Not Quite The Trip We Had Planned, Part 1: Warsaw, Poland
We had grand plans for this venture abroad — Anna was supposed to be speaking at a conference in Seattle so we were going to use our time in the USA not just for her work, but also to visit some friends that we hadn’t seen in a long time. We’d be flying in to Seattle on Saturday, April 27 and then in what sounds like the plot for a made-for-TV crime movie on the Lifetime Network we’d fly to stay in an Airbnb in Detroit to visit our mates Tom and Leonie and then take a road trip with them to Chicago. From there we’d travel back to Seattle for the conference and also catch up with our pals Momo and Takuo before heading to New York for a few days to explore our old stomping ground and see friends and family there. Then, after all of that was planned, Anna got asked to attend the World Health Organisation meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, but that would be the only leg of this trip that would come to fruition.
We arrived at Changi Airport painfully early that Saturday morning on very little sleep, a conscious decision that we figured might make the jet lag a little more bearable if we got to have a proper extended nap on the plane, but we wouldn’t need to worry about that. There was a little confusion when we tried to check in, the woman helping us needing to confirm with Homeland Security before returning to inform us that neither of us had valid visas and we couldn’t board the flight. We explained that we had ESTAs and had used them to enter the US around the same time the previous year, but when we checked the status of our visas they had both been revoked without warning or notification of any kind. It was strange that both of our visas had been cancelled and the only conclusion we could come to was that it was because we had visited Cuba in February of last year. Throwing a little hissy-fit as he was prone to doing, in his final days in office Donald Trump decided a fun dick move would be to undo one of Barack Obama’s policies by putting Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and we know that American bureaucracy is painfully slow so they must’ve only just got around to acting on it. This doesn’t completely blacklist us from entering the US, we just now have to book an appointment to visit the US Embassy and pay S$500.00 (US$370.00) to have physical visas stuck in both of our passports, but the soonest appointment was in July so that wouldn’t be happening.
We were both furious and when we returned home we messaged our friends to let them know that we wouldn’t be coming and I went back to bed and tried to put it all out of my mind.
Anna was too angry to sleep and she always has great travel insurance so she got online and cancelled everything, getting refunded for all flights and accommodation except the Detroit Airbnb and then she went down a rabbit hole. I was awakened a couple of hours later by the same woman smiling, who went on to tell me that we had to be in Europe anyway, we had always wanted to visit Poland and get to see Auschwitz among other sights, plus we have friends in Berlin, and there were flights still available to Warsaw the following day. After doing some looking around she had us going to Poland to spend three nights in Warsaw, five in Krakow (although that bit would have to be altered), then over to Germany for three nights in Berlin, before heading over to Switzerland to spend two nights in Geneva for the conference and meet up with our upstairs neighbour who splits time between Singapore and Geneva.
Here’s how the first part went:
Sunday, April 28, 2024
The climate was going to be similar to the US where we were now traveling so we went back to the airport in the morning without unpacking, but we wouldn’t be truly relaxed until we were seated on the plane, bound for Warsaw, Poland:
Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at 1.86 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.27 million residents, which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous city in the European Union. The city area measures 517 km2 (200 sq mi) and comprises 18 districts, while the metropolitan area covers 6,100 km2 (2,355 sq mi). Warsaw is an alpha global city, a major cultural, political and economic hub, and the country’s seat of government. It is also capital of the Masovian Voivodeship.
Warsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town in Masovia. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Kraków. Warsaw served as the de facto capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, and subsequently as the seat of Napoleon’s Duchy of Warsaw. The 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom which made it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Known then for its elegant architecture and boulevards, Warsaw was bombed and besieged at the start of World War II in 1939. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated by the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and systematic razing.
