Early as it was when I got to the city, I sat around the common room of the hostel (I wasn't able to check in until the afternoon or I might have taken a nap) for a lot of the morning. Since I enjoyed the Vilnius walking tour so much, and my list of ideas for things to see in Warsaw was less than huge, I decide to check out the Warsaw walking tour. There was one that started at 11, so after a hostel-prepared breakfast of waffles with Nutella two other guests (who are here in Poland about to start a 10 month English teaching placement) and I set off to the main square. The walk down there was actually quite charming, despite everyone's warnings that the Polish Old Town is not too exciting. There were lots of little cafes and bars and shops lining the streets, and I found myself really enjoying the atmosphere. At the main square we met the tour guide, a Polish university student who has lived in Warsaw all her life. Promptly at 11:15, as we were just starting the tour, trumpet music started playing from the ex-royal palace. Apparently, they play (live!) Warsaw anthem everyday at exactly 11:15, because when it was bombed during the Second World War, that is the time that the clock stopped working, and when it was rebuilt in the 1950s it was restarted at 11:15. Which brings me to the title of the post. What's really interesting about the Warsaw Old Town is that it isn't very old at all. During the war something like 95% of the city was completely destroyed. It was rebuilt in exact replica in the 50s by the soviets as a way to gain Polish support for the regime: as the thinking goes, act like you care about Polish history and culture, and they won't rise up against you demanding independence. The atheist Soviets even consented to rebuild the churches that had been destroyed, so long as they represented merely a piece of Polish culture, and no one actually used them as places of worship.
Unfortunately it was pretty cold and rainy all through the tour. It didn't really slow us down, and we still saw just about everything we should have, but it did make the free vodka we were given at the end of the free tour especially welcome! It also means I have a lot of pictures to share here because I was using my phone rather than risk getting my camera all wet (my phone's already been for a small swim so I'm not too bothered about a little bit of rain there).
Inside the courtyard of the royal castle:
Altar in the Warsaw Cathedral:
Old Town Wall rebuilt from the rubble left behind after it was bombed:
"Little Insurgent" monument, built in honor of the Home Army fighters against Nazi occupation in 1944. More on that later:
Tower of Royal Palace, seen across the square at the entrance to Old Town:
After walking around in the rain for a couple hours, we decided to get some lunch. Two other travelers, both from Australia, joined us, so we five headed into the city in search of cheap Polish food (when we asked someone where we could get cheap Polish food, they asked if we meant vodka. We did not, but were thankful for the help anyway). We found a cafeteria style place where I had a delicious stuffed zucchini (Polish? Maybe? Well it was made in Poland by Poles so I think it counts) and some spinach stuffed pierogis (definitely Polish, except for the spinach, but way to help a vegetarian out, Poland!). Everything was great and we sat there munching, drying off, and discussing foreign policy with special attention to Syria. Ah, I guess I never left American University.
The Australian guy told me he'd read about another free tour at 4 with a focus on Communism, which I thought sounded interesting. The weather was looking a little bit better but still not really adequate for solo wandering (strolling is good in the sun, and I don't mind walking in the rain, but strolling in the rain is just unpleasant) so I decided to join him, and we walked back up to the main square. I really liked that your (even though we weren't given any vodka) as the guide was born in 1981 so was giving us personal stories along with everything we saw, which really gave it all a lot more meaning. We saw, for example, the bookstore where he waited 5 hours to buy school books, the grocery store where his father swapped his vodka coupons for extra chocolate coupons (good trade?) and the passport office where his grandfather was detained for two weeks because he once forgot some information on a form.
By the time that tour finished I was resembling a drowned rat, and my toes were an alarming shade of purple, so I went back to the hostel where I checked in and relaxed. Having only slept a little on the bus the night before and having arrived so terribly early, I was too exhausted to do anything fun, so I stayed in that first night. Being my mother's daughter I started dozing over my book by 9:00, and just went to sleep not too long after that.
The next day I woke up early but knew nothing would open for a few hours so had another leisurely morning at the hostel. At 9:30 I went to the Uprising Museum, supposedly a really incredible place to learn about the uprising against the Germans in August-October 1944. It was unsuccessful (hence, World War II) but still a matter of national pride for Poland. I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by the museum. Maybe everyone who said it was amazing just built up my expectations too much (or maybe I am used to the Smithsonians while other people are not) but I didn't think there was very much to look at. There was a lot (a lot!) of reading, and most of the English translations were grey type on black background (while the Polish type was in white) and too small so really hard to read. On top of that, it was so crowded I could hardly move, and there were a couple viewfinder kind of things where you looked through and saw some slides and read about them, which was completely impossible in a packed museum - I wasn't going to wait in lines of 50 people to look through each viewfinder. In addition, the flow of the museum was really difficult to follow. I was trying to watch the audio guide numbers, but sometimes they were in the absolute wrong direction, and other times I couldn't find a number at all. So I don't know. Maybe it's much better on a weekday, because no one I talked to said they didn't like it. Or maybe I am just missing something.
After the museum, I made my way back to Old Town. It was another dreary day but a little bit warmer and no rain, so I did roam aimlessly for a while. In the main square, I ran into a gigantic protest by the workers' union against governmental reform. I read that 100 thousand people showed up, and there was a lot of noise and yelling and blowing of horns:
It was all very exciting. I went down to Marie Curie's birthplace, and then walked down to the river where I located a great big fountain, and then started back up through the small, winding streets of the Old Town:
No clue what they are or mean, but there are several of them in the yard of this massive building, and they are gigantic.
I love the murals on the walls of so many of the buildings:
Mermaids are a symbol of Warsaw. Why is a sea creature the symbol of a city nowhere near the sea, you ask? Let me tell you a story (adapted from the one the first tour guide told me). Once upon a time two mermaid sisters lived in the Baltic Sea. One of them was very beautiful and very lazy, and the other was very strong (but if you check out the original Warsaw mermaid she is terrifying. Now she has also become beautiful). One day the two sisters fought so they went their separate ways. The lazy sister swam with the current and wound up in Copenhagen (the symbol of which is also a mermaid) and the strong sister fought the current and eventually (via the river) came to Warsaw. She was captured and forced to sing by a greedy man who charge money to come and hear her sing, but a Polish young man who heard her fell in love with her and eventually rescued her. In her gratitude she promised to always protect Poland and her people. In my opinion she needs to work a little harder at this (can we talk about the 20th century for a second?), but I guess she is doing her best.
I also happened upon these random flying horses:
Last night I went with another guest I met to a tiny bar just a few doors down from the hostel where vodka, beer, coca cola, and water all cost the same: 4 zloty (approximately $1.25) so we certainly took advantage of those prices, and had a fun last night in Warsaw (met a couple people from Warsaw who were pretty impressed that we managed to find this hole in the wall place what with all the other bars around whose bright lights and big signs are designed to attract tourists, but who dare to charge 8 zloty for a vodka! so they decided we were cool enough tourists to talk to). I am now on my first train ride in a while - on my way to Krakow, which I've heard described as the cultural capital of Poland (and in fact it was the actual capital for hundreds of years). I've also heard it's a much better and more interesting city than Warsaw, because it has a lot more history, and, as the story goes, Hitler thought it was too pretty to blow up so it's more or less intact. It depends who you ask, though: there is a bit of friendly rivalry between Warsaw and Krakow, and the first tour guide told is that the reason the capital changed to Warsaw is that the king, sick of Krakow and looking to get out, purposely burned down his palace in Krakow and said "well, might as well go to Warsaw". She also said, though, that people from Krakow will swear the fire was an accident.
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