Warsaw, Poland 12.06

After stopping over in Wloclawek for a day, we headed off in the car for Warsaw. This time it wasn't just the two of us in the car, Artur's mum came with us. This was because they had bought us tickets to see 'The Phantom of the Opera' that night! The plan was that Artur's dad would come later on in the day, and we would all go to the show together.

We decided to make the most of our extra time in Warsaw, so the ladies went shopping for a wedding dress. Unfortunately, the shop that had a dress that Loren had seen in a magazine, was closed. It had closed down permanently, but apparently had a little outlet somewhere in a country town. That was pretty disappointing, so we went to another shop across the street. The dresses there were horrible though, the materials looked so cheap and harsh. We tried asking where we could find more shops, but without success.

We decided to stop in a restaurant for lunch instead, and wait for Artur, who was busy with organising some airline tickets. We had a flight booked from Budapest to Cairo in September, but Malev had decided not to fly that route anymore, so we had to re-book the flights via another country. Artur went to their shop, which he found out was open until 5.30pm by ringing their customer service line. He showed up at their door to find out that it had closed at 5pm! Not happy! He went back the next day, and found a note sticky-taped to their door, saying that they had taken the day off. Very proffessional!

Phantom of the Opera After our meal, we went to meet Artur's dad at the opera. We made it just in time and found our seats. The show itself was absolutely spectacular. Loren had seen the movie version of it before, so she knew what was happening even though it was all in Polish. The costumes and sets were really well done, and the singers were really good as well. It was like having the movie acted out right in front of you. Artur enjoyed the show, but not as much as Loren. He was frustrated by the tiny seat space, leg room and lack of air-conditioning.

During the opera, Poland was playing Austria, and everyone rushed out in the break to check the scores. As the opera was finishing and the actors were bowing, one of the guys on stage held up his fingers with the scores to let everyone know that Poland had scored a goal 1-0!

We were eager to continue watching the game after we got out, so we went off the the local pub. The pub forced people to pay for their seats and make rerservations, so we got kicked off the table and chairs we found. We moved to a sofa, and they told us we had to pay for this too. We were getting a bit irritated by this point, so we told them they should have told us that before we bought our drinks not after. We drank our drinks very slowly, and were eventually joined by one of Artur's school friends, Asia. Thankfully, the waiters didn't bother us agian.

Sadly, Poland ended up losing in a penalty shoot-out, after Austria was awarded a penalty kick in the last few seconds of play and scored. The English referee who awarded the penalty, was not popular in Poland after that. There were even death threats on the online footbal forums!

Feeling a little down, we left the pub and went to Asia's house. Asia had offered to let us stay at her place, while we were in Warsaw. [For anyone that remembers, Asia (or Ashka), is one of the friends that we met up with in Cambodia.] Her apartment was really nice, and filled with books in all different languages. There was a bed set up for us, so after catching up with each other for a while, we crashed and recharged our energy for the next day.

Embassy District
The next morning, we dealt with some administrative tasks, including the unhelpful trip to the closed Malev office. Then we went to visit the Brazilian embassy to get a visa for Loren. We had all our paperwork ready but unfortunately, we forgot that the you can only get your visa 3 months before you enter the country. The official realised when we got there, that we were too early too apply, so we had to give up.

After our visa effort, we had some lunch at a nearby Hungarian cafe, 'Saska Kepa'. We tried some Hungarian potato pancakes, which were really good! It was weird though, because the pancake was savoury, but it had cranberries and icing sugar on top. It was a weird mix of a savoury meal and a dessert, but so good!

Palac Kultury i Nauki
Next we visited the major landmark of Warsaw - The Palac Kultury i Nauki (Palace of Culture and Science). The Palace was donated to Poland by Stalin. It is the tallest building on the skyline, and people are still divided today, about whether it is a blemish or a treasure. Some people think it is ugly and should be torn down. Other people have accepted it into their hearts like the 'Tour Eiffel' in Paris, and would never agree to its destruction.

We went inside the cinema entrance of the building, and saw a 'Photo Press' exhibition. The display was of the best photos by journalists in 2007, from all around the world. There were some amazing photos from massive warehouses in China that have been turned into sport factories for child gymnasts, ping pong players, etc, in the hope that they would become future olympic champions. In the photos, there were hundreds of children going through the same routines at the same time.

There were also some photos from reportage on natural disasters and wars. These photos were quite disturbing, as they showed people with enormous wounds and fatal injuries. There were also pictures of people proudly displaying their guns and other weapons.

One interesting section was of famous people caught in funny situations. One of the photos was of a group of cardinals and the pope seated in a circle, while a group of young girls were performing some acrobatics and dance in the centre. The photo was taken as the girls were all upside down with their legs wide open in the air! Awkward!

