Blogs from Masovia, Poland, Europe - page 33

Hello everybody, There is one big difference about Warsaw. Every other city tour focuses on the age of the buildings. In Warsaw, they point to the buildings and say, "completely destroyed by Nazis and rebuilt." They have done an amazing job of recreating buildings from drawings, paintings and photographs. After the uprising, Hitler personally ordered Warsaw to be levelled. 85% was destroyed, mostly in the middle of Warsaw. The Russian Army watched from the other side of the river as they had through the uprising. The first order of business was clearing the rubble. They found 98,000 dangerous items--ammunition, landmines, etc. The reconstruction was done with volunteer labour and donations. They have put plaques on numerous corners and although I can't read them, they all show a high number and somewhere 1944. Sometimes you just get ... read more

After Krakow i Caught the train to Warsaw, the first hostel i arrived at turned me away coz they were full, the first time id been turned away from a hostel durin my trip... but i still wasnt gonna and never will book a bed online...after bein turned away from the hostel i went and found another after checkin in.. i went and found the KLM Royal Dutch Airways Office place to get my flight changed seeing as i was runnin low on money.. i tryed to change it to around early July and the earliest they could fit me in was August 10th.. so i changed it to that.. originially it was October 18th.. after that i went back to the hostel then went out for a walk.. first i went to the Uprising Meusiem ... read more

Hello from Poland (actually, we're currently in Berlin, but for the sake of the story, we'll pretend and say we're still in Poland.) Warsaw is a very very nice city and we'd have to say has been our second fave next to St Petersburg (see russia wasnt all bad). The old town especially is gorgeous and the food and clean toilets sure are a bonus! Once again its unbelievable what these people have been through, and unfortunately seem to still be suffering from (the poles really didnt seem happy) they had to rebuild most of their city after world war 2 and after having one of the worlds largest jewish populations before the holocaust, they now only have around 3000 living there (there used to be 300,000) so it is pretty sad. We stopped at memorial ... read more

...I like to Boogie. Nowhere was this more painfully evident than in Warsaw. I know there's more to this confusing (and yet straightforward), welcoming (and yet impossible), modern (and yet hidden beneath layers of unlearnable history), unfathomable (and yet strangely magnetic) town than you'll see here. But a picture tells a thousand words, and besides... most of what I loved about Warsaw I felt. I'll never be able to describe it to you properly. I thrived in Warsaw... I felt it's pull almost immediately. It sang and danced around me, it offered me gllimpses of pre-war Europe and it maddened me with envy for it's costly boutiques. I saw the ravages of war and I cried openly in public at the sad stories of it's people. I was also ashamed of my own deeply hidden prejudices ... read more

Geo: 52.2514, 20.9288Started the day with a driving tour of Warsaw. Most of this city was bombed during WWII and then later rebuilt to look as it did before the war. First stop was a fountain of Chopin thinking. We drove around the city to help us orientate ourselves. Next stop was the Pawiak Prison where many Jews were imprisoned and then sent to camps or their deaths. Drove past where the Jewish Ghetto used to be. All the Jews were made to live in a small area of the city. Then saw a memorial dedicated to the Jews who tried to escape from the burning Jewish ghettos. Walked to the Old Town Square and visited the Natural History Museum which was very interesting and real, as it had photos of all the horrible events that ... read more