Warsaw, Poland

Friday 9th March 2018

Warsaw, the capital city of Poland is home to 1.7 million people and is a place with so much history I cannot even get my head around it all. We had booked tickets to Warsaw suddenly last week since Lew is expected to be in Gadansk for three days on Monday anyway and domestic flights within Poland are cheap as chips. I managed to end my contract with St Thomas’ Hospital A&E on Friday to avoid having to work my scheduled weekend 12 hour shifts and then we had a free weekend to go to Warsaw! Last month when we were in Brighton we sat down and worked out how to get to all the different airports from our house. Todays journey was going to be at Luton airport and we had pre booked a train from London St Pancras Station out to the airport. Luckily this was all organised as I finished my night shift at 6.30am, slept until 11.30 and then got up to organise everything. I met Lew at St Pancras station by catching the Victoria line from Stockwell station (only a 10 minute walk from our house). It was all reasonably easy I guess other than the fact that there are multiple escalators and then occasional stairs you have to carry your bag up. Leaving at 3.30pm from St Pancras it was 20 minutes to Luton airport parkway where you then have to catch a 6 minute bus to the terminal. Luton was much smaller than we were expecting which we hoped would make it easier to navigate. Everything went smoothly checking in our bag as it wasn't packed to the brim like our previous travels. The entire process was more like getting on a bus than a plane and we could easily see why Air New Zealand wins airline of the year over and over again...they don't have much competition. Instead of the gates having seats everyone was just herded into a line like when you check your bags in and with our flight being late in we basically stood for an hour waiting. By this stage of the afternoon the lack of sleep was 100% catching up to me and thankfully I found a windowsill to perch on. Mum and Dad Kennedy are down at the lake this weekend and as we gazed out at the dreary autumn rain we wished we were there too! Little did we know that we would have to walk out there to line up and board which we discovered when we saw them unloading the plane with the previous jet setters. The two hour flight wasn’t so bad although it took us a little bit to get used to the worn leather seat and very fast conversions in what’s we presumed was Hungarian since Wizz is a Hungarian budget plane company. Empasis on the budget. I had quickly tossed together a stir fry and brought it in containers so we had some dinner but the smell of the spicy noodles probably wasn’t as appetising for the rest of the passengers. Once we exited the plane into the bitterly cold air we were directed onto a bus to take us to the main terminal. Unfortunately our favourite app Citymapper that basically allows us to get from A to B in any large city didn’t have an option for Warsaw so we felt a little unprepared. However, it was cheap (£6/$12nzd) for us to catch an Uber to our Airbnb and at 9.30pm that seemed like the best bet since we were both getting a little tired realising we had been travelling since about 2.30pm. I have honestly never seen such a beaten up car posing as an Uber and when it's number plate matched the car we were looking for and it sailed in to the park in front of us Lew said to me "welcome to eastern Europe!" The man was nice enough but had to remove his baby seat from out of the boot for us to put our bags in. We gave him a little bit more sympathy guessing this may have been a second job for him with small mouths to feed at home. He pulled up outside the locked gate of our airbnb and we unloaded everything. There wasn't a single thing in English and it all came flooding back to me how challenging travelling can be when minimal people speak english. A lady walking her dog let us into the gate and we could also get into reception although no one was there. There was a note and a phone number which we translated from Polish to English but it went straight to answer machine. Thankfully the airbnb host replied to our message and a security guard appeared and showed us to the apartment. It was certainly very very nice despite paying £41 ($78 nzd) a night with a flat screen tv and every modern piece of ikea the owner could find. We really couldn't complain. It was just before midnight in Poland when we both headed off to bed - late because London is an hour behind and we had each enjoyed a nice bath.

