Czartoryiski

 

March 25, 2026

Auschwitz. Birkenwald. I will say nothing.

Czartoryiski Museum: small, dark, far more interested in showing me guns and swords than I was in seeing them. Some fine painting, including the famed da Vinci Lady with an Ermine, which is far from the most interesting piece in that collection, but which was nevertheless surrounded by a horde of French schoolchildren. You wonder about renown and how it is assembled. My guess is if the painter was Johannes Doe it would be hanging on the a common wall with other excellent, enigmatic, but not quite priceless artifacts. I liked the medieval pieces best, and a staff apparently inlaid with emerald. Stopped for chocolate, on Michaela’s recommendation, at Karamela’s, around the corner from the museum. The most chocolatey chocolate there ever was. I am still in a bit of a chocolate coma. Saw thrushes in yew scrub outside St Florian’s gate. Sat for a while in the market. Twice a pigeon landed on my hand (two sequential pigeons, I should say) and regarded me inquisitively. The amazing thing was the unexpected coolness of their claws.