Dear Friends and Family,
Dzien Dobry! (“Good day”)
Varshava (That’s “Warsaw” in Polish,) is the capital of Poland and has a population of 1.7 million.
As you can imagine, Polish is not easy to learn. Fortunately, we were always able to find someone who spoke enough English to help us out with directions, etc. People were pretty friendly. So far we can only say thank you, good day, yes, no, excuse me and toilet, in Polish. The time is indicated in a different way than Bruce expected. He paid for the 2am train to Warsaw, when he meant to book the 2 pm (14:00) train. Consequently, we got to the station twelve hours too late and had to fork over $70 for new tickets. We arrived at Warsaw Central Station in no time on a spiffy Express train. Warsaw Main Station is next to a giant plaza and modern mall where we ate in unique food court venues and enjoyed seeing Mission Impossible and Mama MIA in style, with Polish subtitles.
The Nazis completely leveled Warsaw. Consequently, Old Town here is a kind of plastic replica. It was completely reconstructed, including the Royal Palace, churches, etc. They were fortunate to have detailed paintings of Warsaw by Bernardo Bellotto Canalotto. We took the free walking tour around old town and learned a lot, but it felt like we were walking through a Hollywood movie set, especially after having been in Gdańsk, where so many of the buildings are original.
Chopin spent the first half of his life in Warsaw, studying, composing, and performing music. We bought tickets for a Chopin Festival concert and were disappointed that the performance we attended wasn’t even Chopin, just a contemporary. It was still very enjoyable. There are benches around the city that actually play Chopin when you push a button! We found two of them, one at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and one near the Presidential Palace.
They honor Seniors here in Warsaw with reduced tickets and free transport (over 70 yrs. old) Nice! They have a great system of trams and buses. Our hotel, part of a Polish chain, the Metropol, was terrific, with a great buffet breakfast and ideal soundproof rooms. We had a nice view of a large round-about below from which we observed the amazing synchronization of buses, cars, trams, etc., at a major intersection. Pedestrians walk underground to cross at these big intersections. You can easily get turned around down there if you aren’t paying attention, or start window-shopping at the little underground shops and stalls along the way!
We really enjoyed walking Warsaw’s Royal Way on the way to Old Town. We agree with Rick Steves that the History of the Jews (Polin) Museum is one of the best museums anywhere. The displays include film, sound, and visuals of Jewish life in Europe from early times to the present. Polish Jews are trying to revitalize their culture in Krakow, but what once was a rich Polish Jewish culture has now been scattered throughout the world. Of the six million Jews that died during the Holocaust, three million of them were Polish. There are a few buildings in Warsaw that weren’t completely blown up, just partially, and you can see the pock marks from bullets in the original portions of them.
On April 10, 2010, a plane carrying the Polish President, his wife, and most of his cabinet crashed on the way to Russia and killed everyone. We learned that the loss enabled the opposing party to take control of the Polish government. Of course there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding this tragedy. We visited a memorial to the victims. It is a solid granite staircase leading to heaven, but some have protested bitterly that it symbolizes the climb to power of the opposing party. *sigh*
All in all, we had fun in this big, modern city. We’re looking forward to another country tomorrow. Lithuania awaits!
Hope you are well. Love n hugs,
BnL
bnlmos 
Nice share re Warsaw. Did you get to see or hear the story of the Jewish resistance within the Warsaw ghetto? I like it because it’s the one place that we at least went down fighting rather than just rolling-over to the Nazi’s. Always sounded like pre WW II Jewish life in Poland was pretty nice. Have you heard much Klezmer music? It was hard to find in 1998 when I was there. More prevalent in Krakow. Three cheers for the Polish labor movement and Walinsky for eventually pushing back at the Soviets during the Cold War! We are all well Enjoying our puppy and cooler weather. Wishing you safe travels. Gene.
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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Hi Gene- yes, we heard all about the resistance at the Polin Museum. We spent several hours there. We also heard about it at the WWII museum in Gdańsk. Resistance or not, the Jewish people were decimated. We were surprised to learn that 50-80 million people died, depending upon whether or not you include those who died afterwards from war-induced disease and famine. Mind-boggling! Glad you are well. It is cool here too, but not too cold. Vilnius, Lithuania blog post post soon. Had some Internet challenges….Leaving for Riga, Latvia today.
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50-80 million! That is almost incomprehensible! How horrible 😦
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Hi guys, Wow, beautiful pics, what a cool looking country – very clean!
I can’t believe I hadn’t heard about the ex-President and cabinet, and that just happened in 2010. That’s tragic 😦
Glad you are both having a nice adventure and are staying safe & having fun.
Love,
Jose
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And btw, here is the Wiki on that crash. Check out the section “causes.” Seems like a legit crash. That’s too bad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash
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Yes it does. However, we’ve heard about other possibilities from someone in Lithuania and from someone else in Latvia, where we are now… In Lithuania, there were birch crosses for the victims in front of their presidential palace. The plane crashed into birch trees.
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There is so much happening in our own news it’s easy to unconsciously dismiss other world news…it was vaguely familiar, but after hearing it here…we looked it up to read more. Very sad and surprising that so many significant government officials would risk flying together!
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Yeah, that’s crazy 😦
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