Heart of Palms

WARSAW, Poland - I spent most of yesterday, my first in Warsaw, looking for a palm tree.

The search began 36 hours after I woke up, post-driving to New York, flying across the Atlantic, retrieving my bags, locating a hostel and taking a shower. That's why I asked the friendly travel agent to repeat her directions on where I could find a train ticket.

"Go by the palsmk-- pawms-- palmm." She turned to a co-worker, unsure of the pronunciation, "Palm tree."

Strangely enough, this made some sense. Staring out the window of Bus 175 on the way from Frediric Chopin International Airport to city center, I glanced at what appeared to be a tropical tree in the center of a rotary.

That can't be, I thought. This is Warsaw in winter. That's not a palm tree. It must be some type of mostly-branchless spiky European tree. You've been looking at too many Soviet-style apartment blocks.

But given explicit instructions from a travel agent to seek out the tree, I set off in the general direction of the tree. For bearing I used the Palace of Culture and Science, a Soviet-era monolith that appears to be Stalin's Eighth Sister and is the tallest building in the city.

My search for the tree was frought with distractions. I saw an H&M and went in. Same clothes, higher prices than America. I went in an old bookstore to find a musty smell and a few texts on Polish astromony. I crossed the same street three times.

I reached the palace, but still couldn't find the tree. I took out my map (a small photocopy from the Albany Public Library's Lonely Planet Poland) and tried to find the palm tree. It wasn't listed, but it did say the Warszawa Centralna Rail Station was just two blocks away. I went there, bought a ticket to Lithuiana for $24 and was off to dinner in under half an hour. No palm tree required.

This morning I dodged into the Muzeum Narodowe , or National Art Gallery, to get away from a rain storm. Running into the museum's high gates, I turned to my right and saw 100 meters down the road a familar traffic circle with a palm tree in the middle, branches drooping in the wind.

(The tree, by the way, is technically called Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue, and was installed by Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska in 2001 as part of a temporary art exhibition. The tree proved so popular that it became a permaent exhibition. It's artificial.)