WARSAW

Well the good news is that we didn't puke on the ferry ride over. Though judging by the smell in certain parts of the boat it's likely not everyone can lay claim to that...! We boarded around 8:30pm, had a bit of a wander around the boat, grabbed a bite to eat (with the obligatory beer of course) and then headed to our cabin for the night.

After a half decent night's sleep we were rudely awoken at around 6am to the dulcet tones of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. It was playing over the PA system that could not be turned off and at the end we were encouraged to get up so we could have some breakfast and spend the last of our Swedish money in the duty free shops. Now 6am is waaay too early for either of us to eat breakfast, even though it was included in the ticket price, and we had very little Swedish money left so we stayed in situ for a while longer only to have the PA come to life again 30 minutes later telling us to get our arses out of bed - well maybe not in quite so many words... So we packed up and got out of the cabin to wait in the debarkation area where we managed to spend our last few Swedish Kronor on a couple of chocolate bars and in fact left owing about 1 Kronor - that's the second country we've left in debt now but at least we're not carrying around excess currency that we'll never use again.

With feet firmly on Polish soil the next challenge was to find our way to the Gdynia train station. We opted for a taxi, which was an experience in itself. We weren't in Texas any more Toto! Gone were the easy days of Scandinavians speaking English, but we somehow managed to get the message across to the taxi driver that we had no cash and that we wanted to go to the train station. His solution to the cash problem was to firstly take us to an ATM where we mounted the footpath with all four wheels and came to a screeching halt at which point we figured out that he wanted us to get cash out rather than taking a card for payment. With cash in hand it was off to the train station where once again we came to a screeching halt with all four wheels on the footpath to be ceremoniously dumped at what we hoped was the right location.

I must ask you at this point to cast your mind back to previous comments in this blog about the quality of the train stations over here. Well let me be corrected here and now that this rule does not necessarily apply to Gdynia station...

And as for the trains...well I guess this is a former Eastern bloc country so they were perhaps a little more rickety than we were used to but they were comfortable enough and once on the train we did manage to make our way to Warsaw by the evening without too much hassle.

The first night we wandered down into the old town to grab a bite to eat. We stumbled across a restaurant that looked like a nice, small, family-run place with authentic Polish cuisine. Well we weren't wrong about the authentic Polish cuisine - we had dumplings in "gravy", which is really just the fat from the cooking and stuffed cabbage. It was delicious but we were to find out afterwards that the place wasn't such a small, family-run place but one of many in a chain of restaurants - good food all the same.

Day one we ambled around the city on a "self-guided" tour. Warsaw is an amazing place with an incredibly complex and chequered recent history. With Poland being occupied by various countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to being stuck between waring Germany & Russia in the first and second world wars to being annexed by the USSR in the mid to late 20th century it is a country full of contrasts. The most intriguing thing about Warsaw was the fact that it was completely levelled by the retreating Nazis at the end of WWII. Basically everything you see there now has been rebuilt from historical records or new stuff put up in its place. To give you an idea of what was left at the end of the war, here are a couple of pics I found on the web.

This was all that remained of the former Jewish Ghetto. The lines on the ground were where the streets were.

The old town with market square in the middle - see below how it looks today.

The old town of Warsaw was completely rebuilt, including the old city walls and gate entries, etc and if you weren't told that you would never know by looking at it. It has been listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Register.

The old town wall, originally dating as far back as the 9th & 10th centuries, and one of the only remaining entry gates. These gates were not necessarily destroyed during WWII but pulled down as part of the city's development over the years. Ironically it was during the rebuild after WWI that they were able to discover a wealth of archaeological information about the history of these walls.

Old market square - would you believe this was built in the 1980's...?

Adrian & the killer mermaid - some myth about her being the protector of the fishermen, or Warsovians or something...

The Royal Castle. This was completely levelled at the end of WWII. 

See the column / statue in the background? Like everything else this is a reconstruction but the fragments of column lying on their side at the edge of the photo are from the original column.