Fortunately everything went smoothly for us and by 10:00pm we were checked into our Warsaw hotel, located on a tiny street that was blocked at one end, and then we were in the downstairs bar for a nightcap:
Monday, April 29, 2024
Most likely due to jet lag we were up reasonably early by our standards and it was a beautiful day, perfect for exploring this city, but the first item on the agenda was breakfast. Clearly drinking is acceptable here at any time of day, made evident by a place across the road called Breakfast and Prosecco, but Anna had a crepe craving and there was a cafe nearby that was the place to get them, while I just ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. I don’t know what it was about it or how they did it, but that may have been possibly the greatest grilled cheese in human history! Even Anna was blown away by how good it was.
We had the whole day ahead of us and some loose plans on how to spend it, but first I need to take another look at that sandwich, plus some other scenes from the very beginning of the day:
We wrapped up breakfast, slapped on some sunscreen and we hit the road in the general direction of The Old Town:
Warsaw Old Town, historically known as Old Warsaw, is a neighbourhood, and an area of the City Information System, in the city of Warsaw, Poland, located within the district of Śródmieście. It is the oldest portion of the city, and contains numerous historic buildings, mostly from 17th and 18th centuries, such as the Royal Castle, city walls, St. John’s Cathedral, and the Barbican. The settlement itself dates back to between the 13th and 14th centuries, and was granted town privileges c. 1300.
During World War II, the Old Town was nearly totally destroyed and subsequently reconstructed. The project was the world’s first attempt to resurrect an entire historic city core and was included on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1980. The reconstruction efforts were again recognised in 2011 when all its documents and records were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme.
It was about a 45-minute walk to the heart of the Old Town and we passed many statues and some beautiful architecture along the way, including Holy Cross Church where an urn containing Chopin‘s heart is interred inside a pillar, as well as the Carmelite Church, but before too long we were walking along Krakowskie Przedmieście, one of the most distinguished streets in the city. We spent about an hour veering off the main track many times to look at more of the historic sites and the stunning architecture of churches, palaces, the market square, and the university, but progressing along it was kind of depressing as we reached the prestigious New World Street to see that it was just all Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, KFC, and every other major franchise including high end brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci, as well as endless souvenir shops in such a historically and culturally significant region. Sure, we expected the souvenir stores, but the sheer amount of them was nuts. That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the Old Town, we absolutely loved it, it’s just sad seeing such a beautiful district with so much history being inundated with large franchise stores and others just putting the city’s name on pretty much anything to make a buck.
Take a look around the Old Town and see the best parts for yourself in all of its glory:
It was still early in the afternoon when we had finished looking around the Old Town so the next plan was to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum, but along the way we passed some dilapidated, abandoned residential buildings leading us to think that we were entering a seedy neighbourhood, but instead we stumbled upon what was once an old industrial area that had now been turned into shops, restaurants and cafes, similar to a smaller version of LXFACTORY, the one we found when we were in Lisbon, Portugal last year. Naturally we had a look around, Anna finding a Smeg bar fridge that resembled the front of a Fiat 500 that she loved, but S$18,000 (US$13,350) was a tad pricey for something to keep beer in so we stopped to grab a coffee and kick back before doing an audio tour through the depressing museum:
Complexity of the international situation at the time of the Rising is portrayed, including the post-war years of the Communist regime and the fate of Insurgents in the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL). With the total area of more than 3000 m2, 800 exhibition items, approximately 1500 photographs, films and sound recordings, history of the days preceding the Rising is told. Visitors are guided through the subsequent stages of the Rising until the time when the Insurgents left Warsaw. Their further fate is also portrayed.
The second part of the permanent exhibition, opened in May of 2006 in Hall B, presents the story of Allied airdrops. Its highlight is a replica of a Liberator B-24J bomber. Much of the exhibition has been devoted to the Germans and their allies, showing their actions in Warsaw as documented in official texts from the time of the Rising and in private notes. The stories of eye witnesses of the August and September 1944 events are played in Hall B. These recordings came from the audiovisual Spoken History Archive at the Warsaw Rising Museum. A movie theatre shows films about the Rising on a panoramic screen. At the mezzanine gallery various temporary exhibition are displayed. The Museum tower is a special attraction with a view of the Freedom Park and the city of Warsaw.