Saturday 10th March 2018

I spent a lot of the night worried we were going to wake up really late and miss half of the day in Warsaw due to the time different. But all this worrying meant I was awake just before 9am which wasn't too bad at all after out late night. Starving with no food in the house I made a cup of early grey (something I never drunk until we arrived in the UK!) and settled in to do some research on what we could do today until Lew woke up. We left the apartment at about 10am and set off in the direction of a couple of highly rated brunch places. We settled for one called Aioli which had a queue out the door which meant it must be good. Gazing through the windows as we waited in the link it was clearly the place to come if you were young and cool in this city. It took about 5 minutes for us to get a table and thankfully we were given the bright red english menu as opposed to the white Polish version, we didn't stand out at all...Converting everything back into pounds we confirmed what we already knew and that was that it is rather cheap in Poland since the Pound is so strong. It is such a nice feeling to be earning a currency that is one of the strongest in the world (it's in the top 5 to be exact).We discovered the Polish Zloty as it's called is basically worth similar to the Indonesian rupiah - not exactly a compliment! We both ordered a bacon baguette which also came with spinach, egg, fresh beetroot and garlic aioli. Lew had a cheeky extra of cheese melted on his baguette also. We added a hot chocolate and also a raspberry tea which was amazing since they used normal earl grey and then put in raspberry jam and spices such as cardamon, nutmeg and cinnamon into it....A.M.A.Z.I.N.G! Finishing breakfast which cost us 64.78 Zloty (£13.72/ $26.10 nzd) I brushed my teeth in the bathroom before we hit the streets soaked in sunlight, commenting on how the sun actually warms this place up unlike London in the recent weeks. Lew had a plan in his head for us to walk down the river Vistula to where the old town is. It was surprisingly stark along the river side but it was obviously that they were putting in a side walk and seats along the waters edge. I guess we are just coming out of winter and no doubt there was snow on the ground last week like there was in London so it was looking a little bare. After about half an hour before we came across the Royal Castle of Warsaw in all it's glory perched upon a hill overlooking the river. The castle entry is free on Sundays so we vowed to do this tomorrow as opposed to spending 30 Zloty (£6.30/$12.10 nzd) but for free we were able to look in the Kubicki Arcades beneath the castle which was built in 1820 and overlooks the castle gardens. They survived World War 2 and have been used as stables, barracks, car garages, warehouses and now have been renovated to hold exhibitions, concerts and performances. They have the most beautifully created brick ceiling which we have only ever seen in concrete and also wooden tiles, Lew also came out raving about the bathroom! We explored a little brick tunnel connecting the arcades to the Palace which they wouldn't let us through and we had to walk back up and around to get to old town. Old town was incredibly beautiful and we just loved the buildings in different colours with varying accents, heights and widths. The sad thing being that 85% of these buildings were destroyed by Nazi troops in WW2 and were actually rebuilt using old archives and a painting by Bernardo Bellotto to resemble what they would have looked like in the 18th century. Neither of us would have guessed that the rebuilding of old town was completed in 1961 and these building are not as old as they appear. Wandering around we came across the Archcathedral Bascilica of St John the Baptist of Warsaw a beautiful red bricked building with a cute green roof. This was almost basically raised to the ground during the war and also rebuilt based on its 14th century appearance.

We really had no plans for the day and ended up spotting groups of people gathering around bright yellow umbrella saying it was a free walking tour. We joined the huddle of people and before we knew it we had joined this 2pm walking tour focusing on the Jews of Warsaw that would last 2 hours. Our guide Pse started off  by telling us that the Jews first settled in Poland in the 1414 as they were forced to flee due to the crusades and the systemic crucification of the Jews in Western Europe. They were never planning on staying in Poland but due to it's religious tolerance and social autonomy they figured it wasn't a bad place to put down some roots. In 1483 and 1527 the Jews were expelled from the city of Warsaw and were forced to create their own town at least 3 km outside the city boundaries. If they owned shops within the city they were allowed access into Warsaw during the day but had to leave every night. In the 18th century Warsaw expanded so much that the Jewish city became part of Warsaw and by the 19th century it was the largest Jewish community in Europe with 80% of the Jewish population (350,000) living there. They spoke 4 languages - Yiddish, Polish, Russian and Hebrew and whilst some integrated in Polish society the Orthodox Jews did not which caused conflicts between the Polish and the Jews. September 1st 1939 Germany invade Western Poland and the Soviets followed suit on September 17th. By November 16th 1940 all Jews had been forced into the Jewish Ghetto surrounded by brick walls leaving 450,000 Jews only 3 km squared to live in. The death penalty was inflicted on anyone who left the ghetto. Now in Warsaw there is a metal strip in the ground indicating the location of the Jewish ghetto since there is basically not a single thing left other than two original buildings that were used a gestapo