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.

Phone Home

Day 213
When I woke up I was ready to hit the town, but not before I had breakfast at the hostel.

I started out by exploring some of the old town gates and the wall. There used to be a big Teutonic castle here, but now it is in ruins. The thing isn't well marked and I had problems telling if it was a castle ruin or just a ruin. There is a legend that in 1746 a soldier and his wife saw a dragon. They reported it to town hall, saying that it was about 6 feet long, brown and shiny, that it could fly and swim. There were a few dragon paintings around town, a statue and even a pizza place to commemorate the story.

Next up was the church of Virgin Mary. It was nice but nothing spectacular. They did have the symbol of the cult of the shroud on display though. Funny how I keep running into that.

As I mentioned before Copernicus was born here in 1473. His family owned a house here but no one is sure if he was actually born in this house or not. The museum kinda sucked. All I learned was that he had studied in Ferrara and that ginger cakes were a local specialty. There was a lot of stuff to look at but very little descriptions. The second half of the museum consisted of rooms decorated in a style that Copernicus would recognize. Overall I was pretty dissapointed.

As I had explored the different sites during the morning there were kids running around town doing what looked like a scavenger hunt. They kept asking me things. It was a bit odd because the same ones kept talking to me. I wonder if they didn't recognize me or if they were just teasing.

For unknown reasons I stopped back at the hostel before grabbing lunch. Jeanfrançois was just waking up and decided to come with me to get some soup. It was pretty good.

We had both wanted to visit the planetarium and were disappointed to find out that none of the shows were in English. We decided to visit the Orbitarium instead. This was kinda like a really tiny science center. It was packed with kids. Jeanfrançois joked that I was the oldest one there but also the shortest. The whole thing was interactive and we tried to play with the different displays whenever the kids would back off. After waiting in line for about 10 minute to see how much we would weigh on the mood we gave up. The kids just wouldn't respect the line!

Eventually we just wrote the place off as a loss and went to explore a bit more. The goal was to walk to a lake but it turned out to be more of a drainage pool. On the way we reminisced about our favorite Simpsons and Family Guy episodes.

Kamilla was meant to meet us at 8 to go out. Neither Jeanfrançois or me really felt like another late night. I had an early train and he was still recovering from the day before. While we were discussing this one of the other girls at the hostel told me that I had a phone call. I hadn't had anyone call me since I left home, it was really kinda nice. Kamila asked us if we would mind meeting up for a movie instead with a couple of her friends. Apparently she was telepathic.

At 8 we met to see Boski Chillout, or Pineapple Express. It was really really funny, go see it. Wait, I bet it was out months ago in the states and that I am really behind.

After the movie we headed back to the hostel and I got packed up before calling it a night.

Movie in My Mind

Day 212
I was up early and after eating breakfast I headed straight for the train station. I was headed to a town called Torun that was about 3.5 hours away. Most of the travel I am doing right now I booked about 2 months ago. I can't always remember why I picked a specific town or why I picked it for the length of time that I did. When my bus went over the river and towards the old town I knew why. Torun is called the red city because of all of the beautiful red brick buildings. It was all medieval and beautiful.

After dropping my things off I went to the old town hall. Outside was a monument to Copernicus, he was born here. There was some sort of event going on and there was a stage set up in the square. Kids were doing dance acts and singing. One group of girls who were maybe 7 or 8 danced to a medley of Broadway songs. The danced to Grease and Mama Mia, I was surprised when a song from Miss Saigon that was about how a prostitute would deal with her vocation. I don't think that the person who picked that song spoke any English!

Eventually I wandered into the History or National museum, I don't really know what it was called. Upstairs there was a rather nice collection of paintings. I quite liked one by Antoni Michalak and another by Vlastimil Hofman. Most of the collection consisted of 20^th century pieces, but there were some older ones as well.

Downstairs was more of a history museum. It was split up into different guilds. It was kinda an odd way to present things. There was a lot to look at, but very little of it was explained in any language.

I was a bit tired but stopped at the supermarket to pick up dinner before heading back and taking a nap. I was really hoping that I would have the room to myself that night. Shortly after I woke up Jeanfrançois from Quebec came in. We chatted a bit and decided to check out the town later that night.

While I was eating I chatted a bit with Kamila, the girl working at the hostel. I asked if she would like to join us and we all ended up out at a place that she moonlights at. Kamila and Jeanfrançois tried different types of vodka while I stuck to beer. When the bar closed we headed to a different place with some of Kamilas friends. Eventually Kamila and I left while Jeanfrançois decided to stay with some people he had met. The next day he told me that he couldn't find the hostel for anything and ended up getting a cab for the block or two back.