Warsaw is a beautiful city.
However, we should warn you at this stage that if you are looking for a
visitor’s guide to any places we visit, you may have to look elsewhere (we
recommended Lonely Planet – other guide books are available).
We are terrible tourists.
We will of course take in those tourist attractions that particularly
interest us, but we much prefer to wander around a place and get a feel for
it. We find this is generally best done
by finding a pavement café and spending some time watching the world go
by. However, if it’s after about 2 o’clock in the
afternoon and we can’t find coffee then we will settle for a bar. If we absolutely have to. It’s just such a lovely way to spend a couple
of hours, in the sunshine, watching a strange city go about it’s business.
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| Warsaw Old Town Main Square |
Anyway, as I said Warsaw was surprising lovely. I was expecting to be disappointed – most
people will recommend Krakow or Gdansk as having more history or better
architecture and I was expecting a city with a decidedly Soviet feel to it (with
the exception of the medieval Old Town which was rebuilt after it was flattened
by the Germans in WWII, so technically it’s only 40 years old but who's quibbling). The Old Town itself is very small and full of
bars and restaurants and a perfect place to mooch about, but the rest of the
city is really quite elegant, with wide boulevard type thoroughfares, hardly
any traffic for a capital city, and lots of side roads to wander along.
The Ghetto Wall is marked in parts on the border of the Old
Town and the New Town and that is quite moving. Not only was the Jewish population (which
made up a little under 25% of the whole population of Warsaw) slaughtered by the Nazis but the
whole of Warsaw fought for their city before the Nazis finally razed it to the
ground and decimated the population irrespective of race or religion.
And the Polish are very friendly and forgiving. We have made such an effort to try to learn
Russian and Mandarin, we hadn’t given a thought to learn even just the basic
words in Polish (or Lithuanian). I
normally try for “hello”, “goodbye”, “please”, “thank you”, and (last but not
least) “two large beers” to which you can add the Polish/Lithuanuan for “please”
that you’ve already memorised and you’re practically fluent. We are ashamed of our ignorance but impressed
with our hosts' patience (and fluency in English for the most part).
Travelling on a
Shoestring
I also feel that I should add something here about our
attitude to our budget. We obviously have
a limited amount of cash and we could probably stretch it out over two years if
we slept in flea ridden dorms, ate leftovers, shared buses with chickens and
refused to visit sights costing more than 75 pence. Many, much younger travellers do this and I salute
them, however, we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, young any
more. Neither do we have the desire to
prove that something can be done for a pittance, at the cost of it no longer
being enjoyable to actually do, and at the risk of insulting our various hosts
by trying to get everything for nothing.
We are not rich, but we have a lot more money than many of the people we
shall be meeting along the way and neither of us can be arsed to haggle over
tuppence.
We are staying in budget hotels and hostels and so far have
no complaints whatsoever. Indeed, the
first hotel in Koln had shared bathroom facilities which I quickly discovered
meant that you were likely to see a random German male bottom wandering around
the corridors which is not altogether unpleasant.
In terms of food, we have so far made no attempt whatsoever
to curb our spending habits (which must and will change as we don’t intend
eating out in restaurants all the time).
However, luxury is relative. We
had an amazing meal in the main Old Town square in Warsaw (knuckle of pork and
roast duck), with beer (of course) and side dishes – for less than £50
(including a rather large tip – I will expand on this subject later).
When we arrived in Vilnius last night and were both starving
after the long train journey (a separate post on train journeys is warranted!) and
after checking into our hotel we went to the first decent restaurant we could
find. We had the most expensive items on
the menu - scallops and beef medallions (and again, lots of lovely Lithuanian
beer) all for £40 (including a 20% tip).
The standard of the cooking was amazing and the service excellent, and
while it would have been relatively easy to find somewhere much cheaper, it is
not often we can justify eating such lovely food as it would cost at least 2 or
3 times more in the UK.
We now have the best part of 2 days to wander around Vilnius
before we catch our train to St Petersburg on the overnight sleeper tomorrow
night. It’s quite chilly this morning
but by the time we’ve had breakfast and the sun has had the chance to heat the
air we will set off on a mooch and explore the town a bit.
Oh, and I should mention here that an unreasonably high
proportion or Lithuanian women are stunningly beautiful. Paul has been looking forward to revisiting
Vilnius since he was last here in 2008 for a friend’s wedding. It is blindingly obvious why he loves the
place so much and getting a conversation out of him is proving a challenge but
understandably so. The men, on the other
hand, not so good. To be honest, I’m
surprised he’s not champing at the bit to have breakfast and then get out and
“explore” Vilnius some more.
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