The Cartographer. Warsaw, 1: 400,000

Abstract

In January 2008, theatre took me to the city of Warsaw for the very first time. One morning, free of any prior engagement, I set out on a walk and allowed myself be guided by the map which had been given to me by the hotel reception. I was returning to the hotel for a bite to eat, having visited the now restored old quarter, when I happened upon what seemed to be an old church. But as I came closer I saw that the building, in front of which stood a police car, was in fact not a church but rather a synagogue. I had never been inside a synagogue, although I did at that moment recall how, as a child in Madrid, I had walked many a time past a building, which I remember hearing was a synagogue, on my way to the public library in the street named after Philip the Fair. There was always, as indeed in the case here, a police car parked outside the front door.