Joanna Rolińska: You often speak of your ties to Krakow, but it was Warsaw that made you the actor you've become, wasn't it?

Gustaw Holoubek: It was 1957 when I first came to Warsaw, and before I arrived, all of my friends warned me not to make the journey, because Warsaw was supposed to be a pit of vipers who would consume me and leave me for dead. And indeed: when I arrived at the train station in Warsaw West and made it by foot to the old town student's district, with the aim of reaching the Ministry of Culture, I first dropped into a barber shop by the Bristol hotel. There were many people waiting to get their hair cut, so I waited two hours, and finally was seated by the barber. He looked at my hair and said "who did your hair?" I answered: "I went to the barber's in Krakow." The barber cried out "I can't fix what they did to your hair!" and he kicked me out. This was a somewhat playful episode, but not totally illustrative of my time in Warsaw. In fact, I quickly recognized that I am in a place of extreme, central importance to Poland and this feeling spurred a sense of obligation in me. JR: But you