Woodgen't You Know

Day 218
After saying goodbye to Jeremy and Tom (I couldn't find anyone else) I went to the train station and headed to Lodz, pronounced Woodge. I read The Golden Notebook to pass the time.

I went to the hostel that my guidebook suggested (I hadn't gotten around to booking anything) just to find out that it was under renovations. Luckily they had another property not too far away.

After picking up some food I went to check out the four kilometer long pedestrian street. There were a lot of interesting and odd statues, including one of a guy playing a winged piano that played music for $.75 until the neighbors complained. Another guy was climbing up the side of a building while reading a paper.

When I reached the main square I turned around. Luckily on the way back I found the tourist office where I got a lot of info about the town. Staying here for just another morning will be hard. There is a lot to do here.

Back at the hostel I sorted through the info I had been given, read my book and wrote in my journal. I made myself some dinner too. I had a 10pm curfew though and eventually I got bored and just went to sleep.

Smell Goes On

Day 217

Today was my last day in Warsaw and I had quite a bit to do. I wanted to be up early, but I hadn't expected to be woken up at 6 am. One of the guys in my room came back at this time, he absolutly reeked and it didn't take long for his smell to fill the small space. One he fell asleep he snored louder than I thought possible. Everyone was out of the room by 7 am, he cleared the place.

I headed downtown and was delighted to find that the castle was actually opened. The opening hours were inside, where you can't get to if its closed. Thats not very helpful. The castle had been destroyed during WWII and was restored to reflect its 18^th century appearance. The rooms are decorated with objects and paintings that had been salvaged from the wreckage or hidden during the war.

That original castle was partly built in the 14^th century and added to extensively in the 17^th century. Not only did royalty live here, but it was also used as a meeting place for parliament. In 1939 the castle was bombed, but the staff at the time had the forethought to try and save much of the objects and even some of the wall paper and moldings. In 1944 the castle was blown up completely with the rest of the city. Reconstruction began in 1990 and it was opened to the public four years later. There is still work to be done though, from what I could tell the castle gardens were next.

The palace was nice. It wasn't anything I hadn't seen before, it was interesting to see the things that had been salvaged though. There was a small but nice collection on paints and a room full of porcelain. The room on coins was rather boring, but the woman watching it seemed like her feelings would be hurt if I didn't check it out so I took my time in there.

After the castle I wanted to go and see the Powaik Prison Museum, unfortunately it was closed. I did get pictures of the memorials though.

I ended up doing some blogging instead. When I was done with that I headed to the history museum. I asked the woman at the front desk if I could take pictures, she told me that it would be ok as long as I didn't use any flash. Wonderful, I like taking pictures!

The first settlement in the Warsaw area dates back to the 10^th century. Quickly the small settlement grew and soon became a center for crafts. I took pictures of everything that interested me. I was having a good time. Warsaw becomes a center for crafts. Warsaw became home to the Moravian kings and later the Saxon kings. It was interesting to see everything that had been salvaged from the original museum.

At this point tried to take a picture of a piano thing and was yelled at for doing so. I tried to explain that I had been told that I could take them, but she didn't speak any English and there was no point. I was pretty irritated though. Sometimes when I ask people act like I have done something really awful. I just don't understand. It's a yes or no question.

I wrote down a handful of notes afterwards but I was kinda sick of the museum. There was an odd dolphin sculpture that had been left over from the Swedish occupation. When they tried to move it back to Sweden in 1655 they accidentally dropped it into the river. It was rescued in 1911. By 1792 Warsaw had become a center for Polish culture. It was easy to see through the paintings how the old town used to looked compared to what it is now.

When I got to the more modern history there as a really stale smell about the place. I also knew most of it at this point. I didn't want to read anything else about WWII. Plus, my stomach was growling.

I went to Pizza Hut for dinner and to write. I've been craving pizza, but I want the greasy NYC kind, not what I had today.

Back at the hostel I met up with the guys from the night before. I hadn't known, but Jeremy was also in my room. He pointed out the stinky guy who came into the room this morning. Jeanfrançois pointed out, along with several other people, that this guy had been looking at porn all day long on the hostel computers. How gross!