One of our favorite sections was a collection of people or faces in their normal surroundings. For example an old man standing against a brick wall as he sold fruit. The people in the pictures were so beautiful in their own unique way.

After seeing the photo exhibition, we went to another entrance of the Palace, and took the elevator to the top. We got out at the observation deck of the Palace. The view from the deck was amazing, you could see all the major suburbs like 'Ochota', 'Wlochy', 'Praga', and 'Stare Miasto'. There were some great maps located all around the deck, that described what the buildings were that you could see on the horizon.

The view was very interesting for Artur, who had been up there 4 years earlier, and he noticed big differences between then and now. There were a lot of new buildings, and old buildings had been restored or redecorated. The observation deck, had been combined with an indoor display of physics experiments for children. The theme was Einstein, and the exhibitions were simple hands on activities to teach children about science. There were some cool displays on the human brain, and on weirdly shaped mirrors.

Visiting Friends

That evening, we went to visit another of Artur's school friends, called Wladziu. We brought some flowers for Magda his wife, who had recently had their second child. They now have two little boys, one called Marcin and one called Tomek. When we arrived there was a table set up out in the backyard and the bbq was being prepared. An excellent welcome for us Australians! It was also very impressive, considering they had two kids to juggle at the same time.

Loren was fascinated by a drink that Magda was having, called 'Karmi'. Karmi means 'feed', and the drink is a non-alcoholic beer that is very popular with pregnant and feeding women. What a great idea! We saw countless numbers of women drinking it on our trip.

We had a great time chatting over dinner, and then upstairs in their house. Loren had a great time playing with their Labrador as well, although he was not the best behaved dog. He tends to jump on people when he is excited. Apparently the breeder was so relieved when they bought him, because he was such a handful as a puppy.

Wilanow Palace

The following day, we explored Warsaw with Asia. The first thing we visited was the 'Palac w Wilanowie' or 'Wilanow Palace'. This was the place where the Polish kings used to live. Artur was very surprised, because the building was always a white colour, but this time, they had painted it yellow! The colour looked more appropriate for an icecream, rather than for a serious palace.
Today, the Palace has been adopted as a musuem, where all artefacts from the time of the kings, are gathered there. There are huge galleries full of paintings of noblemen, kings and queens, busts of famous Polish people, including Chopin, Mickiewicz, Radziwil etc.

Loren's favorite activity was to search out the pictures of the women, as they interest her the most in history. She loved to look at their faces, their body shapes and their clothes. It's amazing how so much has changed over time, and how different people are today. It was also surprising, that the people who we would identify as looking very Polish today, look nothing like the people in the paintings. The whole nation is a lot different to what it was then.

Lots of rooms displayed beautiful pieces of furniture, including tables inlaid with mosaics of semi-precious stones. Artur especially admired the old maps that they had of Poland. It was interesting to see the difference in Poland's borders over time.

Once we had finished inside the Palace, we decided to explore the Palace grounds. We were very impressed, it was like an entire forest filled with walking tracks, flower beds and a huge lake. Some of the gardens were under repair at the time, so we couldn't see them all. One maze-like garden near the Palace, impressed Loren the most.

We saw so many brides and grooms having their photos taaken in the gardens. Loren saw one particularly cool dress, and enjoyed admiring the others. There must have been over 5 different couples there. There were also videographers instructing their newlyweds to walk along while he filmed them,and photographers with reflector sheets to place the light on the couple in the best way. The most interesting thing that we noticed, was that the one Vietnamese wedding that was there, had the family and friends standing around cheering the couple along, whereas most other couples were on their own for the photos. Big difference in the wedding cultures of different countries.

Stare Miasto

After Wilanow Palace, we went to visit the 'Stare Miasto' or Old Town. After finding a dodgy looking parking spot, we headed off to a rerstaurant called 'Pierogarnia'. The restaurant has this name because of the food that it serves there - 'Pierogi'. Pierogi is usually called dumplings stuffed with different fillings, but a better description is probably to say it's similar to 'tortellini', or more like the Chinese and Japanese version of dumplings. The fillings are much tastier than tortellini though, and the pasta or dumpling covering always tastes like it has just been freshly made. The pierogi dish is usually topped with little pieces of diced bacon. Each of us tried a different kind of Pierogi. Loren tried one called Diablo because it was spicy, and the others tried more normal fillings with white cheese, onion and sometimes meat.

A few metres down the same road, we found another Pierogi restaurant, and decided to stop and try their sweet Pierogi. We got tiny portions just so we could try them. They were delicious! Loren tried one with white chocolate sauce on top and white cheese and raspberries inside. Mmmmmm!

