Warsaw, Poland (Post #34)
Sunday, August 7th, 2005Hello, Michele here…today is Sunday, August 7th.
We spent Wednesday, August 3rd in Malmo, Sweden. Unfortunately, most of our one day there was spent doing errands so we did not get to do much sight seeing but the parts of the city we did see were quite beautiful and we ate at a restaurant in one of the many small town squares filled with flowers and foutains. Anyway…
We are now in Warsaw, Poland! I love this city because it is so rich in history. We took a flight from Malmo, Sweden to Warsaw, Poland last Thursday with no problem. However, we took bus #175 from the airport to our hostel and this was quite an adventure. There is no such thing as “the bus is full”. No sir, each and every square inch of this bus was taken up with people and luggage. We tried to pay the bus driver but he wouldn’t take our money and seemed somewhat overwhelmed himself by the number of people crammed into this city bus. It really was crazy because at each stop I was thinking there is NO WAY one more person can get on this bus. And then 5 more people would get on.
Our hostel in Warsaw is only 2 weeks old and the owners are 30 years old. We are staying in the only room with its own bathroom (we decided to give ourselves an upgrade and booked a room with a private bathroom this time). The staff who work there are all young (in their 20s and 30s) and we have spent a lot of time talking to them about life in Poland.
So, what have we been doing? On Friday, August 5th, we walked to Old Town through the Royal Castle Square, passing many statues of poets and famous Polish historical figures along the way. We also went into several churches. I thought one church was quite fascinating and very ornate (St. Anne’s Church) and there I was taking a picture when I noticed a bride at the back of the church ready to walk down the isle. Oops! On this day we also went to the Warsaw Historical Museum and saw a film about the destruction of Warsaw during WWII. The cost was $3 and there were rooms and rooms filled with very interesting historical exhibits. During our pierogi lunch Mike had a warm beer with honey and cloves and I had a beer with strawberry juice. When I was talking to a young Polish woman at the hostel about how strange it was to have a beer with juice in it, she said she had never had a beer in her life without juice and thought it was very strange that a woman would drink plain beer with no fruit juice poured into it. After lunch we saw the crypts in St. John’s cathedral, the oldest church in Warsaw, and saw the Church of the Hoily Cross with Chopin’s heart boxed into one of the columns. (You know Chopin…he was a very famous piano player and if anyone took piano lessons as a child, yea, well, you know his music.) Finally, we saw Barbican, part of a medieval wall that once encircled Warsaw then walked to Saxon Gardens where the tomb of the unknown soldier is under guard. The tomb is surrounded by a fragment of an 18th century royal palace destroyed in WWII. As you may or may not know, most of Warsaw was destroyed during WWII and has since been maticulously rebuilt to look the same as before the war.
Yesterday we focused on seeing many sites associated with the Warsaw Ghetto. If you have seen the movie The Pianist or Schindler’s List then you would know about Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto and the uprising. During WWII the Nazis established a Jewish Ghettoand in April 1943, the Jews fought back, refered to as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We saw parts of what is left of the ghetto wall, the Monument of the Heroes of the Ghetto, and the newer (built in 1989) Monument to the Warsaw Uprising. Then we went to the Pawiak Prison Museum, which is in the former building used as a Gestapo prison during Nazi occupation. The whole afternoon was very moving for me.
Today we slept in a bit then walked to the Royal Lazienki Park where we saw a palace on an island in the middle of a lake and a theatre on a different island in another lake. The park was huge (we spent hours there) and it had many fountains, flowers, and statues in it.
I will try to upload photos within the next couple of days. Tomorrow we take a train to Krakow (and in the next blog I will have to tell you the story of buying the train tickets!)
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Michele Harmon