Warsaw

* Why there?: In the wake of a visit to the ancestral city (Wloclawek), combined with an Israeli family that lives abroad.

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* Israelis living abroad: Ran (36), Naomi (37), Roni (three weeks).

* May 3: Ran is waiting in the Mercedes at "Frederic Chopin" (the international airport). All is coordinated. It's quiet in Warsaw: Today is Trzeciego Maja (May 3), Independence Day. We drive through the wide boulevards in this low-key city, where occasionally a glass-and-steel high-rise looms next to the ponderous Soviet past. We stop at the Umschlagplatz, 18 Mila Street, at the monument that commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, pass through Three Crosses Square (immortalized in Joseph Zieman's book about the street children, who sold cigarettes there during the Holocaust) and arrive in the neighborhood.

* The neighborhood: Ursinow, suburban, gated, pointed roofs, convenient parking, tiled streets, plowed fields covered with gray clods, which in the fall will yield potatoes (and other root vegetables).

* The home: The apartment is a duplex (180 square meters) - new, well lit, well equipped, rented (3,000 zloty a month, about $1,000). The Sharons have lived here for five years. All the neighbors are CEOs; you can't hear so much as a fly.

* Entering: The wooden floor is exactly that. On the entrance level, beyond the broad foyer, is a very large living room with an antique bureau, a sofa in dark leather, a matching armchair and a white sofa with two headrests like you see in cars ("We bought it at a kind of local equivalent of ID Design"). Adjacent is a new cradle (for Roni), a coffee table which holds an open laptop ("This is my office" - Ran) and de rigueur Crocs. On the narrow bureau which is close to the white sofa is a DVD projector and a collection of Israeli and other films and TV shows, including "Walk on Water," "Operation Jonathan" and "24," then miniature Boss speakers and a yellowing Haaretz in a basket. By the window is a hookah ("from a Lebanese friend"). Outside are blue skies and a Warsaw spring - 14 degrees Celsius.

* Onward: Also on the same level (as the living room) is the well-equipped kitchen (two refrigerators) and Naomi's study (with computer, library and diploma from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa). We are served croissants and instant coffee (espresso is also an option) and ascend a polished wooden staircase to the bedrooms.

* The bedrooms: Three. One is Roni's room (containing everything that's needed), all in pink and white ("I painted it in my seventh month" - Naomi), one is the master bedroom (with an adjacent alternative living room), and one is for guests, with a wide bed, in which a guest is presently staying.

* The guest: Esther, Naomi's mother, has come from Kiryat Ata, outside Haifa, for three weeks on the occasion of the birth. She, too, is impressed by the quiet.

* Livelihoods and occupations: Ran, a businessman and a lawyer ("but I don't work in the profession"), has been in Warsaw for nine years, speaks Polish, is well-connected and is the CEO of Cornelius, a family-run investment firm (his father is the president), which focuses on initiating projects in the realm of environmental quality and at the same time represents companies, both Israeli and others. He works out of an office in the city center, has a staff of 25, pays a 19 percent "companies tax" to the Polish treasury, has flexible working hours and tries to get home by 5 ("because of Roni). He drives a maroon Mercedes, which he bought second-hand from a friend, the CEO of Mercedes in Poland ("like new").

* Naomi's occupation: At the moment she is on maternity leave. A year ago she completed ("summa cum laude" - Ron) her medical studies at the University of Warsaw ("I was the first Jewish-Israeli student") and will soon take a final exam before interning.

* Interning: She hasn't yet decided where she will do this (Israel, the United States or England), but in any event not in Poland ("It's impossible to work here") - the family will have to decide. She will specialize in emergency medicine or in ophthalmology. In the meantime, she is breast-feeding ("like a full-time cow"), walking in local parks ("There are a great many"), and when it's cold she finds a haven in the malls.

* Naomi's bio: Naomi is from Kiryat Ata. Her father, Dov, the son of affluent refugees from Romania ("They were saved because of their ties with the Italian Mafia"), had a cigarette-distribution business and is now retired. Her mother, Esther, Israeli-born and a salesperson in a lingerie shop in Kiryat Ata, is of Syrian-Iraqi origin ("a niece of Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, a former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel"). She attended high school in Haifa (majoring in control and computers), where she excelled in both the humanities and the sciences, then served in the Israel Air Force, studied mathematics and physics at Tel Aviv University, was a programmer in a project to develop artificial intelligence, was an extra in several episodes of the satirical TV series "The Cameri Quintet," then went to New York, where she worked in Citibank (on Wall Street) developing financial software, felt satiated with high-tech ("I understood that I would remain a successful single") and returned to Israel in 2000. There she enrolled in the Technion, met Ran, completed a master's degree in medical sciences, went with him to Warsaw, where she studied medicine (receiving an MD) and is just now at a professional crossroads.

