Written by Rod and Belinda

 

We had no trouble finding our apartment in Warsaw, partly because it was one of the most unattractive Soviet-era buildings we have ever seen. We know why they call it Soviet-Block; it’s a description of their architecture style from the 1950’s. However, once again, parking was proving to be perplexing. We had various sources of information to guide us (sat nav, maps me, email from apartment owner), but could we find it? No. We parked in the nearby Radisson car park which was going to cost 12 zl per hour (about $4). The actual apartment car park was 50 zl for the 3 days!

It did not bother Rod to go out in the cold dark night and sort this out imbroglio (yes, this is Rod’s word). He eventually manages to extricate the car from the soon to be closed Radisson underground and finds the entrance to the apartment car park – it is the next driveway. He strikes up conversation with another Soviet throwback, the car park attendant. He is housed in a soviet style sentry box and armed with no English whatsoever.  Fortunately there is another fellow there, presumably a regular, who has a smattering of The Queens. Rod pays the fee, parks the car and is proud of his accomplishment. However, his subsequent trip, on foot, to the supermarket is not as impressive (see the previous post re: what we ate for dinner). Still, he has managed to purchase wine and we are happy with that.

 

The two days in Warsaw didn’t quite turn out as we had envisaged. We woke up tired and early to snow showers and were forced to contend with a super-cranky Hamish. Our plan for the day was to head to the tourist information centre, find out about public transport tickets and from there, take Hamish to the Copernicus Science Centre (Centrum Nauki Kopernik). We managed one out of three – the tourist information centre, which really, didn’t tell us anything we couldn’t find on the internet. One of the major transport hubs was right across the road, but we couldn’t figure out how to purchase the day tickets we were after. Hamish was starting to show signs of deterioration, so we headed to the shopping centre, conveniently located next door, to get a bit of lunch and regroup.

We pretty much ditched all plans that day. Did manage to buy some waterproof mittens for Hamish from H & M – I don’t think we have mentioned how long it has taken Hamish to put on a pair of gloves. Sometimes it takes 4 goes – per hand – to wriggle his fingers into the right spots. Mittens = 3 seconds per hand. Winning. Hamish’s obsession with Conrad Schumann continues, as he constantly trots along the footpath and pretends to jump over barbed wire.

 

The next day we made a big effort to get up early and head to the Science Centre. After this, we were going to ‘Old Town’ – which isn’t really old at all, just a replica of the actual ‘Old Town’ (We’ll get to this in a bit). We catch the World’s Best (clean, cheap, quick, new, fast, frequent) metro service to the Science Centre and are somewhat put off by the 6 buses parked outside. Great. Schoolkids. Once inside, however, we do not notice them. The centre is massive and everyone is busy looking and exploring. Everybody was doing something. We get a special pass for Hamish to go to the Bzzz section for kids 5 and under. They said he was too big, but we went anyway. All up we spend over four hours at the centre – it’s fantastic. The bus loads of kids are great and are not annoying, which is pleasing. We sit near a group of year 8/9 kids at lunch and they are incredible: quiet, polite, sitting in their seats, all eating their identical lunch without complaint. Well done Poland.

The day has just about finished (dark at 4pm remember?) so Old Town is scrapped (not for the first time…) and we head home. We order take away Indian, it’s the first Asian food we have eaten since we left Australia.

Just a bit here about our impression of Warsaw. Well this city is an interesting blend of modern and cold war architecture. Our building is smack bang in the middle of ‘western’ hotels and buildings, including the actual Westin, which is on the diagonal corner. This unusual blend of old and new makes it difficult for us to get a feel of the city. The history of Warsaw (and Poland) is steeped in tragedy, the country losing 6 million of its people during WW2 (3 million Jews, 3 million Poles – 15%). Much of the old architecture has been replicated on a 1-1 scale, so ‘Old Town’ is only about 60 years old.

A google search helps us to discover that the site of our building was within the Jewish Ghetto walls established by the Germans in WW2. On foot, Rod discovers one of the boundaries marked out on the footpath. The entire ghetto was flattened and only one tiny section of the ghetto wall remains; one synagogue exists in Warsaw – there used to be over 400. We don’t need a museum to get the feel for this horror, however, Belinda is going to Auschwitz tomorrow.