Already, the Poland I first knew and fell in love with (and groaned in frustration about) twenty-five years ago is gone. Long gone in some cases.

When I first arrived and moved into dom nauczyciela, this was the view from the door of the six-apartment building. It was the not-so-long abandoned elementary school, empty only for about a year. The high school in which I taught also housed the elementary school — it was an enormous building.

The high school that temporarily housed the elementary school

The old building stood empty for the first year I was there, from 1996 to sometime in 1997, and its only use was as the rehearsal space for the volunteer firemen’s band.

They rehearsed in the upstairs room, and during the summer, when they left the windows open, the honking and wheezing sounds of amateur musicians filled with more enthusiasm than talent was the soundtrack of many evenings’ cooking.

By the time I left in 1999, they’d begun the renovation process, bringing the ancient and abandoned schoolhouse to modern standards. When I returned in 2001, it was completed, looking slightly similar but much expanded.

Later I moved into one of the apartments that were on the third floor.

This transformation is fairly typical of many of the buildings that had an old world charm for me (read: they were just old) when I arrived in 1996. I certainly don’t begrudge the Poles the natural desire to update and renovate buildings. Still, when in Poland visiting family now, I find myself thinking that I should have taken more pictures of the old when it was old.