Warsaw: Courage in the face of the enemy
SO we got to Warsawa safely enough by train, only we forgot to print out where our hostel was located, and so the fun begins.
The reference in the subject line refers to the Order Virtuti Militari, the highest military decoration the City of Warsaw was given for the heroic defense of 1939.
To begin with, we didn’t know if we’d gotten off at the right station because there were no signs for Warsaw. The previous station began with Warsaw but didn’t finish with Centrale as we needed, so it wasn’t until we’d hopped off the train gone up the escalators, wound our way through the maze of underground stalls at the station and out into the daylight that we realised luckily we were at Warsaw, for sure!
It was cold. No, it was freezing and windy. A rough scout around the block and we realised there are no bus maps like in London, there are not many street signs easily accessible to where we were, and we had no idea of our destination. For some part, I did remember that the street we needed began with an M and it was a major street – well, I got that much correct. We didn’t find out the rest until we found the main part of the station where tourist information was. From then on that station was not going to be our favourite place.
Comparing our hostel here and in Krakow is not possible – Krakow wins hands down. I think it was just because the staff seemed really incompetent in the Warsaw hostel. We settled our stuff in the rooms – we were in a six bed room, two sets of bunks and two singles. The bottoms were taken, but never before have we seen such high top bunks – they must have been about 3 meters higher than the floor, so we took the two singles.
The sun was going down so we headed out to find food. We walked through the big park, where groups of ducks were wandering around wondering why they couldn’t find anywhere to soak their butts.
We walked up to the old town which was all cobblestones and wobbly houses with feral cats and sprukers. Someone couldn’t contain their hunger so we found a restaurant in the new town. It turned out to be traditional Jewish and Polish food, so we enjoyed some herring and fish before heading out to the cold streets again. We took a different route back to the hostel, past many churches and monuments, especially of Nickolas Copernicus. I think I’ve just spelt it in English and Polish there, but I’ve seen it written so many ways.
It was really funny because when we got back to the hostel it was only about 7pm, way early! But that was okay because the next day we were heading out to the ‘burbs. Pruskow was where Grandpa Walton spent his time in the RAF, so we took a train from Warsaw Centrale for a bit of a walk about. Easier said than done, buying the tickets was the hard part. We had the sentence ready in Polish from my phrasebook, but when the lady in the ticket booth answered us in a really looong sentence in Polish. It took us another few minutes to ascertain that we needed two tickets each, one to get out and one to get back. We both had sighs of relief mixed with fits of giggles as we walked away, and then raised eyebrows as we saw the two carriage train was more like a Melbourne tram but slightly faster as we weren’t held back by traffic!
Going to a small out of town suburb we had some trouble again, trying to order breakfast at a local café. Lija asked for a cappuccino but the lady was saying no, they have regular coffee. She then had another question but we had no idea and she stood waiting for a reply, while we stood shrugging our shoulders. We’ve figured out that if you are in trouble you should ask a young person or a business person as there’s a much higher chance if they speak English. At this moment, a man in a suit came over and asked if he could help, we said we just wanted coffees and it turned out the lady was asking if we wanted sugar – a word we didn’t yet know but she had given no hand articulation or physical proof of what she was asking. We thanked him profusely and didn’t stop in at the café very long before strolling around the town. I think there must have been about a square mile of shops and houses and that was it. There was a pretty garden covered in snow where I made a snow angel on the ground and we hurried to the station to catch the next train back to Warsaw.
The next part of the day was a mission if ever. We hiked across town to the river Vistula, pausing to check out the mermaid monument on the way, and walked all the way to Praga, a suburb in the north-east of Warsaw. From the bridge the view of Warsaw is so contradicting. You can see many old-looking places, that really aren’t that old because they were rebuilt after the war, and the beginning of skyscrapers, apartment blocks and other 21st century ruins. Really, it’s all new, but architecturally it is meant to deceive, to make you forget any of it was burnt to the ground in the first place. If it wasn’t for those who are still around, who share their stories and ensure history is remembered then Warsaw would go unnoticed, it would pretend to be like every other city out there.
There were men fishing through the ice on the river, and we wandered through a strange marketplace of arab-looking people selling their wares. Dying for a toilet we found a shopping centre in the middle of this derelict part of town and also stopped for lunch. It was the equivalent of Forest Hill Chase. We trekked back through Praga and its Jewish sites, and then back again to cross a bridge further north, where the largest synagogue is. The wind started nipping at us so we pulled our jackets tighter and walked a bit faster back to the hostel.
After a short siesta with our feet up, okay so we both fell asleep for an hour or so (!!!) we walked back to the main train station – told you we spent most of our time there – to book our tickets to Torun for the following morning. Again we tried to write out exactly what we wanted. Two single tickets to Torun please for the 11am train. She got that, but she kept asking us what time. 11am I said in Polish. 11am Lija had written on the paper. The lady wrote out the train times and passed them under the window with the pen. Lija circled 11am. Ahh. The woman nodded. It was exactly what Lija had written. 11am. Only in Poland, they make the slant on the 1 almost touch the bottom line, as if it were a slanted A without the cross bar. What could we say? We got the tickets – that was the main thing!
On the way back to the hostel we stopped off for supplies for dinner, a combination of herring, salad and crackers mmm, which we laid out on the table at the hostel with our vodka and had a nice drink. We had a new roommate when we went down to our room, and spent the night chatting away with David. He is Israeli-American, though definitely more American, but he was studying in Israel as it’s a lot cheaper there. He had been travelling up through Europe by train, stopping off at interesting places and generally just having an adventure. He too, was off the next day to somewhere new, so we all fell asleep thinking of what tomorrow had in store for us.
Tags: Travel
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