Warszawa (Poland Part: 1)
Nov 12, 2009
As a child I always though that Warsaw was called so because it saw the big war!
Before travelling to any new place I read about it in Wikipedia, buy a lonely planet and if really really interested about it, I download documentaries, movies, buy popular books about it and get myself so high about the place that when I reach it I can tell you better than a local what to do and where to go and how to get there!
But Warsaw was different, and so was Poland. The only thing I ever knew about Warsaw was that a popular pianist gave his last live performance on Polish radio before the Germans moved into the city. I never knew that Oskar Schindler was from Poland and the movie that is based on his life and bears his name was shot on the streets of Krakow, that Madam Curie is from Poland and that her second discovery Polonium is a dedication to her motherland, that the first man ever to say that the sun was the center and not the earth is also Polish, Nicholas Copernicus!
And thus armed with no prejudices and a brief intro to the city and the country I landed in Frederic Chopin Airport of Warsaw (named after the pianist).The first surprise was that an all inclusive 3-day public transport card costs just 16 Polish Zloty, that’s 4 Euros!
After getting high on War history watching the WWII Specials on History Channel all month, my 1st stop in Warsaw was the Warsaw Rising Museum (Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego)
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate WWII Warsaw from Nazi occupation. Undertaken by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), the Polish resistance group, at the time Allied troops were breaking through the Normandy defences and the Red Army was standing at the line of the Vistula River. Warsaw could have been one of the first European capitals liberated; however, various military and political miscalculations, as well as global politics — played among Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt — turned the dice against it. 
This museum is dedicated to all those who fought for their freedom in the Warsaw Uprising as well as all those who, as civilians, perished in the effort.
A fantastic effort to recreate the days of the uprising, inform in a simple way what happened, how it happened and why it happened, ghastly videos, amazing exhibits and the centrepiece: A wall with a heartbeat which also recounts the experience of those who lived through it! The best part of the museum was a huge movie screening unedited clips from the uprising. It had to be counted as one of the best museums’ I’ve ever been in!
As a result of the uprising, Le fuhrer ordered complete destruction of Warsaw, all inhabitants to be exterminated, and the city razed to the ground, left as a dot on the map! Thus the beautiful city of Warsaw was destroyed.
With this background, I walked into the newly re-built old Warsaw expecting some Art Deco buildings, a few cafes and a bunch of tourists. What I saw there completely blew my myths!
Plac Zamkowy is the first glimpse that anyone would get of the Old Town but it’s the Rynek Starego Miasta which is the true heart of Warsaw. Dominated by the Zygmunt's Column, which towers over the beautiful Old town houses and the brick red Royal Castle, the castle square is steeped in history. Here was the gateway leading into the city called the Krakow Gate (Brama Krakowska).It became to develop in the 14th century and continued to be a defensive area for the kings. The square was in its glory in the 17th century when Warsaw became to country capital. And it was here that in 1644 King Władysław IV erected the column to glorify his father Sigismund III Vasa, who is best known for moving the capital of Poland from Kraków to Warsaw.
The Old Town in autumn is a marvelous place, and I really mean it. There are no crowds of tourists; in fact, there are no people whatsoever, and it all seems so empty, so unhampered. I walked around the Statue of Zygmunt and spent a few minutes contemplating the Royal Castle in the rain pelting down. I wandered around the cathedral plastered to the adjacent building until I reach the Old Town Market. The place is totally devoid of people and traffic, there are no beer gardens or drunken youth. I took the liberty of approaching the monument of 'Syrenka', a symbol of Warszawa.
For the gourmet in me, eating at a "bar mleczny" -- or "milk bar" -- is an essential Polish experience. These super-cheap cafeterias are a cheap way to get a meal, and, with the right attitude, a fun cultural adventure.
In the communist era, the government subsidized the food at milk bars. The idea was to allow lowly workers to afford a meal out. The tradition continues.
Milk bars offer many of Poland's traditional favorites. Common items are delicious soups, a variety of cabbage-based salads, fried pork chops, and pancakes. At the milk bar, you'll often see glasses of watery juice and -- of course -- milk. My favourite was Pierogi Ruske!