headquarters and the other a warehouse to store the items of Jews as they were herded onto the trains to the extermination camps (there is a photo further down of Lew standing looking down a street, to the left is the building that was a warehouse and the right the Gestapo headquarters). Anyone aged between 12-65 living in the ghetto were forced to work in order to get their daily rations. In 1942 a total of 6 death camps/forced labour camps were constructed in occupied Poland - Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwit and Majdanek. Treblinka was the closest to Warsaw being 110km away and initially started as a labour camp until Treblinka II killing center was built in July 1942 1 km away connected by a railway. Between late July 1942-May 1943 Jews within the ghettos were transported to Treblinka for extermination. There were a couple of famous people that Pse talked about during the tour and one was a Politician called Jan Karski who managed to enter the Warsaw Jewish ghetto as well as Izbica a transit camp associated with the death camp Majdanek. He went straight to London to report what horrors he had seen but no one cared, he also met with president Roosevelt as a plea for help from the USA. The other unsung hero is Irene Sendler, a social worker/nurse who had a pass to enter the ghetto to treat sick children and smuggled them out in various ways including in a sack, a trunk or under ambulance stretchers. It is estimated that she saved between 100-2,500 children and rehoused them with families outside of Warsaw. She was eventually caught and tortured but somehow bribed a German guard to help her escape. She was never recognised for her work until Poland was no longer a communist country. There is a movie about her called "The courageous heart of Irene Sendler" but Pse recommends not to watch it and to instead watch one called "The Pianist". Pse showed us photos of what used to be in the area we were walking in pre WW2 and what it looked like post war. As I mention earlier post WW2 Warsaw was almost completely raised to the ground and when they finally decided to rebuild the area in which the ghetto used to be the rubble from the former ghetto district was used to produce new bricks for the more modern communist looking apartment blocks you see surrounding the area today. One of the most significant and highly commemorated events that occurred in Warsaw on April 19th 1943 was the uprising of the Jewish ghetto. News had got back to few inhabitants of the ghetto that Treblinka was where mass murdering of Jews was occurring which prompted 23 year old Mordecai Anielewicz to form the Z.O.B (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) or Jewish Fighting Organisation to get revenge on the Nazi's. Guns and weapons were smuggled into the ghetto and underground tunnels and bunkers were formed to aid the Z.O.B in defeating the Nazi's. April 19th was the day the 2,000 Germans entered the ghetto and around 500 Z.O.B fighters and 260 Jewish Military Union surprised them with gunfire. After a few days the Germans systematically set fire to the buildings forcing the fighters to retreat into the bunkers underground. The largest most famous bunker is Mila 18 which was the name of the street and the house number. This bunker could hold around 300 people and had running water, power and everything needed to survive for a period of time. The bunker was discovered by the Nazis on May 8th and the 300 Z.O.B fighters hiding underground were forced out as the Germans used tear gas. As an act of heroism and desperation the leaders of the Z.O.B committed collective suicide by ingesting poison and the rest either escaped or were shot. The uprising ended on May 16th with the Nazis having destroyed all the ghetto buildings and their final symbolic act being to blow up Warsaw’s 'Great Synagogue' -the largest synagogue in the world. There are many different memorials of the uprising fighters including Anielewicz Mound which is made of the rubble of Mila 18 and the bodies of over 100 Z.O.B fighters were buried as they fell. An obelisk names 51 of these fighters but the rest remain unnamed. Pse our guide then walked us to a memorial shaped like a freight carriage called Umschlagplatz which was a holding area next to the train station where Jews were transported twice a day to Treblinka death camp. They estimate over 300,000 Jews from Warsaws ghetto was exterminated at Treblinka. Currently in Warsaw there is only a population of 1,500 Jews as only 2% of the Jews in Warsaw survived. Many did not want to return to Warsaw and gave up their Polish citizenship to move to Israel or other countries such as America. The tour ended outside the Museum of the History of Polish Jews at 4pm and we were both feeling rather overwhelmed and rather cold. How could so much devastation and human atrocities happen in this exact place? We decided we couldn't handle going to the Jewish museum right this moment and begun the 40 minute walk home. Randomly we came across an indoor market called Hala Gwardii which I have to say is a must do! We picked up some fig and hazelnut bread for breakfast tomorrow and then also discovered a small supermarket in another building next to it called Hala Mirowska. On the menu tonight was some Polish sausages which when we translated the sticker on them it said "boy sausage" (we were slightly concerned) , potatoes with red onion and broccoli. Lew headed out for a run and after discovering we walked a total of 17km today which was why my feet were aching I decided to take a hot bath. Whilst eating dinner we watched the movie recommended by our guide called "The Pianist" - horrifying and so very realistic but an incredible story and even more real now that we have walked in the area of the former Jewish ghetto today. 