We wandered through the old town towards the 'Column of Zygmunt' and the Royal Castle that looks like a Palace. When we arrived at the Column, we found that it was completley surrounded by bear statues. The display had one bear from every country that is represented by the United Nations. Each country had to decorate their bear in an artistic way that represented their country. Some of our favorite bears were from Africa, and were painted with desert scenes or jungle scenes. The pictures were really artistic on some. Artur really like the Cambodian and Thai ones too.

After checking out all the bears, we went to see an old cathedral that survived all of the wars in Poland. It still has a piece of a tank lodged in one of it's walls, which it leaves there as a reminder. Speaking of cathedrals, we saw many more weddings and wedding parties wandering the streets of the old town. The Old Town, like the one in Gdansk, is not really that old. It looks old, but it was also rebuilt, after 80% of it was wiped out during WWII.

Swagier Kolaska Concert

Soon we headed off to meet with some of Asia's friends, who we had met before in Cambodia. They were all at an outdoor, free concert by 'Szwagier Kolaska' - a band who's name translates to mean brother-in-law. The concert was virtually on the street, and the band played classics from the 50's and 60's in their own style.

The audience was quite mixed, because the songs are loved by the people who lived back when that music was popular, and also by the people who know the songs from their grandparents, and like the new versions of them. There were little kids, people our age, and lots of old people as well. Everyone had a lot of fun, and Asia's friends were dancing spontaneously on the street with people several generations older than them. We all bought some drinks and snacks from nearby and enjoyed ourselves while we listened to the music. The audience really got into it, calling out requests, and the band had chants that they would yell out and the crowd would answer. It was a lot of fun.

After the concert, we met up with another school friend called 'Gorzyn'. He had just had his father's funeral the day before, so it was great to see him despite the circumstances. After the concert, we went for a few drinks on the same road as the concert. We watched Gorzyn's son who was quite young still, pick up a girl in the playground. Very cute! He gave her a ring that he had just gotten as a prize. His wife had also come out with them that night, so we got to meet her as well.

We started to get hungry, so we found a place for dinner. It was funny though, because everyone was from Warsaw, and everyone had their own ideas about what was the best place to go to, So we wandered up and back along different streets before everyone was satisfied. The restaurant we chose was great, and they served beer in big glass towers. You could choose how tall you wanted the tower to be, then you used the little taps at the bottom to fill your glass. Ours was one meter high! There were some old men playing sad sounding music on the stage, so our group asked if they could play some standard songs. The guys asked for money, but by that point music wasn't on our minds much anymore, so we just laughed and left them to their music.
Artur was on the phone with another school friend, and was inviting him to join us, but he had a hard time explaining where we were.

Eventually, we moved to one of Asia's friends apartments. The poor guy was leaving for Paris early the next morning, but he volunteered his place anyway. There was about 15 of us there, so his apartment quickly became noisy. He had a guitar and played some nice music for us in the background. He also served us some honey based vodka from Biebrza, and some homemade vodka. It was very strong, but good stuff.

Someone found a foam-ball shooting toy gun, but no one knew how to load it. Eventually someone remembered, and soon we were shooting little foam bullets all over the place. Things were quite messy by this point, but too make matters even messier, the friend that Artur had been calling showed up semi-drunk. As usual this friend is not the most inconspicuous of people and started his entry by insulting our host on his taste of music and performance on the guitar, not realizing that he was the host of the party. We decided it would be best to move somewhere else after that, so we left not long after.

The next place that we went to was a bar called 'W Oparach Absurdu' - which means 'in the vapour of the absurd'. The place had a great atmosphere to it and we naturally continued our drinking. After some more shots, we were quite thoroughly drunk. So much so that we lost our camera and we couldn't remember much about the ride back to Asia's place.

Artur, Gorzyn and Asia talked until about 6am, and at some point earlier, Loren fell asleep on the couch. When she woke up the next morning, she saw Artur and Gorzyn asleep on the double mattress, but she couldn't find the camera to take a photo.

We realised when everyone had woken up, that we had lost the camera, and we tried to trace our steps. We figured out that we either lost it in the last bar, or in the taxi on the way to Asia's place. We tried to find out who had called the taxi, so we could contact the taxi company that took us, but none of us had a dialled number for a taxi company. Artur had a dialled called to his French friend from Australia, who now lives in Rome, but had no recollection of making that call. So it seemed pretty hopeless.