The museum was absolutely huge and there were some fascinating displays including the bomber mentioned above, but it was quite difficult to navigate and after about an hour and a half the audio tour started to get a bit repetitive, plus by this stage it was rapidly approaching closing time so we had to get out anyway.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening looking around this part of town, stopping off occasionally for a drink until it was time for dinner, where we pulled up a seat each on the deck of a place called Prodiż Warszawski for our first round of local food. We had a feeling that dishes in this part of the world would be quite heavy, however, what we weren’t expecting was the size of the portions, something that would continue to surprise us during our time in Poland. We ordered some bread with a traditional potato-based condiment, as well as a cold beetroot soup and žurek, a traditional sour rye soup with white sausage and we loved both! Our mains were lamb and some pork ribs, but when they came we weren’t expecting an entire slab of ribs, a substantial amount of meat that we couldn’t finish after we had had a large 3:00pm snack plus what we were now putting on our bread. When the bill came it was accompanied by a digestive in miniature beer glasses of a homemade liquor that had a taste of what I could only imagine was similar to that of paint thinner. We would definitely have to try to get the taste of that out of our mouths with some real drinks.
Some scenes from the afternoon, the Warsaw Uprising Museum, and our dinner:
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
We had learnt the previous day that the soups here are delicious and Anna found a small restaurant called U Kresowiaka that ticked one of the major boxes for her when selecting a place to eat — She liked the tiles, so we started out the day with another traditional soup, as well as some pierogi, Polish boiled dumplings that are usually stuffed with potato or meat so we got some of both, fuel for us to stroll around Łazienki Park:
Łazienki Park or Royal Baths Park is the largest park in Warsaw, Poland, occupying 76 hectares of the city center.
The park-and-palace complex lies in the Downtown district, on Ujazdów Avenue, which is part of the Royal Route linking the Royal Castle with Wilanów Palace to the south. North of the Royal Baths, on the other side of Agrykola Street, stands Ujazdów Castle.
Originally designed in the 17th century as a baths park for nobleman Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski, in the 18th century Łazienki was transformed by Poland’s last monarch, Stanisław II Augustus, into a setting for palaces, villas, classicist follies, and monuments. In 1918 it was officially designated a public park.
The park is visited by tourists from all over Poland and the world, and serves as a venue for music, the arts, and culture. The park is also home to peacocks and a large number of squirrels.
We spent a good portion of the afternoon wandering around the park and along the waterways, passing monuments and palaces while encountering squirrels, peacocks, and Instagram influencers, one of whom dancing and striking bizarre poses. What was really strange and kind of frustrating, however, was when we saw some young kids throwing rocks at a white peacock, their mother just laughing each time it lunged at them like it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. I was definitely supporting the peacocks in that battle.
Breakfast and a walk around the park:
We were in another area of the city that we hadn’t visited so once we were finished roaming around in the park we checked out the shops while trying to avoid accidentally kicking small robotic hamburger delivery vehicles that were motoring around in order to get junk food to stationary people.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see in this part of town so we opted for an early dinner at a place called Joel Sharing Concept, an Israeli restaurants that did small plates in the hope of getting normals sized portions and it was a good idea we did, because despite being essentially tapas, they were still quite big, plus once again there was bread involved. That would power us up to get back to a more familiar part of the city for some fun, all the while trying to figure out exactly what was going on with the Netflix and Grill neon sign near our hotel, something I’d later find out was just a podcast.
Tuesday evening:
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
It was the final day of the Warsaw leg of our trip and it turns out that giant neon sign near our hotel wasn’t particularly unique in this city’s history so the plan for the morning was to visit the Neon Museum:
The Neon Muzeum is dedicated to the documentation and the preservation of Cold War era Neon Signs and Electro-Graphic Design.
Since 2005, our institution has been tirelessly engaged in the enormous task of saving, documenting and preserving the last surviving remnants of the once-great State ‘neonisation’ campaign across the former Eastern Bloc. Our ongoing efforts have been credited with ushering in a neon renaissance throughout Poland; a movement which began with the opening of the first-and-only museum of its kind in Europe – the Neon Muzeum !
