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Poland II: Warsaw
A small whining out of the way first before I continue with photos and ravings; we continue to be lucky with the weather, the sightseeing is great (despite the Monday problem of several museums being closed, like everywhere else in the world - but as this is the nation's capital, it offers more than enough open places for a day) - but the waiter and waitresses in Warsaw seem to have it in for us. There was lukewarm, near cold water for the tea at breakfeast and warm diet coke for lunch, both in stark contrast to Breslau, I hasten to add, plus there was lots of ignoring. Ah well. We're off to Krakow today anyway and will try our luck in yet another café this morning for breakfeast.
Now, on to Warsaw impressions:
First of all, you won't see any pictures of the big avenues like Nowy Swiet with all the shops and banks here; not because they weren't impressive but because I personally don't find that grand style as aesthetically pleasing as smaller streets. Also my camera is a small one and doesn't have the necessary lenses, and Dad left his paparazzo camera with the big telelenses at home. Still, I think it's important to say there are said avenues, in addition to what you're about to see. Most of Warsaw was destroyed in WWII, and when I say "destroyed", I mean over 85%, with most of the population in camps or dead after Warsaw Uprising of 1944. After the war, Warsaw had to be rebuild literally from scratch. And the amazing thing is, if I didn't know that, I would have guessed only in a very few cases of buildings. Because not only did they manage to reconstruct the old core of the city (so much so it was declared world cultural heritage) but also the newer architecture, and in a way that feels naturally grown and presumably matches the buildings as they used to be exactly. I mean, I come from a country where most of the major and a lot of the smaller cities were rebuild post WWII as well, and there are some hideous results from how they did that in the 1950s in several of them. As far as I could tell from my one day trip plus last night's late arrival, this did not happen to Warsaw.
When I think of the Warsaw Uprising, I think of my paternal grandmother's younger brother, who was with the army in Poland. (My father thinks he was in Warsaw, but he's not 100% sure; none of us ever knew him, as he died before the war had ended and my father was born after.) My paternal grandmother always had this story about him, that she asked him, after the earlier Uprising of '43, when he was on home leave, "Josef, is it true they're killing the Jews in Poland?" and that he came to her and whispered in her ear "even the mothers, even the children in their trolleys" - "die Kinder in ihren Kinderwägen", the phrasing stuck with her. "If you wanted to know, you knew," my grandmother used to finish grimly. As a civilian, she meant. She never claimed her brother refused orders. One of my grandfathers was a gardener (which meant he didn't get drafted into the army because producing vegetables was important for the war effort) and the other worked for a producer of leather, also deemed essential for the war effort, although by 1944, it was down to him and the owner's son, and so my grandfather did become a soldier for the last one and a half years, ending up a French POW in Villenes near the Belgian border where he was put to work on rooftops. Apparantly he neither experienced nor left bad memories as he went back there with his family in the late 50s and was teased that the roofs needed some more work. So neither of my grandfathers was, to my knowledge, guilty of anything beyond being a non-resisting subject of a dictatorship, but every family, if you look, does have people who either by their own volition or due to circumstance were part of the machinery. My unknown granduncle looks terribly young on the one photo I know; I walk through these streets and I have no idea whether he killed the grandfathers or grandmothers of the people who walk towards me, or whether he blew up their homes as ordered. So I'm starting the photos with the sculptures honoring the Warsaw Uprising, which lasted for 63 days and ended in the total destruction of the city.
