i suppose it was inevitable. i missed a post yesterday. and so i'm writing a post now (the day after) about what i did yesterday.
i woke up at 9 a.m.-ish, had myself some Multi-grain Cheerios - you can get them here, unlike the Czech Republic - and left the hostel. my plan was to do a Chopin tour - Chopin, for those who don't know, was born in Warsaw and only moved to Paris when he was in his 30's. alas, this plan was not to be.
first things first, i decided i would swing by a park to get a photo of the "palace on water", proper name "Palac na Wyspie", on my way to the Chopin museum. it was going to be another walking day. i walked to the pond at the foot of the palace and took a picture and headed towards the city center, where the Chopin Museum awaited me, stopping to look at a photograph display of Poland from overhead that was hanging on a fence in the park.
after meandering through another park, passing a few embassies (including my own), i finally arrived at the Chopin Museum...
only to find out that it was closed from mid-July until October. what an absurd notion, closing a museum for renovations during peak tourist season... so my Chopin tour bit the dust instantaneously. it was to have included some other things, like the Church of the Holy Cross, where his heart is interred (not his body, though) and what is now the Presidential Palace, where he gave his first public performance.
merely by walking straight towards the Old Town (Stare Miasto), i wandered by said Presidential Palace anyway and learned that for a select few days during the summer (Fridays and Saturdays) i could actually see the Palaces gardens... and it just happened to be Friday. so i found the line, which was around the block and down some stairs, and waited for 15 minutes, only to not be let in because they only let 40 people in at a time. rather than wait another 30 to 60 minutes, i decided to continue trekking north towards the Old Town.
i passed many statues - this city should be nicknamed "Monument City", there are so many statues to famous Poles or miscellaneous War and Uprising related memorials - and whatnot on my way to Old Town. one park had a statue made by Jan Kaminski that was designed in 1939 but not unveiled until 1986.
i finally arrived to find a very nice, new "Old Town". as many people i'm sure are aware, Warsaw was completely destroyed by the Nazis on their way out the door, following a failed uprising by the cities population. so, after the destruction, and during the Cold War, they rebuilt their Old Town.
recently, having emerged from Communism and being besieged by tourists (and, likewise, capitalism and the EU), they've been repainting and refurbishing many of the new Old Town buildings. which, in turn, gives the Old Town a very carnival-esque feel and, really, makes it very surreal. it's like a Disney version of Old Town Europe. there are many street performers. there are sidewalk cafes. there is a fountain of a mermaid in the center of the Old Town. etc etc. it's unreal.
after having some fish and red beet soup (borsch) for lunch, i walked around Old Town a bit more. it's a small Old Town, in comparison to the likes of Krakow or, better yet, Prague and one can walk from one end to the other in about 5 to 10 minutes. i took some photos and decided that i would do a WWII (and, hence, Uprising and holocaust) monument tour.
so i walked northwest of Old Town. i saw the Uprising memorial, which is enormous and beautifully done. (by the way, in case you're wondering, i have photos of most of what i'm talking about, i just don't have the ability to upload them at the moment. expect a massive image page update when i finally get back to Prague and have time to organize them.) i then continued Northwest to pass the location of the uprising headquarters and the memorial to the jews who were deported from Warsaw via the Umschlagplatz, a train platform and building where an organized deportation of 200,000 jewish Varsovians was carried out.
the single most depressing and unsettling thing about this walk, however, was the complete lack of a Jewish Quarter, which was destroyed by the Nazis as well, of course. you must understand, coming from Prague, where the Jewish quarter is enormous and mostly untouched, and even Krakow that still has a small Jewish quarter, i expected to see some small, winding streets and alleyways. what i did see instead were enormous soviet-era housing blocks that were so foreboding and uninteresting that my eyes started to water. there was absolutely no sign of heritage in the area except for the memorials. it was a very humbling experience, indeed.
after the Jewish quarter, i headed back to the hostel for some R&R. when i got back, my two italian roommates were hanging out and the two french guys from next door (and with whom we share a bathroom) joined in. eventually, after reading for awhile, i got sucked in as well.
and this is why i did not post last night. you see, one of the two french guys - we'll call him Jean - was the most stereotypically arrogant French man possible. the other French guy (Adrian) was very genial and very friendly. anyway, Jean was a sexist prick who insisted on talking about and degrading women for the entire evening. i also found myself being pulled along on a hunt for a disco named "Ground Zero" (about which Jean made a very tasteless hand motion indicating the twin towers). by this point, Jean had decided that it would be a competition about who (and which nationality) could find a woman the fastest.
why did i go along with them, you're probably asking yourself. outside of Jean, everybody else is super cool and i hadn't been to a club in awhile... as a matter of fact, i typically find italians to be excessively noisy and obnoxious, but my two roommates are very cool and very respectful of me. i guess it's just a matter of perspective, really... and who you happen to meet at any given time. so i went, albeit i had that nagging feeling that it wouldn't be so fun from the moment it was proposed.
and it really wasn't that fun. it took about an hour for the others, Jean in particular, to get ready to go. it then took an hour to find the place. i stayed for about an hour before getting so bored that i wanted to leave. and so i left, walked back to the hostel and read some before i went to sleep.
Posted by iain at August 13, 2005 08:20 PM