I was here. Do buildings have souls? Story from Opole.

She walked through a deserted city, leaves rustling under her shoes. She wore a long black coat, boots, a backpack draped over one shoulder, and a red beret. With steaming coffee to go in her hand. She was so pensive that she managed to irritate a few drivers along the way, being entirely focused on the purpose of her stroll. For a long time, she has not allowed herself to be immersed in her thoughts to that extent, more often running away from them into the silly social media videos. Unknowingly, browsing irrelevant content left a blank spot in her head. Sometimes she threw away her phone, thinking that the more she takes this uselessness in, the less room there is for what’s important. In fact, the thought of the passing time often overwhelmed her. It seemed to her that there was so little of it, that she would not be able to do everything she planned anyway. Therefore, sometimes she managed to force herself to return to her favorite novels. A few words of Cortazar or Marquez successfully grounded her. Helping her to recall, what really happiness meant to her.

It was a gray autumn day, but suddenly the sun came out from behind a bluish cloud. This sudden moment of joy, like a crumb of departing summer falling to the ground, made her smile. She looked up, warming her face in the soft rays. The sun was about to go down, but she felt a sudden surge of energy. Her eyes fell on a dark tenement house with aesthetic decorations. It was wrapped by the leaves, that were slowly changing colors. It was just about the golden time of the year for this building, and soon teenagers will be stopping by to take pictures for their Instagram accounts. The old buildings touched her. Possibly, more than old people.

Once, she saw a photo of the Cracow Market Square, from the pre-war times, and she cried a lot with it. The unusual dissonance cause by the fact that the buildings hardly changed at all, but all the people walking around them had already passed away. These tenement houses and gates are silent witnesses of history, of moments of joy and sorrow, only changing their inhabitants and users. We unconsciously distinguish buildings into places that are irrelevant to us and sensitive places, which we associate with home and security. Homes of family members and friends. How sad is it to think that many of them will become such homes for completely different people in one hundred or two hundred years from now? Of course, assuming the optimistic version that the world we know will still exist. People instinctively sense that, although we rarely think about it, we are here just for a while. It used to be a tradition that when renovating, for example laying new floors or adding new apartment elements, you would put something in the old parts of the house as a souvenir. For example, a letter, photo or card. Some little bits of reality that passes unknowingly every day. Now she was walking through the gloomy autumn Opole and raised her head up. Tenement houses in the city center carried with them not only several hundred years of history, but also stories of people from another country. Stories of German and Polish citizens, intertwined throughout history, now peeked out of the windows of the renovated buildings. Grandfather told her that when Poles returned to Opole after the war, they simply entered apartments that were deserted. And since the whole city was deserted, the chase from the station was on a first come, first served basis. After choosing the house, it was necessary to take care of the disposal of toothbrushes and other personal belongings that were left in the apartments (previously looted by the Germans). Aside from the complexities of history and the role that ordinary people play in it, how extraordinary is it to know that we are now living in a place that someone has longed and fondly called home?

She remembered when once a series of cards and photos were found in the floor of her aunt’s apartment, documenting a German town that no longer exists. Did its inhabitants know that it was about to disappear and did their best to leave a sign after it? Were they resettled from there and, despite the fact that they started calling Opole home, they missed their previous place? Another time, she found a post on social media of a man who found a card in the wall of an apartment in the centre of Opole. It was a postcard addressed to a little girl by her grandmother. The stories told by the family over the years about people and their stories allowed her to identify an adult woman. Grandma is long gone, but she was touched by this card from years ago, like a message from another dimension.

As she finished her chilled coffee, she wondered what message she might leave behind? Maybe some photo? Some happy moment of everyday life captured. The July sun under the eyelids, the ship seen in the distance from the beach, the smile of a friend. She reached a high block on the Teatralny Square. It was her destination, Grandpa’s apartment, who was already waving at her from the balcony. Like no one else, he knew how to play the game called everyday appreciation. She stepped into the elevator and rode up to the eighth floor to listen to what was really important again and to feel once again the atmosphere of one of the places she called home.