Wonderful Warsaw

Tuesday, Warsaw

I’ve had a dreadful night´s rest! If it wasn’t the crashing of bottles into the skip in the courtyard or the bin men at crack of dawn, it was the noisy waste disposal device on the loo whirring into action.

I have had less than four hours sleep, but, wide awake at 5am, at least there’s plenty of time to read some of the plethora of leaflets Warsaw Tourism has provided and pick a few personal favourites to add to the grand tour.

There’s a clear sign at breakfast that the ´Horrible Harenda´, which is the name I have dubbed my accommodation, has not yet woken up to the post-Communist era. The scrambled eggs are finished and the girls on duty cannot be convinced to provide any more. So I tuck into tomatoes and toast, Spanish-style and jolly nice it is too.

My guide, Agnieszka, has brought her 18-year old daughter, Ana, with her. Ana, who, like her mother, speaks excellent English, turns out to be Poland’s third best hammer thrower at junior level. I later feel her upper arm muscles and realise what it takes to send the Scottish-invented device nearly 51 metres.

Our first port of call is to the right bank of the river Vistula, to the Praga District. This is where Roman Polanski filmed ´The Pianist´, which I vow to look at again when I get home. I am shown a 100 year-old Russian vodka factory, which closed only last year. Apparently, a Russian soldier was given half a litre of liquor per day.

Of course Poland has had more than its fair share of conflict and the Jews suffered terribly during Nazi occupation. It brings you up short to be told that six million Poles lost their lives in World War Two, half of whom were Jews. At the former Gestapo Paviak Prison, you can see part of the ghetto wall and a memorial to the 30,000 who died while incarcerated in that dreadful place.

Ana is off tomorrow to Tel Aviv on a student exchange scheme; there’s still a strong feeling in Israel that Poland was as much to blame for the holocaust as the Nazis, so there’s a lot of bridge-building still to be done.

Almost the last thing the Nazis did as the Russians moved in was to obliterate everything of any value or history in Warsaw.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the endless list of horror statistics, I ask Agnieszka to lighten up a bit. Having just scratched the surface of man’s inhumanity to man, I just can’t imagine what emotion I would feel if I was ever to visit Auschwitz.

Stalin gave Warsaw the ´Palace of Culture´ in 1955 as ‘a gift from the Russian people’. There was quite a debate as to whether it should remain after Communist rule ended, but it´s certainly an impressive reminder of that era of history.

I want to go to a market and have mentioned one I found in my guide book. My two hosts look at each other and Ana tells me a truly horrific story about the place which I shan´t repeat here but persuaded me that it was certainly not to be included on any itinerary. The market is in an old stadium, built by the Russians in 1954 but hardly ever used and now about to be flattened in preparation for the European Football Championships in 2012.

I hadn’t realised that Chopin grew up near Warsaw, being the son of a French father and Polish mother and there is much celebration of him in and around town.

Agnieszka tells me a little bit about Polish politics. Apparently, in a play of words on part of their surname, the Kaczynski brothers who were President and Prime Minister until one lost his position in last year’s election were known as Big and Little Duck. The new Prime Minister is called Donald…..

Today, there’s concern here that the leaders of Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Estonia have all flown in the same aircraft to Tbilisi to show their solidarity with Georgia against Russia.

Agnieszka has of course saved the best till last. The restoration of Warsaw Old Town from rubble is nothing short of miraculous. Most of it was completed in the early 1950´s, but it took another twenty years before the Communists would sanction the building of the Royal Castle. What works for me is that it looks completely authentic, where it could have been rather more Disneyesque than even Donald Duck.

We eat an excellent dumpling lunch in lovely surroundings near the Barbican, the name for the double walls which surround the old city. I am intrigued by the name, because I did much of my formative drinking at the Barbican in Plymouth. An investigation of word origins is clearly called for.

Ana disappears off to buy her Israeli host a present and her mother and I take a trip to the Polish Versailles in the enormous Lazienski Park. My lack of sleep and the fact that the rush hour has started combine for me to call an excellent day to a close.

There’s good news too from Warsaw Tourism. They have relocated me to the SAS Radisson and my bags are already there. Joanna has queued personally at the station to get my seat reservation for Berlin tomorrow, so she wins a fistful of gold stars for excellent service.

The Executive room in the Radisson has even got a kettle, the first one I have so far encountered this trip. (I am in fact equipped with a travel kettle and universal sink plug, both of which I regard as indispensible travelling companions).

One challenge on this trip was always going to be the washing of clothes and I am delighted to find a washing line in the shower. Although I hate hand washing, it´s the only practical solution on this trip, some hotels charging ten pounds a shirt for their laundry. As I hang my last shirt up, the line breaks and everything lands in the puddle on the floor below.

Ah happy days. It´s clearly time for a swim in the pool downstairs.