Warsaw
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
44
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Warsaw,
Poland
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
The feeling that I was back in Europe was instantaneous with my arrival in the airport. The heating was turned on instead of the air conditioning. The place was clean, well maintained and everyone there was minding their own business. I took out some zloty from an ATM and changed them for a bus ticket at a magazine stand. I asked for some advice about getting into town and the lady staffing the information booth gave me a free map of Warsaw.
After three months exposure to the customs of the Middle East (and particularly Egypt), the apparent similarity between Poland and Canada made me feel like I had just come home. It took me a few days to realise it, but it eventually occurred to me that the folks in customer service and sales helpfully bided their time at their posts. They were completely indifferent to what they could get from me. More than the cold, or than the familiarity of European design the main factor was the return to a western notion interpersonal relationships.
I took the brand new looking bus into town and slowly it filled up with Poles. I was asked something in Polish and I realised that someone wanted me to move my bag so they could sit down. I asked myself - do I look like I speak Polish? - and then it occurred to me that I had no idea if I did or not. I hadn't an idea of what a Polish person looked like. I spent the rest of the ride trying to figure out what Polish people look like.
The first hostel I tried for was full but the desk clerk helpfully directed me to another hostel. At the second, a girl from Montreal with Polish citizenship let me ditch my bags while I waited a few hours for my room to be opened up (they had a closed during the day policy).
I walked through what was Historic Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto and the bland three story walk ups didn't do much for me. 1944 was a bad year for the area and it was rebuilt in medium density appartment buildings with wide streets. A crew of people in bright red jumpsuits were cleaning the leaves that had just been uncovered by melting snow.
I found a monument to the Polish resistance that was crushed in the burning city years ago and then I went to see the rebuilt old city. It was strange to think that my own house is older than all of these apparently renaissance buildings. Nazi affected history unavoidably leads me to make value judgements and I decided that it's better to reconstruct historical buildings rather than to just put up a few more three story walk ups - particularly when they are destroyed by a foe who intends to destroy a people.* Warsaw is centuries old but the only history that shows here began in 1939.
Back at my hostel around 3 pm I hadn't slept in thirty six hours, and after the ordeal of a few days before I craved sleep. The tenth can of coke had no taste to it anymore and I threw the vile thing half empty into a trash bin. I stretched in my fresh linen beddings and pulled my touque over my face. I slept eighteen hours straight and completely missed whatever of the solar eclipse that passed over this part of the world.
The next day I checked out the Polish military museum. There was a big section of Medieval Polish war history with their involvement in the 30 years war and even a dollop in the crusades (if I remember correctly) and despite all that I know about history I was surprised to see it. I expected it to begin with something about the second world war.
Eventually I got to that part which began with the Ribbentrop / Stalin map of the division of Poland in 1939. Outside the building were all sorts of military vehicles from Soviet times. Tanks, rocket launchers, and those big trucks that are always in communist parade video footage - the ones that carry ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missles) and a soviet helicopter. This boy was having fun.
After I had all but driven one of those tanks into war, I had had my fun. I took advantage of Polish public transportation to get to the train station. I forked out twenty bucks for a ticket to Krakow and soon I was on my way. I even got a complimentary cup of tea on the train. Oh how I love Poland.
*In 1944 the Soviets reached the right bank of the Vistula river, which cuts through Warsaw. Sensing liberaiton, the Poles of Jewish faith in the Warsaw ghetto rose up against the Nazis. The effort was joined by other Poles and fighting lasted until the city was a pile of rubble. The Soviets had decided to not bother getting in on the action because the uprising let them take a few days off while the Nazis were distracted by the Poles, and also because they didn't want any Polish resistance to the impending Soviet occupation. They let the Nazis destroy it for them.
