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.)

A Day at the Auction House

HONG KONG - "It's not cheap. But these days, nothing is."


The words belonged to a Englishman, a man of around 40 dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit and one of those white ties that are very much in fashion over here. Next to him was an Asian female, around his age. They conversed in English, she had the same British accent as he. In his left hand, he carried an art catalog. Standing in the center of Christy's Auction House, they blended in perfectly.

My university is paying for this trip, but they're paying me nowhere near the amount of money to justify a trip to Christy's - one of the world's oldest and most respected auction houses. I arrived thanks to a happy accident.

I was on the hunt for an art gallery which my Lonely Planet guide suggested was near the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I wandered through the cavernous building - it appeared especially designed to make a person seem small. There were stores, halls and even a convenience store inside, but I could find no art gallery.

Christy's was on the way to the bus stop. I walked by the entrance oncem, then I turned around and walked by it again. Could I go in? The last auction house I was in was ten miles outside of Albany, and specialized in estate sales. After my freshman year in college, my friends and I would go there to look for cheap road signs to hang in our dorm rooms. I usually spent no more than $10 a night on cheap dinnerware and old road signs.

I'm sure I couldn't get within 100 meters of the Christy's in Manhattan, but here I just walked in. I was dressed in $5 Gap pants and a fake $3 polo shirt, and carried with a faded computer bag. Everything about me screamed: THIS MAN WILL NOT BUY EXPENSIVE ART. But I was let in without incident by an extremely friendly attendant.

Christy's is gorgeous. There is a free tea area in the front, where the live auctions are displayed on flat-screen televisions. The high bid is displayed in eight different currencies - helpful if you're representing a Swiss client with a hankering for Ming vases.

On display were the jewelry of Princess Margaret. The recently deceased sister of the Queen owned an extensive gallery of large diamonds, brooches and tiaras which was very impressive. There was also a preview of an art sale, where I saw several Picassos and even a Van Gogh. It was like a museum, but free and without crowds.

The auction house reflects Hong Kong today. The city is not - as I once suggested - a dying city. Any place where a single print can sell for a million dollars, is the only place in Asia where the royal jewels are displayed, and where dozens of smart-dressed men and women can afford to waste several hours on the middle of a Monday afternoon looking a fabulously expensive items, must be doing pretty well.