Scene of the Crime

Witek called us because he had lost one of his mobile phones, which turned out to be in the apartment where we created a mess. At least he found it, we were both pretty upset at losing the camera, but as Gorzyn summed up, 'Without damage, it can't be called a good party!'.
We woke up in the afternoon, so our plans to catch up with Bartek and Wladziu in the Lazienki Park, didn't quite work out. So we spent most of our day trying to contact all the taxi companies in Warsaw, and the 'W Oparach Absurdu' bar. We even visited the bar and searched around ourselves. Artur was worried that they had found the camera but weren't telling us, so he offered to pay to get it back, just so we could have our pictures. We had basically lost all our pictures from Malbork, Gdansk and Warsaw, which to us was worth much more than the camera itself. No luck though. (You're probably wondering where all these photos have come from, seeing as we lost all of ours. We've used photos from the internet, and ones that we've taken from our phone, to try to recreate exactly what we saw in Malbork, the Tri-Cities and Warsaw.)

Visiting Friends
That evening, we went to visit Bartek, one of Artur's best friends in school. We got to see his new daughter called Hania. It was really great to meet his wife and daughter, and for Loren it was particularly great to meet such a good friend of Artur's. It was great because they spoke English very well too.

We had a late lunch with them when we arrived, but we ended up staying for dinner as well. We talked for hours about our travels and about their new experiences of being parents.Bartek recommended that we see the Warsaw Uprising Museum, as Loren was looking for some good information on Polish history. We decided to see it the next day.

Bartek's wife showed us her baby book for Hania, which is like a scrapbook. She wrote lots of pages about Hania, and collected everything to do with her. Including the tickets from the hospital, the first postcard addressed to them and Hania, even bills for the first holiday they took with her to the seaside. Artur still wanted to stay and catch up, even at the end of the night, as he spent most of his childhood with Bartek, and could talk for hours about anything. Eventually we did leave though, and returned to Asia's place.

Last day in Warsaw
On our last day in Warsaw, we picked up Asia from her office, and went to lunch together. We had packed our stuff back into the car, so we gave her the keys back, chilled out together over lunch for a while, and thanked her for being such a great host. Before we left Warsaw, Artur decided it would be a good idea to report our lost camera to the cops, so we could claim it on our insurance. So Artur left to visit the police station, while Loren went looking for some wedding dress shops that Asia's sister had visited before her wedding.

Loren walked a long, long way around the city, without much luck at finding any of the stores. She was almost ready to give up and go shopping for books or clothes, when she decided to just ask someone. She went to a coffee shop for a drink and directions. Thankfuly someone directed her to one that they knew of. She tried on some dresses, but didn't see anything she really liked.
Eventually, the designated meeting time was reached and she went to wait on the steps of the Palac Kultury i Nauki. She was there for 1.5 hours before Artur showed up! She was pretty sure she was going to be stuck there all day, lost in Warsaw without a phone.

In the meantime, Artur's session at the police station was taking a lot longer than he had hoped. He had to dictate an entire essay on what had happened to the police officer on duty, and try to prove that the camera existed in the first place. Artur brought his charger along to prove it, but the officer said it wasn't really enough, anyone could have a charger. The officer obviously never tried to buy one that had been lost! We tried when ours was lost in our luggage, and despite it being a new camera, no one had any to sell. They suggested buying a new camera! Eventually the officer decided to process the report. There was heaps of paper work to be done, and lots of formalities. 3 hours later, he got out of there and went to meet a rather bored, scared and frustrated Loren.

The Road Home
Finally we headed home in the car to Wloclawek. We were anxious to get there as Poland was playing Croatia in the Euro Cup that night. Artur was listening keenly to the pre-game commentary on his favourite radio station, Trojka. Just after we drove through Plock, and were just entering a little insignificant town with about one house, we got pulled over for speeding. Artur hadn't noticed the change in speed limit because he was concentrating on hearing the radio, and was still going 85km/h in a 50km/h zone. He and one of the officers got into the car alone, to 'discuss' what could be done about it. For the amount he was speeding, he was told he should be taken to the police station and have his license suspended.

Artur didn't have as much money as the cop was asking for the 'get out of jail free' bribe, so he told him his sob story about already being at the police station for 3 hours, and about how we were on our way to see the big football game, and that his Croatian fiancee was going for Poland in the game. The cop decided that it was against his morals to accept the small amount of money that we had instead of the full amount, so he sent us away with a warning. Bizarre, but good!

We made it to the game, just after the start. We were armed with beer and snacks and our flags and scarves. It was quite a disappointing game though. This was Poland's last chance in the Cup, and Croatia was only playing with their second squad of players. However, we figured that second squad players would not play an easy game, as they are trying to prove to their coach that they should be in the first squad. So our scarves and flags didn't work, but we had fun cheering the players on.