* Ran's bio: From Holon. His mother, Aviva, Israeli-born (her family is originally from Hungary), was in the past the Israeli tourism attache in Budapest and the external relations director for Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava. His father, Reuven, Polish-born, a former official in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, was the first Israeli economic attache (after the fall of the Communist Bloc) in Eastern Europe. He did his army service as an accident investigator for the Military Police, then went to stay with his parents in Hungary, where he says he studied law and the preparation of blintzes (palacsinta) and other local delicacies. At the beginning of 1996 he returned to Israel and was admitted to the bar. In the meantime, his father left the civil service and joined the operation of the Dankner Group in Poland. Ran, who came for a visit, liked what he saw. He set up his own company (1998), forged ties with Poles, and in 2003 received his dad as president.

* Working with Dad: "He is the strategist, I am the doer." He had met Naomi two years earlier.

* The meeting: 2001. Ran, the Warsaw-based businessman, decided that it was time he got married. Naomi, a student at the Technion, had similar feelings. They both registered with Cupidon, a matchmaking Web site ("We were among the first 100"), and after numerous disappointments (Ran: "I would fly to Israel every two weeks for blind dates"), she appeared on the site as "April," aged 30 ("She made herself a year younger"). That very day they arranged to meet a cafe in Kfar Hess, in the Sharon district (halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa). She showed up with Shlomke ("a very good friend"); Ran came alone. They met in a parking lot. Later he asked her if she would like to come with him to Warsaw. She said she would, and seven months later (after she completed her master's degree), they were married.

* The wedding: 2002, David International Hotel, Tel Aviv, 400-500 guests ("Aviva organized everything, we just showed up to be married"). Ran needed six tries before he broke the glass ("The stage was made of flexible plywood").

* Life in Poland: "There are about 25 Israelis here and we are a community." They socialize with colleagues, business people, representatives of foreign companies, and usually hang out at the Q Club, a sushi-fusion restaurant in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, or at the U Kucharzy, a Polish avant-garde restaurant in the Europejski Hotel.

* Cleaning: Fanny, a cleaning lady, comes in twice a week and takes 12 zloty an hour.

* Shopping: "Everything here is organic. The cows graze in the meadow, a tomato is a tomato, but only in season."

* Crises: "No lack of them, but morning makes them go away" (Ran).

* Gestures: "There are a great many gentlemen here," Naomi says, "and even professors open doors."

* Ultrasound: The public health system allows two free scans during pregnancy ("It's a Catholic country - there are no abortions"); those who have money do one every month privately. At the same time, Naomi says, Polish medicine is no less advanced than Israeli medicine and sometimes more so ("40 million people is a mass that provides a research base").

* Anti-Semitism: "I haven't encountered any" (Ran). "On the contrary," Naomi says, "as a Jew I was immediately stereotyped as someone smart." Ran: "The Poles are the most pro-Israeli nation in Europe, and most of them have never seen a Jew."

* The Holocaust: "For them it is a wound they keep coming back to; they live that event more than we do." According to Ran, Poland feels the absence of its Jews strongly.

* Judaism: "There are things I do in Poland that I did not do in Israel - going to synagogue on Yom Kippur and reciting the Kiddush every Sabbath eve."

W Loneliness: "Never."

* Polish passport: "Today it is a European passport."

* Pangs of conscience: "There were no hesitations," Ran says. "The accounts were basically finished."

* Dreams: "One has come true: the birth of Roni," Naomi says. In the future, she adds, she will aspire to work as a doctor in an exotic locale. She expects to have many children. Ran says he dreams of achieving "financial resilience," which will enable him to choose where to live.

* Israel: "I will apparently die in Israel, and I want my children to serve in the IDF" (Ran). "Today I am committed to my happiness" (Naomi).

W Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Ran - 8, Naomi - 7-8.