We first approached the building from the backside, and thus first saw sculptures which seemed to have nothing to do the Uprising but which struck us as eerily beautiful:
Then we circled the building and found the groups depicting the Polish Home Army soldiers and the Warsaw citizens:
Not that far away is the house where Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie was born (she who won the Nobel Prize twice and remains probably the most famous Polish woman). There is a museum dedicated to her (with an antique shop in the ground floor), but alas it's closed on Mondays. Still, here is the house:
The most famous Polish man, at least abroad, probably remains Chopin. Whose heart made it back to the old country and into the pillar of one of the many churches here. The cathedral back in my hometown has the two skulls of the two saints who are buried there seperate from their bodies, so I'm not really surprised:
Warsaw becoming the capital of Poland a few centuries ago means they have several royal residences. Here's Willanow and its garden:
And Belvedere:
En route to the palace which was blown up, with the rebuilding only starting in the early 1970s and taking 17 years:
And the palace itself:
Have a look at the inside, and talk about reconstruction:
Outside again:
The nearest church - St.Paul's - looks like this from the inside:
St. Paul:
Warsaw has its Rynek as well, smaller than the Breslau one, but with the same colourful harmonious flair usually associated with the South (really, all the colours are what surprised me most about Poland):
In the centre of the Rynek is a statue of a mermaid. Decidedly not a Hans Christian Andersen mermaid willing to give her voice, her fish tail and ultimately her life for a man who hardly notices she exists, but a warrior princess type of mermaid who, I was told, is the symbol of Warsaw and its protector, so she shall be the final sight of my Warsaw pic spam:
Now, on to Warsaw impressions:
First of all, you won't see any pictures of the big avenues like Nowy Swiet with all the shops and banks here; not because they weren't impressive but because I personally don't find that grand style as aesthetically pleasing as smaller streets. Also my camera is a small one and doesn't have the necessary lenses, and Dad left his paparazzo camera with the big telelenses at home. Still, I think it's important to say there are said avenues, in addition to what you're about to see. Most of Warsaw was destroyed in WWII, and when I say "destroyed", I mean over 85%, with most of the population in camps or dead after Warsaw Uprising of 1944. After the war, Warsaw had to be rebuild literally from scratch. And the amazing thing is, if I didn't know that, I would have guessed only in a very few cases of buildings. Because not only did they manage to reconstruct the old core of the city (so much so it was declared world cultural heritage) but also the newer architecture, and in a way that feels naturally grown and presumably matches the buildings as they used to be exactly. I mean, I come from a country where most of the major and a lot of the smaller cities were rebuild post WWII as well, and there are some hideous results from how they did that in the 1950s in several of them. As far as I could tell from my one day trip plus last night's late arrival, this did not happen to Warsaw.
When I think of the Warsaw Uprising, I think of my paternal grandmother's younger brother, who was with the army in Poland. (My father thinks he was in Warsaw, but he's not 100% sure; none of us ever knew him, as he died before the war had ended and my father was born after.) My paternal grandmother always had this story about him, that she asked him, after the earlier Uprising of '43, when he was on home leave, "Josef, is it true they're killing the Jews in Poland?" and that he came to her and whispered in her ear "even the mothers, even the children in their trolleys" - "die Kinder in ihren Kinderwägen", the phrasing stuck with her. "If you wanted to know, you knew," my grandmother used to finish grimly. As a civilian, she meant. She never claimed her brother refused orders. One of my grandfathers was a gardener (which meant he didn't get drafted into the army because producing vegetables was important for the war effort) and the other worked for a producer of leather, also deemed essential for the war effort, although by 1944, it was down to him and the owner's son, and so my grandfather did become a soldier for the last one and a half years, ending up a French POW in Villenes near the Belgian border where he was put to work on rooftops. Apparantly he neither experienced nor left bad memories as he went back there with his family in the late 50s and was teased that the roofs needed some more work. So neither of my grandfathers was, to my knowledge, guilty of anything beyond being a non-resisting subject of a dictatorship, but every family, if you look, does have people who either by their own volition or due to circumstance were part of the machinery. My unknown granduncle looks terribly young on the one photo I know; I walk through these streets and I have no idea whether he killed the grandfathers or grandmothers of the people who walk towards me, or whether he blew up their homes as ordered. So I'm starting the photos with the sculptures honoring the Warsaw Uprising, which lasted for 63 days and ended in the total destruction of the city.
We first approached the building from the backside, and thus first saw sculptures which seemed to have nothing to do the Uprising but which struck us as eerily beautiful:
Then we circled the building and found the groups depicting the Polish Home Army soldiers and the Warsaw citizens:
Not that far away is the house where Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie was born (she who won the Nobel Prize twice and remains probably the most famous Polish woman). There is a museum dedicated to her (with an antique shop in the ground floor), but alas it's closed on Mondays. Still, here is the house:
The most famous Polish man, at least abroad, probably remains Chopin. Whose heart made it back to the old country and into the pillar of one of the many churches here. The cathedral back in my hometown has the two skulls of the two saints who are buried there seperate from their bodies, so I'm not really surprised:
Warsaw becoming the capital of Poland a few centuries ago means they have several royal residences. Here's Willanow and its garden:
And Belvedere:
En route to the palace which was blown up, with the rebuilding only starting in the early 1970s and taking 17 years:
And the palace itself:
Have a look at the inside, and talk about reconstruction:
Outside again:
The nearest church - St.Paul's - looks like this from the inside:
St. Paul:
Warsaw has its Rynek as well, smaller than the Breslau one, but with the same colourful harmonious flair usually associated with the South (really, all the colours are what surprised me most about Poland):
In the centre of the Rynek is a statue of a mermaid. Decidedly not a Hans Christian Andersen mermaid willing to give her voice, her fish tail and ultimately her life for a man who hardly notices she exists, but a warrior princess type of mermaid who, I was told, is the symbol of Warsaw and its protector, so she shall be the final sight of my Warsaw pic spam:
