June 12,2005
Hotel Le Regina
Warsaw Poland

Sad to be leaving Poland but looking forward to some sleep. There has been not time to rest up since arriving. Without Marta to direct us we really would have been lost getting everywhere on time and finding all the great restaurants and places to go.

The opening was fantastic. Like nothing I have experienced before. Apparently 900 people where there along with all the newspapers, magazines and even radio stations!

The opening started at 8:00 with a speech by the Master of Ceremonies. Perhaps Mistress of Ceremonies is correct? She was Ms. Jolanta Fajkowska from VID TV, a very famous Polish TV Personality. There was a stage at one end of the upstairs large gallery room (yep the gallery had a huge room upstairs and 2 smaller rooms downstairs as well as a large bar downstairs.) Anyway she spoke about the work and has Tomasz and me come up on the stage, asked us questions and had us say something about the work. It was weird being up there looking out on about 900 people (it was a huge room) the 20 to 30 paparazzi standing at the foot of the stage and the tv cameras and staring at us. As we spoke the paparazzi did not shoot but when she officially opened the show they wet wild. Pushing in toward us cameras whirling and flashes flashing – move over Mick Jagger. It was truly weird and I had no idea what to do- now I like to have my picture taken but this was just too weird. Had my digital point and shoot in my back pocket so out it came and I started shooting the paparazzi shooting us. Was a good mood the crowd went wild and the show was on it’s way.

The show slowed down around 10:30 but the bar stayed open and we finally left around 2 pm.

The list of people there was impressive and going through the photo pages you’ll see them all.