Sunday 11th March 2018

I woke up at 7.30am for a snack and started on the blog from yesterday. It’s always a little more difficult when there is so many historical things to google search and read around. It is actually nice doing some research on what you learnt the day before. I set the alarm for Lew to wake up at 9am since we had planned to run together this morning. One of the things that came up multiple times when we searched "what to do in Warsaw?" was a beautiful park called Lazienki or known as Baths Park which is the largest in Warsaw. It has Lazienki Palace or the Palace on the Isle, built as a bath house in 1680 it survived the war. It is overlooking the lake which was still partially frozen despite the mild temperature. There was also an amphitheatre on it's shoreline which is used during the warmer months. Lew rather likes destination runs so plots it in strava on his laptop, sends it to his phone and Vola we are ready to go! It was a surprisingly warm morning like yesterday with the sun peaking through the clouds. Warm to us being around 10 degrees so those of you back home in NZ probably wouldn’t say that’s anywhere near your definition of warm right now! We ran a 7.5km loop down to the park and around it’s woodland tracks around different frozen lakes and rivers. The Palace on the Isle was rather beautiful and you could see what a grand place it would be during the warmer months with the flowers in bloom. The air smelt fresh and we wondered what we have got used to in London and how bad the pollution really is if we think this is fresh. There were peacocks hanging around out side the castle with feathers of deep green and blue and small ducks with similar colourings. The squirrels were running around the trees and we realised we had got so used to not having any wildlife in our lives. The other night we discovered we didn’t even hear a single bird as we walked around our neighbourhood. Once we returned from the run we had an hour before our midday check out. Yesterday at the market we found we purchased some fig and hazelnut bread ready for breakfast when we came home so we could delay lunch a tad and make it dinner instead. It was the type of divine bread that needed no toppings of jam or butter to make it taste wonderful. Our plans for the day was to go to the Royal Castle and also the Jewish Museum. We left our bags at reception and headed out. Lew mentioned walking but after doing 17km yesterday and a run this morning my feet were already feeling rather worse for wear. I suggested we biked since it was such a lovely day and we could see more of the city on the way. Typically we struggled to log into the silly app system as it didn’t like our UK postcode and we spent time putting in the details of our Airbnb to register and then has to top it up with some money. It honestly took us about 45 minutes dealing with this machine to get it right and Lew was a little furious as we biked towards old town. I throughly enjoyed the bike and we wheeled through old town itself and around it's back streets. The main reason being we couldn’t find a bike stand to put the bikes away and stop being charged but there was lots of old town we had missed yesterday and the bike ride allowed us to see some of it. Time was running out and we decided to skip the Royal Castle since neither of us really had a great excitement of looking inside a castle right now. I also wasn’t in the mood for a Jewish Museum either but I felt we had to do this. After all our guide yesterday said it was voted one of the best museums in Europe. My instant thought was that if it was a good as any museum we went to in Switzerland then it was 100% worth it. Despite wanting to bike to the museum to save time and to save our feet we were concerned about navigating the busy streets and being on our phone for maps and decided to leave the bikes behind - once we finally found a bike stand for them. A 20 minute walk away we were at the museum a little more tired and hungry than expected. Tickets wern't at all expensive at 60 zloty (£12.60/$24 nzd) for two people so I wasn’t too worried if we didn’t get everything done today. Not that we have plans to come back here anytime soon but just the fact that we spent a good two hours on the walking tour and another two hours watching the pianist which focused on the Jews of Poland. The temporary exhibition I found rather boring as it was in regards to modern pressures on Jewish people. Then there was the main focus of the museum and that was the history of the Jews from the start. There was a LOT of information about original settlements in each country, early struggles that Jews had and basically everything to do with their daily living habits throughout the years. I sped through this rather fast since my brain was feeling a little overloaded and I apologise but I was also hangry. Not a good combination for a museum. I was more fascinated about the time of WW1 and WW2 hardships endured by the Jews. Probably the most fascinating thing and something incredibly crude was that in the gas chambers they used carbon monoxide with a truck attached to the pipelines. I had always though that they used much more lethal gas to exterminate the Jews than mere carbon monoxide - still very lethal but sometimes a bit more of a slow killer. Lews fact of the day however was that 134,000 German