That night Jeremy and Tom and I went out for a bit. When Jeremy and I got back to the room we had to get our pj's out of the rather creaky locked cabinet. The room reeked and we were both annoyed so we talked a bit as well. I guess we were louder than we thought because stinky man told us to shut up. I replied that I didn't care what he wanted because he smelled bad and woke everyone up in the morning and he didn't care then. Perhaps this wasn't the nicest thing to have said, but it shut him up. He did smell bad, really really bad. He rivaled the woman back in Portsmouth.

In the end neither of us could sleep because of the smell and we went to ask if they could do anything at reception. Apparently they had asked him several time during the day to stop looking at porn and he wouldn't. He had also was very aggressive in hitting on the guy at receptions girlfriend. We were given beds in a new room. I was happy to go to bed after an eventful night.

Not Like A Walk In The Park

Day 216
I was up early, guess because of the early night. It was Monday and I knew that everything would be closed. I decided to head to Lazienkowsk Park in the southern part of the city. Before I got there though I stopped by the American Embassy to see if they could help me vote, they couldn’t. I also made a stop for some tea and to write in my journal.

The park was full of autumn colors and was really beautiful. I was looking for a particular castle with a moat around it. I kept hearing a low crashing sound around me. It turns out that some type of nut or seed kept falling from the trees. They were just about big enough to fill the palm of my hand and very hard. I felt lucky that none had fallen on me when I wasn’t paying attention. I then saw a peacock. There was only one, it was kinda odd. There were a lot of pretty red squirrels around. I was hoping that one of them would stay still long enough for me to take a picture. Instead of running away he started to run at me. An animal bit would really put a damper on things and I ran away. I didn’t know that a walk in the park could be so dangerous. On the cute side there was a little girl feeding bread to the ducks. She would take a chunk and then eat it and then take a chunk and feed the ducks.

When I had thought I found the castle I left the dangerous park. At the exit I found a map, I had not found the castle, just something else nearby. I was far to lazy to walk back and just headed to the down town area. I still wanted to see the castle and figured if it was closed on Sundays it must be open on Mondays, it was not.

Hungry now I went back to the milk bar. This time I got perogies and some yummy noodle and sugar thing. It was a much better meal than the day before.

At a loss I went to the internet café I had found a few days before and did as much blogging as I could and screwed around for a bit just reading things. When I was sick of this I went to see The Women. I think this was the biggest chick flick ever and I can’t decide if I liked it or not.

Back at the hostel I caught the end of the happy hour and ran into Jeanfrançois and Martin. We met Dutch Max, Canadian Tom and Kiwi Jeremy. It’s too bad more girls couldn’t have been in the group, I was a bit outnumbered. We went for a few drinks and over the next couple of hours the numbers thinned out. Jeanfrançois, Tom and I grabbed falafels before calling it a night.

Milking It For All It's Worth

Day 215
Due to a slightly late night I was in bed longer than I had planned. I had a banana and a roll for breakfast before heading out.

Warsaw has a lot of things to see, and I mean a lot. Not only would it take quite some time, but I think that it would be rather overwhelming to do it all in one visit. I am sure that I will be back here at some point and am not going to stress over it right now. The must see museum is called the Rising Museum. It’s about WWII, but focuses on the two months that the citizens and partisans fought for the cities freedom.

In September 1939 German troops entered Poland. Two weeks later the Polish army was forced to surrender. Occupation begins. Right away monuments are destroyed and works of art stolen. Polish government officials and intellectuals are killed. In 1939 Stutthof, the first concentration camp in Poland opens, Auschwitz follows a year later.

Resistance fighters tried to get rid of the Germans from the beginning, but made a big push towards the end of the war. Everyone was suffering from famine and disease. Americans tried to send weapons but were too late, the Russians got weapons through, but airdropped them with no parachutes and most of them were damaged.

After much fighting the insurgents and civilians are forced out of the city. The German army begins a systematic destruction of historical buildings. Only 64 out of 987 were left standing. Few people remain in the rubble until January 1945 when the Soviet Army liberates the city. More than 18 thousand insurgents and 180 thousand civilians were killed.

After the war Poland had expected self rule. This did not happen. The communist government wouldn’t even allow the rising to be discussed and even prosecuted those who were involved. In 1956 this began to change.

This museum was really well done. They had some objects that I had never seen before. There was a house number from the home of a resistance worker and a piece of bread saved by a concentration camp victim. He wanted people to see what he had to eat. There was a monument that ran through all floors that had a heart beat and bullet holes that allowed the sounds of war to escape.