The remnants of a former Royal Palace which was destroyed during the war. All that remains are these three arches inside which they have placed a memorial to the unknown soldier. As chance would have it we happened across this by accident at exactly the same time as the changing of the guard ceremony.

A memorial to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising - more about that below.

Day two we managed to book a tour with a twist - a tour into the communist era Warsaw and the various WWI & post WWI events that shaped that part of Poland's history. We were picked up in an original communist era van, a Nyssa 522 - which in it's day was THE van, well the only van you could get in Poland. Basically if you wanted a van, you got a Nyssa 522.

Without going into the intricate details it was an incredibly fun yet informative tour and well worth it. We found out about the Warsaw Uprising at the end of WWII where the locals tried to kick out the Germans before the Russians arrived from the east - the Warsovians basically saw the writing on the wall and knew that if they just waited for the Red Army to "liberate" them they would be destined to communism and further occupation. They didn't win the Uprising but simply earned the wrath of the retreating Germans who basically levelled the city as per the photos above. We also learned a little about the life and times of the Soviet occupation & communism. Very interesting indeed.

No these are not under demolition, nor are they ruins from WWII. These are a couple of the few lucky building to escape relatively unscathed after the war. The damage to them was not caused by the war, but rather by the Communists. Pre-war all of Warsaw's buildings were intricately decorated and apparently it was very similar to Paris. The Communists, however, didn't like any of this decoration so they had it all stripped off the buildings - so that's what you are looking at here: naked buildings. People still live in the top floor of the one on the left.

Our guide Martin showing us some bullet holes of one of the places where the Nazis used to execute people in the streets.

Stalin's gift (sometimes also called Stalin's penis). This building was gifted to Warsaw  by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1952. Apparently he wanted to give something back to Warsaw for their continued commitment to communism, he offered them several things, amongst others a metro system, but they chose the skyscraper. They built the metro system them selves but it took more than 45 years to complete!!

A communist era sculpture - it was all about strong workers, good & faithful workers...

A view from below one of the bridges over the Vistula River. In the foreground are the ruins from the pre-WWII bridge that the Nazis blew up upon their retreat from Warsaw. The Soviets were approaching from the side of the river behind where this photo was taken and the Nazis were trying to hold the other side.

At the end of the tour our guide kindly dropped us off at Lazienki Park. The site of yet another Royal Palace, but this time a summer palace. Not a bad little summer house on the lake...

Chopin's monument in the palace grounds. Chopin plays a very big role in Warsaw's tourism industry.

After wandering around the park for a while we then headed off on foot to the other side of the CBD to the Warsaw Uprising Museum. A very modern and interactive museum about the aforementioned Uprising. The exhibition was very well done with a wealth of onformation, albeit with a little too much going on, being stuck in the middle of a few bus loads of tourists probably didn't help, but we got the general idea. One of the highlights of the museum was a 3D movie with a flyover of post WWII Warsaw which gave a very poignant picture of exactly how devastated the city was after the Germans left - much more effective than the couple of photos above and my few words on the matter.

A replica of a B-24 Liberator that the Allies used to use to drop supplies in for the Uprisers. Inside is a small cinema where they show the fly over movie of the post WWII city.

An air drop canister - the parachute is on the left hand side. Some of you will know what I mean when I say that nowadays these things would come with a Greg Jack attached!!

It's a bit hard to see but these are the sorts of things the Allies used to drop to the Uprisers - cigarettes & tobacco, first aid supplies, tea & coffee and of course...hand grenades!

And of course the dropped the important stuff like guns and ammo

So all of that made for a very long day, with many kilometres walked, so we more or less grabbed a bite to eat and hit the hay for the evening.

Next stop Krakaow - watch out for the next post. BTW - we are a little behind on the posts due to being either busy or not having an appropriate internet connection. Currently we are in Amsterdam so we have a few posts to catch up on; Krakow, Auschwitz, Prague, Vienna and Budapest - and after tomorrow Amsterdam too. Hopefully we'll get to those over the next couple of days so keep checking if you are interested.