of humor. I mentioned thats thing definitely where i feel i connect but what happens i think when you you know, you fall in love with somebody from another country right chances are when you visit that country you fall in love with the country as well because thats the country thats the culture that created the person you love and, you know, i was fortunate in not just to visit the country that created the person i love, but i was able to there at the very momentous time its its history. So i really saw the people i think at their best honey has always said poles are good in emergencies and it was an emergency. Theyve had a quite a few they have they have practice right. Yeah. And um so then i think explains my, my affection and my, my love for, for poland. And again, the fact that its an unsung place. Its, its a place that other people have overlooked and. I like to champion that kind of place. So in a way, would it be fair to say that your love of poland was extension of your love for hania . Definitely. Okay. Definitely. It like a good place to end it. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Thank