LETTER FROM WARSAW/Hugh O'Shaughnessy: Warsaw, according to Norman Davies, the foremost historian of Poland in the English language, hasn't been much of a capital city.
Most of the time, he says in his book God's Playground, it has been "a resort of intellectuals, burglars and insurrectionists ... more akin to Dublin than to London or Washington". It is, he states, "less elegant than Budapest or Bucharest, less picturesque than Belgrade or Sofia, less venerable than Prague, less impressive than Berlin". So take that, all you Dubs and Polacks.
Warsaw acquired the status of capital in 1611 for no other reason, it seems, than it was in the middle of the territory where Poles lived. The city, sitting on a little plateau overlooking the River Vistula, is a victim of terrible freezing winds from the east in the winter, and the land surrounding it is not particularly rich or productive.
Yet as the city settles down after the excitement and fireworks of Poland's day of accession to the European Union, the citizens of the Polish capital are no more abashed at Dr Davies's tart opinions than Dubliners are.
Today it is revelling in the spring and the opportunity - available for only a few months in the year, due to the cold and the snow - to do some gardening and forget the hard times of winter. The parks, like the Lazienki Park with its peacocks and rowing boats on the lake, are full of families promenading in the weak sunshine.
Wilanow - the Polish equivalent of Howth Castle but much bigger and with more rhododendrons - was once the residence of King Jan Sobieski. There the gardeners have taken up the warm covers which in winter protect the more delicate shrubs and bushes. Lovers are beginning to kiss and cuddle in the gazebos and under trees that are breaking into leaf.
Both parks have evidence of the amazing new Polish passion: food - or, rather, haute cuisine. In a country where once the potato was king of the table and where, they say, meat dishes meant 57 varieties of pigs' trotters and pork knuckles, things are changing fast. In one wing of the Wilanow palace, for instance, they have been staging a mouth-watering display of how food was served in the great houses in the days of yore.
It's better in the Lazienki. There you don't just have to drool but can sit down in the elegant Orangerie for some of the finest food in Europe east of the French border.
But there is fine fare everywhere, and the most unlikely places are being turned into restaurants. One provides traditional foods - the best fish, duck and puddings - in chintzy surroundings in a pretty little villa. In sadder times the Russian KGB tortured its victims there. In the main square of the Old City, reconstructed after the wholesale destruction wrought by the Nazis at the end of the war, there is a restaurant where they have been selling wine and food since the 1540s.
The coffee house that was a favourite of Gen de Gaulle when, as a young captain, he was attached to the army of the newly independent Poland after the first World War, is still the quiet, respectable place it has been since 1869 - a Bewley's Oriental Café, one might say.
Meanwhile, the agricultural lobby is gearing up to defend its interests in the EU of which Poland is a proud new member. Andrzej Leper, a nationalist politician, has delivered more than one broadside against foreigners coming in and ruining the organic qualities of an industry where horses continue to provide the power which in other countries comes from tractors.
He says Poland uses seven times less chemicals than the West, and does not want to import animals and poultry that have been reared using antibiotics, growth promoters, dioxins and sludge from cess-pits and many other additional chemicals.
"Polish food is healthy food," he snaps.
As the chefs and restaurateurs vie with each other the eternal Warsaw goes about its business as it has always done - conservative, a little suspicious of foreigners.
For whatever reason the curses of urban life experienced in western Europe have not penetrated the Polish capital. There are few of the garish neon signs in a city whose reconstruction its inhabitants regard as a miracle and which must consequently be treated with all the reverence accorded to a medieval saint's body in an Italian cathedral. The only sign of urban raciness was the parking of a seagoing yacht outside the Royal Castle recently as an advertisement for some bank.
There is a marked lack of any yobbish tendencies in this city which used to enjoy the reputation of being "the Paris of the East". There is nothing comparable to Temple Bar in Warsaw.
On the whole the Poles are, it appears, good citizens, not least when they eat and drink. That does not mean they have become abstemious with regard to alcohol. Vodka is produced in ever more enticing forms and ever more attractive packaging. One very senior Pole is reported to be under its spell for more hours of the day than are good for that person or indeed for the country.
But the votaries of the spirit continue to proclaim its quality of never producing a hangover. And Poles appear to have mastered the technique of imbibing vodka without giving the appearance of incapacity.
Poland could never produce a president such as Russia's Boris Yeltsin who memorably pinched a woman's bottom live on television.