Aprovechando I: Warsaw

So, this blogging thing has become something of a habit, and even though I'm back in the states it may continue for a while yet,at least as long as I have some somewhat interesting things to talk about. And a camera, because mine doesn't really turn on anymore.

The title of this post is Spanish for "taking advantage of" and is something everyone in Spain has been telling me to do. Mainly in regards to speaking Spanish/Galician and going outside whenever it's not raining, but also about traveling. (travelling?) So, in an effort to take advantage of my last few weeks in Europe, I booked a flight east to Poland. This took an unprecedented amount of planning from me for two reasons: 

1. I would be traveling solo to a country where I don't speak the language (though I did pick up a few useful words)
2. Coordinating with the various people--my ex-roommate Anna in Łódż (pronounced wootch), her friend Asia (pronounced asha) in Krakow and my mother in Madrid (pronounced ma-DREETH)

More than a month ago now I hopped on a good ol' Ryanair plane with my little red travel notebook in hand. Arguably the most valuable object in my possession besides my passport, it is full of pages with titles like: Warsaw --> Łódż: how to get there and Hostel address, door key code etc. Seriously. I have traveled by smartphone before, but little red notebook is far more reliable. It doesn't need charging or internet and won't shatter to pieces if you drop it, and with a little forethought can contain all the information you might need.

reconstructed royal palace in Warsaw

After a brief stop in Barcelona where I said goodbye to my sunblock (curse you, airport security!) I found myself in the Warsaw Modlin airport and making friends with a confused elderly British gentleman. I was a little confused myself, because getting from the airport to the hostel was something of a challenge. I had to take three busses and two trains (Bus, train, train, bus, bus) to get to the neighborhood the hostel was in, but my little red notebook guided me there in the end. 

I arrived late in the day (because of that whole bus, plane, plane, bus, train, train, bus, bus business) so after checking in I dropped my things off and went to the little convenience store around the corner to buy a frozen pizza and a beer for dinner. This turned out to be a mistake however because the hostel didn't have much of a kitchen and I ended up cooking my pizza piece by piece on a hotplate. 

reconstructed main square

Warsaw was nice. I went on a free walking tour (love those!), saw the sights and made two travel friends: a Warsaw native who was going on the tour because he wanted to become a tour guide, and a British guy who was heading home after his Erasmus year in Budapest. 

About eighty-five percent of the city was leveled in WWII and later rebuilt by the communists. The tour guide told us a nice story about how after the war the city government went out and collected all the old photographs and paintings done by the pre-war art students in an effort to accurately reconstruct the old town, which was nice, but had a ring of sadness to it. We learned about Marie Curie and Frederic Chopin, who were both Warsaw natives and who both died lingering deaths in France. There are "Chopin benches" littered throughout the city, which will play a cheery (or not so cheery) Chopin tune when you press a button. 

After the tour I went with my new travel friends to a bar mleczny or "milk bar"--a nostalgic remnant of the communist era. The place was all done up in linoleum and cement, with metal-and-plastic chairs not unlike the ones I owned in my off-campus university years. Our aspiring tour guide ordered us some dumplings and beet soup and told us about how in the real milk bars, back in the bad old days, had the silverware chained to the tables so no one would steal it.

presidential palace (you can't go inside)

We wished our Polish friend good luck on his job interview and me and my British friend caught a trolley down to the Warsaw Uprising museum. The museum was huge and had an incredible amount of detail, on everything from daily life in occupied Warsaw, to the kinds of weapons and aid the fighters got and the fates of city officials, soldiers, members of the media and little girls. It was yet another reminder that these things you read about in the history book were not so long ago, and these places really do exist and are permanently scarred from them.

I also learned that Obama was in Warsaw on the day I arrived (which happened to be the 25th anniversary of free elections in Poland) and gave a speech about how free elections are great and if Russia invades Ukraine and Poland would like some troops we can probably lend some. The Polish people I asked about this thought this was a good idea.