Our permanent collection contains hundreds of fully restored and dazzling neon signs, as well as other electro-graphic artefacts; many of which were designed by the great graphic artists of the age – the designers who were responsible for the world-renowned Polish Poster School. When you visit the Neon Muzeum you will be astonished by the sheer creativity and unique characteristics of a hitherto unknown art form – which was born from revolution, served as state propaganda, and was omnipresent throughout Poland and the Eastern Bloc’s post-WWII urban landscape.
That sounds like something right up my alley, but there was one minor issue — I woke up feeling terrible. My stomach wasn’t sitting right and I just felt extremely lethargic, a problem that only got worse once we had arrived at the museum. As Anna was buying the tickets I just sat on a seat with my head in my hands on the verge of passing out, or possibly just trying to catch a brief nap in the 30 seconds I had to myself. I have no idea why I was so feeling awful, but still managed to see the entire museum, however, it was difficult to take it all in and I continued to feel worse and worse as we went for some reason. When we finished we figured I might feel a bit better when we got back out in the sun, had some water, and a walk outside and it did help a little so we then went back to the hotel so I could recuperate and hopefully return to full operating capabilities in the afternoon.
The plan had worked, I felt perfectly fine after my rest and multiple trips to the bathroom, I just wish I had felt this fresh when we were checking out what seemed like a fantastic museum. We spent the afternoon walking around other far away, unexplored areas of the city, on this occasion in a different old town, passing abandoned buildings and others that were still bullet-riddled from the war, as well as stopping here and there along the way for a bite to eat to help reline my stomach including more soup in Pyzy, Flaki Gorące, but it was later in the day that we stumbled across some things we would have never expected. The first was a weird Walk of Fame that ran up the middle of a street of bars and restaurants where, much like when we were in Hollywood back in November, 2015 I stumbled upon the star of Nicolas Cage among others. Cage’s Hollywood star with a silhouette of a movie camera pales in comparison to his Warsaw star, which has a caption that translates into;
“Don’t lose the best things in life just because you aren’t sure about them”
– Nicolas Cage
I can’t help but wonder how long the city trawled his Instagram to find that quote or why I am in a similar stance to Mr Cage in that particular Instagram post having never seen it before. I guess we’ll never know. The other odd thing was a basketball store at the end of the same street that was selling Ron Artest‘s Chicago Bulls jersey. Sure, he was drafted by the Bulls in 1999 and played two and a half reasonable seasons with them, but nobody really remembers that part of his career. However, most fans will recall the ‘Malice at the Palace‘ a couple of years later while Artest was playing for the Indiana Pacers against the Detroit Pistons when he ran into the crowd after an on-court skirmish and started attacking fans, because one threw a cup at him, trampling the team announcer in the process resulting in five fractured vertebrae. Artest receiving the longest suspension in of any NBA player for an on-court incident in history (86 games) and to cap it all off he later changed his name to Metta World Peace.
Of course not all of the evening consisted of taking in tributes to the unhinged, we later found another great looking restaurant, U Kucharzy W Arsenale, so we made a booking and then kicked back in an outdoor bar until it was time for dinner. When we arrived for our 7:30pm reservation, it turned out that we could’ve just walked in, because we were the only people there, but that doesn’t mean that the food wasn’t great, we just tried our best not to over-order, however, the cold beetroot soup again was a must. When dinner was finished Anna found an area not that far from our hotel where the an entire street full of bars and pubs was closed to traffic so we could do a wandering pub crawl surrounded by people a quarter of a century younger than us on our final night in Warsaw. Why didn’t we find this place earlier?
Wrapping up the first leg of a trip we weren’t anticipating, unfortunately with very little of the Neon Museum, but including both times in my life I’ve encountered a Nicolas Cage star:
Stay tuned for our next Polish stop, Krakow, where we had a lot of fun, but mixed that in with visits to places where some of humanity’s worst atrocities were committed as well.
Great Photos, pretty girls, fantastic architecture, yummy food, hearty soups. You’ve successfully hit all my buttons. Nice work!