At milk bars, the service is aimed at locals. You're unlikely to find an English menu. If the milk-bar lady asks you any questions, you have three options: nod stupidly until she just gives you something; repeat one of the things she just said; or be one of those rude “pointers” who point at text in the menu randomly. If nothing else, ordering at a milk bar is a fiesta of gestures. Always remember, smile and the whole world smiles with you! I was lucky to have a list of Polish food written down on a sheet of paper before I left for Poland.
My milk-bar dialogue usually went like this:
Milk Bar lady: "Prosze?" (Can I help you, please?)
Me: "toe" (while pointing)... "i to" (pointing again) ... "i to" (pointing once more). It means, "That ... and that ... and that." (Or atleast that’s what I think it means!)
After three days in Warsaw, there is but one striking memory. A young Polish girl on Nowy Swiat (new world street) was telling me how great the city of Warsaw is and how great a man Pope John Paul II was. Almost as if to prove her argument, she took out her iPhone and showed me the video of a young pope, on his first papal pilgrimage to Warsaw, towering over a millions in the crowd talking with passion about the city:
"It is impossible to understand this city, Warsaw, the capital of Poland, that undertook in 1944 an unequal battle against the aggressor, a battle in which it was abandoned by the allied powers, a battle in which it was buried under its own ruins—if it is not remembered that under those same ruins there was also the statue of Christ the Saviour with his cross that is in front of the church at Krakowskie Przedmiescie. It is impossible to understand the history of Poland from Stanislaus in Skalka to Maximilian Kolbe at Oswiecim unless we apply to them that same single fundamental criterion!
We are before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In the ancient and contemporary history of Poland this tomb has a special basis, a special reason for its existence. In how many places in our native land has that soldier fallen! In how many places in Europe and the world has he cried with his death that there can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map! On how many battlefields has that solider given witness to the rights of man, indelibly inscribed in the inviolable rights of the people, by falling for "our freedom and yours"!
"Where are their tombs, O Poland? Where are they not! You know better than anyone—and God knows it in heaven".
I wish to kneel before this tomb to venerate every seed that falls into the earth and dies and thus bears fruit. It may be the seed of the blood of a soldier shed on the battlefield, or the sacrifice of martyrdom in concentration camps or in prisons. It may be the seed of hard daily toil, with the sweat of one's brow, in the fields, the workshop, the mine, the foundries and the factories. It may be the seed of the love of parents who do not refuse to give life to a new human being and undertake the whole of the task of bringing him up. It may be the seed of creative work in the universities, the higher institutes, the libraries and the places where the national culture is built. It may be the seed of prayer, of service of the sick, the suffering, the abandoned—"all that of which Poland is made".
All that in the hands of the Mother of God—at the foot of the cross on Calvary and in the Upper Room of Pentecost!
All that—the history of the motherland shaped for a thousand years by the succession of the generations and by each son and daughter of the motherland, even if they are anonymous and unknown like the Soldier before whose tomb we are now.
All that—including the history of the peoples that have lived with us and among us, such as those who died in their hundreds of thousands within the walls of the Warsaw ghetto.
All that I embrace in thought and in my heart during this Eucharist and I include it in this unique most holy Sacrifice of Christ, on Victory Square.
And I cry—I who am a Son of the land of Poland and who am also Pope John Paul II—I cry from all the depths of this Millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost:
Let your Spirit descend.
Let your Spirit descend.
and renew the face of the earth,
the face of this land."
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 1:44 AM 4 comments
10 things I did in Poland
Nov 1, 2009
1. Checked out the capital Warsaw
2. Understood Warsovian pain during the uprising
3. Saw Pope John Paul II's speech in an iphone
4. Ate Pierogi & drank Zabrowska
5. Made new Polish friends
6. Visited Krakow, Poland's biggest tourist draw
7. Paid homage to the millions of Jews who perished in Auschwitz
8. Rolled with the crowd in Polish Airforce open day
9. Spent lots and lots of Zlotysch
10. Ate all many meals in Bar Mleczny
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 11:58 PM 1 comments
