Poczatek means beginning, and we ended up there because our original choice of cafe was so full, we backed out quicker than we came in. Definitely noted for another day and time, because it looks like a bomb place in a bomb location.

For those who don’t know, when I say that I love the 1920s, I don’t mean the Great Gatsby and all that jazz. I mean the bars, restaurants and cafes you could see in Berlin when Christopher Isherwood decided to pen Goodbye to Berlin. And that includes the old districts of Zehlendorf, Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and Schoeneberg. Places most people wouldn’t know to find because they no longer exist, at least not in their past incarnation.

Poczatek reminded me of that vibe, a cozy place on the surface and the white chocolate cheesecake and brownie looked tempting as well. They even provided orange and mint infused water, which in Poland to me seems so much a rarity that it really needs to be celebrated. Though it’s true that more and more places in Poland seem to provide at least water for free. So far so good. As an added bonus the cafe also provides the customary surly server, who – regardless of age or gender identity – weaves that fine line between Hungarian customer service (eat shit and die, ideally a very painful death for the sin of inconveniencing me and just breathing / being alive today or any other day) and the German variant of you just had to come in twenty minutes before closing time and inconvenience me, didn’t you, and now you’re messing up my neatly arranged vases that took me three rulers and the sun hitting the window at just the right angle (41,2341 degrees) to arrange).

Though to be fair, maybe it was the headscarf one of us wore in celebration of Eid, which generally doesn’t go over well in Poland. And this being us i,e. your friendly neighborhood cultural mish mash, we celebrate our way, so this year with (hopefully) good cake and coffee in a more or less nice place. Which pissed off the couple at the other side of the room where we were heading, the small bench being pretty much the only free space.

One thing I noticed, Poles seem to have an inbuilt antenna for detecting those full of joy and then doing everything in their power to quash it out of them. Once I came to that realization, the attitudes of the people in my school started making a lot more sense to me. Half of them were the offspring of ethnic Germans who’d fled Poland after WWII, or came three decades later. And for some reason the couple by the table next to ours wasn’t taking it well. Their sniggers and looks were obvious. Middle-aged but trying to come off as hip they still weren’t hip enough to share in the joy of those around them, who – like the couple – just wanted to enjoy their coffee and cake and whatever else they had ordered. Especially if one of those people is a perceived Muslim (minus the olive skin they associate with Islam) and people being very affectionate with each other in a way that befits siblings, close friends or any other group of people that loves being close to others.

Though in the spirit of fairness it has to be said that when I asked a different server if we could advertise something in the cafe as we were leaving, she was super nice and even gave us an extra tip to use flyers instead of tacking up one poster.