The problem was that it was free entrance day. The place was mobbed. People were really rude too, I would wait my turn only to have someone push me aside to read something. They seemed to think that they were the only ones there. I ended up just leaving out of frustration. Later on I found out that I had missed a floor. I did spend some time on the grounds outside and managed to find a German bunker that no one else managed to locate at the same time.

I was rather hungry at this point and headed to Bar University. During the communist government there were subsidized restaurants that people nick named milk bars due to their dairy heavy offerings. This is the cheapest meal in town and I wanted to give it a try. Luckily they had an English menu, the translation was a bit weird though. I decided to go with something called milky noodle soup and a cheese pancake.

The way this works is that you order and pay and then bring your receipt to a window and the person there brings you your food. It only took a minute to order, but about 45 to get my food. My soup turned out to be noodles floating in milk and my pancake was more of a tortilla. Not the best meal I have ever had, but definitely edible. The cost of this whole thing was a whopping $3.68. That included $1 for a coke.

I had wanted to see the castle but it was closed and I couldn’t find anything with opening hours. While I was walking back I noticed that there was a huge crowd in front of a cathedral, there seemed to be standing room only, I had no idea why. I was thinking about going to the National Museum, but it was late in the day and by the time I got there I wouldn’t really have time at all. I ended up back at the hostel playing around on the internet.

Earlier this morning I had had a weird moment with one of the girls at the hostel. She told me that I had to check out. I told her that I had paid for 4 nights and she said that it must be a mistake. When I came back there was a boy on my bed. Hmm, not totally bad but really unexpected. I went to talk to the hostel people. Someone had made a mistake so I had to move to a new room. I was a bit annoyed, but before I could ask for anything they gave me back one nights accommodation. I didn’t mind moving to a new room for an extra $18 in my travel fund.

After a pasta dinner I met up with Jeanfrançois. We waited for a while for Martin but he was late and we thought he was standing us up. Later we found out that we missed him by about 2 minutes. Jeanfrançois and I went to a local jazz place for live music and caught the end of a set. We were both tired and didn’t stay out very late.

Only Missing the Mouse

Day 214
I was up early, but not quite early enough. When I got to the bus stop the kiosk was closed. There wasn’t enough time to walk. One of the other people standing around realized my predicament and pointed to the kiosk across the street. My bus was in view though and there wasn’t time. I point to the bus, he pulled an extra ticket out of his pocket, I gave him the money for it and thanked him. People in Poland are so nice!

On the train I met a Spanish woman who had lived in Dublin for a decade and was currently teaching Spanish in Poland. Chatting with her was a nice way to pass the ride to Warsaw.

Once in Warsaw I got to the hostel despite the directions on the website. Thank goodness for the map in my guidebook! I dropped my things of and quickly filled my grumbling stomach before heading into town.

Warsaw was completely destroyed during WWII. All of the downtown area has been rebuilt. While there is a Disney like quality to it, I still found it beautiful. Wandering the cobbled streets and jumping out of the way of horse drawn buggies was a good way to spend a few hours. I didn’t want to really check out too many museums though. Jeanfrançois was planning on heading towards Warsaw and we had tentative plans to do some of the museums together over the next day or so.

After some wandering I was able to get my things out of storage and moved in. I fell asleep for a while and dreamed that while I was waiting to move my things into the room I had decided to go to a five star hotel. For some reason I seemed to have forgotten that I had already paid for a hostel. In the dream I called my mom from the hotel to chat. When we hung up I realized that not only did I have two places to sleep, one being very expensive, but that I had just made a really expensive phone call. I decided to not worry about all of it and go to the movies. This is when I woke up. When I realized where I was I felt like I had really dodged a bullet.

On my way out to the supermarket I ran into Jeanfrançois, he was heading the same way. We decided to skip the hostel dinner though and went to a Polish place instead. I had some yummy beef stroganoff and some type of pancake thing. I think that this was the biggest meal that I had had for a very long time. I was absolutely stuffed!

After dinner we decided to hit the hostel bar happy hour. This is where we met Martin, also from Quebec. The three of us decided to hit a couple of places that had been recommended by one of the girls at the hostel, Kasha. She had directed us to a hidden courtyard that seemed to be tourist free. This didn’t stop two girls trying to scam Jeanfrançois and Martin though. They bought them shots. The guys were both seasoned travelers though and knew what was going on. We simply left and went to another bar.

Before heading back to the hostel we got some pizza and made plans to meet up at 9 the next night.