Warszawa Extravaganza

Nina, Steffi, and I had a brilliant idea: a 24-hour trip to Warszawa (Warsaw for all you western, non-Polish folk).

Thursday night, after making an appearance at the Czech party (the food at which, made me want to move to the Czech Republic and befriend a little old woman in need of someone to sample her cooking), we boarded the 12:05 am train. Don't we look happy to be there?

It was a 6.5 hour ride from Wrocław. So, we slept as much as we could.

We arrived at 6:30am, and wandered around until the city began to wake up and places where one can purchase food began to open. In the background, you can see the Cultural Center--it was a gift from the USSR to Poland in the 1950s. It's traditional socialist architecture and there's a big debate regarding whether to building is a landmark or a momument to socialism. Personally, the more I looked at it, the uglier it became.

The park we wandered through during our early-morning Warszawa exploration.

The Old Town. It's important to remember that Warsaw was almost completely leveled in WWII (watch the ending scene of "The Pianist" and you'll see what I'm talking about). Everything is a reconstruction, and the rynek looks like a cartoon set. It's as though they tried to hard to make it look original. Plus, the whole city is a very strange mixture of old and new, socialism and modern architecture.

The United Nations bears were in town--each country had its own bear.
We miss Shail...but we remembered everything he taught us. And therefore, we knew that the items in this store were not "real Indian."

The government seat, complete with military guards.

More of the Old Town:

I really like the narrow streets in all Polish cities.
This made me smile.

I made a new friend on the viewing point. He's all braun and no brain.

And here's a better view of the rynek--nowhere near as pretty as the one in Kraków...or Wrocław.

This statue in the rynek was pretty underwhelming...it reminded me of a toilet flooding the bathroom. Water just spilled out the bottom basin.

Memorial to the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto. I really wanted to go see the ghetto itself, but there's just a museum. The real ghetto is gone.
Ah....socialism.
Here you can see an example of how all the differant types of architecture are irregularly blended together.
Waszawa may be ugly, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun.

General conclusion: Warszawa is ugly, but the ice cream there is fantastic. And if you change all your photos of that city to black and white or sepia, they seem less tacky.
Polish City Ranking:

1) Kraków

2) Wrocław

3) Poznań

4).............

5)..............

6) Warszawa

There were also crew races on the Odra on Saturday afternoon.

We also took the train to Poznań on Sunday, but I'm not going to post pictures of that day-trip. I'd been there on the way to Berlin, so you've all seen it before.