Warsaw or The Place Where Chopin’s Heart is Buried

When I was a kid my father’s friend Kevin used to play a game with my brother and I. He would drive us to a place (usually the town dump to watch the bears scavenge) and afterwards he would insist that we give him directions to get home. Neither of us could ever manage it, and we’d end circling the small town for a long while before Kevin finally gave up and told us, “You were close,” and drove home. The town had less than a thousand residents. Of course we were close.

My sense of direction has not improved over the years. On a recent trip to Budapest I spent the days that I was there following a curving road to a bridge where I’d cross and walk up the hulking steepness of Gellert Hill. It was only a couple of days before I left that I realized I’d been going the long way and that the hill was much closer than I’d thought. I’d have known this if I’d just looked out the window of my bathroom to see Liberty Statue, an enormous land mark that sits on top of the hill.

I had a similar experience in Warsaw, Poland a few weeks later. It was my last day in the city and I decided to walk through Old Town. I was sure that I’d been to Old Town several times, but upon looking at my map I realized that I had only wandered along the edges of it. I wove deeper in and found the market, a number of statues and the plaque recognizing this part of the city as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Being in Warsaw was a special kind of lost. I was often distracted from my original plan by the city’s parks. They were hidden behind what seemed like every sky scraper, and if you just looked behind you half the time there were willows and silvery maples that guarded the entrance of yet another grassy expanse that stretched for kilometres. And then suddenly it was getting dark.

I had read before arriving that Chopin’s heart was buried in the city. Years before, I visited the cemetery that held his body in Paris and was equal parts disturbed and delighted to read a story about his dying wish to his sister. He had wanted his heart to return to his home city, though he knew that Paris would never let his body go. She had honoured his somewhat grotesque death wish by carrying the enlarged organ in a bottle of what was rumored to be cognac, hiding it beneath her cloak so as to get it past any over-zealous border guards. The organ was buried beneath a pillar in one of the churches. And aside from a bit of hot-potatoing between priests during the war, there it remained.

I realized only when I saw a couple dart into an under-construction building, that this was the place when I had been searching for. Should there be any confusion, when you type in Chopin’s Heart on Google Maps the Holy Cross Church comes up as the first result. The pin on my phone screen showed me that it was right in front of me. And following a parade of Japanese tourists, I walked in to share a room with an organ that had been out of commission for over seven decades.

On my last night in Warsaw, after a late performance of Swan Lake, I ran for the train in the chill air. I stumbled through what I only then discovered was called Pilsudski Square. A huge mausoleum stood to my right, with little fires lit up all around it. It was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I realized I had passed just a block beyond it many times, and sheepishly I wandered past, taking a couple of very dark photos, sure that I was not giving the memorial the respect it deserved.

My plane home scheduled to take off in a few hours and there was nothing I could do but fly home and try to imagine what the place looked like in the light.