Nowa Huta was built in 1949 as a socialist ideal city for the steelworkers, and people who have never been there will tell you it's grey, and it's the opposite of grey: it's the greenest district in Kraków. The planners put trees down every avenue because they were designing for people who'd be walking. The trees are seventy-five years old now. The avenues are tunnels of lime.
I grew up on Osiedle Górali, a name that means 'the highlanders' estate' though the nearest highlander was two hundred kilometres away. There was a yard with a climbing frame that had been there since Gierek, a shop where the woman knew your family's bread, and a tram that took twenty minutes to the Rynek if you wanted the Rynek, which as a child you did not.
I teach kids from the whole city, and the ones from the old town look down on the ones from Huta, and I let them, and then I take the whole class to the Central Square and make them count the trees. It's the best geography lesson I have. It's about what a plan looks like after seventy years when the plan was for people.
Then we get a zapiekanka from the stand that's been there since my mother was a girl. Also part of the lesson.