Warsaw

When we arrived at around 8am, Chris, Ash and I all must have looked like death because none of us got much sleep on the bus. It was pretty bad! Im short and i struggled to get even close to comfortable so poor old Chris who is a giant i think gave up about an hour in. Fortunately the packed bus emptied out by about 4am so we got a little sleep in the early hours of the morning.

As soon as we got into the bus station terminal it became obvious how different eastern bloc countries are to the western european countries. Chris went up to the info window to ask for directions into the town and the woman spoke neither english nor german. Somehow we'd all managed to avoid this awkward situation untill this point. Chris ended up shoving the lonely planet guide up to the window and we managed to extract a general direction and some bus numbers from the info woman.

Once we got to the bus stop we didnt know which side of the road we should be on. Much to our suprise, a homeless man walking around happened to speak german and told chris what side we needed to be on. So after a short tram ride and a not so short walk, we arrived at Tamka Hostel. It was great. Clean, lots of free stuff and friendly staff. Little things like free internet, english TV news and free tea and coffee really make a difference after no frills hostels in amsterdam for instance.

In Poland you can see how capitalism is thriving on the mess that communism left. No buildings, not even beautiful, historical buildings are exempt from the big, nasty looking billboards. Its amazing! Fair enough a coke advertisment on a crappy old communist commission housing bloke, but even the palace had billboards slapped on! Its absurd.

That arvo after lounging around for a while, we walked up to the biggest structure in Warsaw, the Palace which is an art complex. Strangly in the U shaped front side of the building there were 3 'street basketball' courts. A bizarre mix.

We decided to make use of the kitchen so chris and i cooked up a nice rice meal with veggies....very nutritious!

The following day we set out for a big stroll towards the 'old town.' Unfortunately the old town was completely leveled in WWII, however it has been rebuilt, and although you can tell its not authentic, it still great to see the city close to how it would have looked before the war.

From there we walked to Pawiak Prison. A very sombre museum lies in the ruins of the prison that served as a gestapo headquaters/prison during german occupation. In the tiny prison the Germans held over 100,000 people and executed over 30,000. It was quite incredible to read the stories of inmates, read their letters and poems, see propaganda from the time and other priceless artifacts from the terrible prison.

After the prison we walked further to the newly open Jewish Uprising Museum. A bizarre multilevel complex with very indepth information regarding treatment of the jews in poland, and ultimately the uprising as a result of the maltreatment.

After the museum we went back to refuel(eat dinner) and after lounging round again for a while, we went off to some bars. There was this unusual complex similar to the one in Berlin only instead of the beach theme, it was like an old carpark that was full of rubble with bars scattered around! Europe really is full of these strange little bars. After the bars we went back to the hostel. Some other aussies convinced Chris to go out with them even though he was meant to catch a 7am train back to Berlin. Not so suprisingly, at 7.30am, Chris was on the couch in the lounge, passed out having only just arrived home!

That morning Ash and I went to the station to catch out train to Krakow.

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