Jews were killed out of the total of 6 million Jews killed all together, a rather small amount considering they were trying to cleanse their population and it seems they spent more time cleansing the population of other countries. By 4pm we had well and truly finished looking about and were absolutely ravenous. We had planned to be back at the apartment by 5pm to collect our bags and head to the airport so we really didn’t have long at all. Walking the 20 minutes to the market we were at yesterday called Hala Gwardii which had a large selection of food stalls since this was on the way home and would be easier. Along the way we walked past the other building we found the supermarket in the day before called Hala Mirowska and we discovered that this building was also a silent witness of Warsaws history. The two halls were constructed in 1901 and they were the location in which the Germans conducted civil executions. During the uprising majority of the buildings were damaged leaving only parts of the original walls and foundations. This meant that as we walked down the street past one of these walls the multiple bullet holes are still visible today. Entering into the Food hall were were spoilt for choice  and we wandered around deciding on options. Lew of course went for a burger and I went for a vegan curry. The burger connoisseur was rather impressed with this hunk of beef from “Hereford Steki Burgery” and even pointed out to me it was grass fed 👍🏼. Good on you Poland. Mine was from a place called “Tel Aviv: urban food” and was a steaming hot bowl of coconut curry with tofu served with quinoa and rice and a side of pita. Both certainly hit the spot and we were right on time to catch or Uber back to the apartment to grab our bags. We promptly ordered a second uber to take us to Chopin airport just outside of Warsaw and we arrived exactly at 5.30pm as planned. Lew was flying to Gadansk which is in the north close to the Baltic sea as he is there until Thursday with his work with Andiamo. I on the other hand was being shipped back to London to fend for myself. Since my flight was at 7.10pm we found my check in area first as it stated that even if I didn’t have baggage because I’m not an EU citizen I would have to present my passport at the desk. I did so and she glanced at it for a brief second before telling me to head to the gate. Lew then walked Lew all the way back down the terminal via the bathroom so I could brush my teeth and we could rearrange our bags before dropping his bag off. He was flying with Poland’s national carry and he was surprised they actually weighed his backpack! Thankfully it came back at 8kg, well and truly under the 10kg mark. Heading through security they were much more picky than even Luton and Lew was instructed to remove all his camera equipment from his bag to be checked and he himself was drug tested using some sort of machine that went across his hands and into a machine. The line was getting bigger and bigger and once the ordeal was over we commented on how they must not be able to be so through when it’s rush hour. Who knows? I guess it’s all for our own safety. Lew walked me to my gate and we had to say goodbye before I went through customs. I have to admit it is 100% the first time I have travelled internationally completely alone. Although to be honest it just feels like domestic anyways. Lew headed in the opposite direction not knowing what the next few days will bring work wise but any break from London is good. The flight was a lot nicer than the one we flew on Friday night and I had learnt they don’t allow you to have a wheely bag and a small backpack unless your “priority” so I stuffed my pockets full of everything I might need within the 2 hour 15 minute flight. I landed into London Luton at 9pm London time (10pm Poland time) and then I was the only person who had to fill in an arrival card since everyone else was clearly on an EU passport. Thankfully this also meant that I was the only person in the "other passports" line and got seen straight away. Iv applied to become a registered travel member which cost £70 ($133 nzd) but means I can use the E-passport gates with everyone with passports from the EU and I don't have to keep my own personal stash of arrival cards since we have so many weekends away coming up. I then had to wait for the bus to take me to the train station with basically everyone else who got off the flight. Then there was a further half an hour wait for the train back into London St Pancras and Might I add this was a wait in the freezing cold so I was pleased to have some tasteless rice crackers (all in Polish so I didn't know what flavour I was buying anyways!) to keep me occupied. I arrived into St Pancras after 40 minutes on the train in which I caught up with some Netflix and fast walked to the underground to take the Victoria line to Stockwell station - another 20 minutes. A short walk home down the dark and scary streets I finally opened the front door at 11pm which was 7 hours since we left the apartment in Warsaw to go to the airport! Wow! On the other hand Lew had already been out for dinner with his work colleagues in Gadansk and was about to settle into bed with it already being midnight. Settling into bed myself I was rather pleased I managed to navigate international travel by myself for the first time ever :D