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fluffymarkI’d meant to write about my Halloween holiday to Poland with the lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snow_leopard before now, but I’ve been a little distracted. My sweeties, Poland is truly lovely and I have many fond memories of my time there that I must write down before I lose them. Poland has much richer culture than I’d expected at first, thats despite all the urban decay and poverty manifestly pervading the country. Knowing the pretty alektoeumenides (who is half-Polish) I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to find that Poles are very beautiful people - the streets are full of highly distracting eye-candy. Lots of pretty Polish women!! Ahem. And everything is so cheap - nothing like Eastern Europe for making one feel excessively rich. *yay*
Our flight got cancelled. So the first day was spent very frustratingly in Luton airport, waiting 6 hours for the next flight. There was a very strokable Ukrainian woman at the airport, so we spent the time teasing each other about fancying her. But it was still Luton airport, and therefore terminally dull. We were flying to Warsaw with Wizzair, who partially redeemed themselves by having pink aeroplanes and cute air hostesses. By the time we arrived in Warsaw, it was almost midnight, defeating our plans to meet Agata (alektoeumenides‘ cousin) that evening and leaving us with a problem of how to get to the Hostel. We found a night bus, but the driver spoke no English so that plan was doomed. Taxi turned out to be cheap, and we arrived in style at the Oki Doki Hostel. Now I must write a few words about this Hostel, as it was truly something. Each room was an individual contemporary art project. Sometimes formal, sometimes pretty, sometimes just downright odd. The bar area had cheesegraters hanging from the ceiling for use as lightshades. Every room with its own name and was unique, with its own theme. They’d obviously let a lot of pretentious art students loose in the place and the result was stunning. Our room that first night was highly Deco in style, with big bold iron bedframes, and the like. I was delighted to see the outside wall was massively thick, with two layers of windows, creating a sizable window-seat between them that I could sit on and look down on Warsaw below. Everything was warm and cosy and friendly. *happysmile*
Woke up early to find a lovely sunny crisp autumn morning, and we set out to explore Warsaw. We first headed for the train station (some monstrous communist building from the seventies) to buy tickets and dump our baggage there. On the way there and back we circled the gigantic Palace of Culture and Science. A gift from Stalin to Poland, this apocalyptic piece of stalinist architecture is the only nice post-war building in Warsaw. There’s still communist statues dotted around it. Also a lovely park, where the red leaves were falling thick and fast, and I had some fun kicking them around. We then trekked out across Warsaw towards the Old Town. Most of Warsaw is large grey comminust tower blocks, quite ugly. But we knew we were approaching the old town - the architecture started becoming nice again. The Rynek Starego Miasta (Old square) had originally buildings dated from the 14th century. Tragically, World War 2 resulted in the entire old town area begin razed to its foundations. Nothing is original, but the good news is that its all lovingly restored the the 14th Century, and is charming with many pretty coloured buildings. In the middle of the square is the gurgling fountain of doom, which amused me much more than it should have done. Sitting in the gurgling fountain is Syrenka, the Little Mermaid. Warsaw is full of mermaids, lots of buildings have mermaid emblems, as to buses and taxis and the like. It’s odd that an inland city should have a mermaid as its emblem, but apparently there’s a good story behind it somewhere. The old town is full of little pretty alleyways and bizarre murals. We found a decadent cellar bar, Stacja Rynec in one corner of the square. Decorated with twisted risque art, the bar was decadent, warm, friendly and stylish, and served amazing authentic Polish food, and some of the most delicious spicy mulled wine I’ve ever had, which warmed us up. We liked the place so much it had become a regular haunt of ours by the time we left Poland. After a delicious lunch, and feeling a little wobbly, we explored the Royal Castle, the former residence of Polish kings when the capital moved from Krakow, also destroyed in World War 2, now rebuilt and houses a museum. Although it had its pretty bits, we felt it seemed historically detached, more like a aristocrats folly than a ancient castle. Pity, maybe something was lost in the restoring, or perhaps it just didn’t click for me. But there were lots of mermaids, so that was nice. We then rushed back to the station to catch the Krakow train. *smiles*
I love long train journeys - the world just passes quickly by, and I can stare endlessly out of the window and everything drifting past. Poland is mainly forest, so lots of trees, the odd bridge, occasional village and scattered farms. Real peasant farms, small little plots with people farming purely for themselves for subsistence, not at all like the huge agricultural food-factories we have over here. It looked alien, different, fascinating. And beautiful, but then I do like nature a lot. Someday I’d love to explore this places glimpsed briefly a bit more. *wistfulsigh*
In Krakow we stayed at Greg-Tom Hostel, a small and cosy place conveniently located very close to both Krakow old town and the train station, although at the top of a soul-destroying number of stairs (oh how we hated those stairs!). By this time it was evening, so we had a quick explore of the Rynek Glowny (the largest medieval market square in Europe), which was breathtakingly pretty by night. In stark contrast to Warsaw, Krakow survived the Second World War mainly intact. It’s also the old capital, so the buildings date back even further. It was all magical and pretty and beautiful. Dragon symbols all over the place - the symbol of Krakow is the Dragon, although there appears to be a wide variety of different stories about this mythical dragon and its importance to Krakow. Still, Dragons everywhere, which is nice. We found a quiet candlelit pizza restaurant just off the square for dinner. Heading back to the hostel, we found a cheap polish supermarket and grabbed some supplies of breakfast and beer. They have apple beer in Poland. This is not the same as Cider. And it’s very nice. *grins*
Next morning, which was wonderfully very warm and sunny (I thought Poland at this time of year was supposed to be cold!) we headed for the pretty Wawel (Castle). Ancient and Gothic, this castle overlooks the whole city. Inside, I was surprised but very happy to find extensive Italian renaissance architecture in one courtyard. An Italian princess was married off to Poland, and she took a few architects along with her to show the Poles how to build things properly. Yay pretty. Lots of pretty state rooms, with maps and gorgeous decorations, and Roman statues. Also the huge and highly Gothic Wawel Cathedral, full of ancient tombs and monuments. And there are real dragon bones hanging over the entrance. Or so they claim. Big bones anyway. We then descended from the Castle via the Dragons’s den, a pretty natural cave under Wawel hill. We failed to spot any dragons in the den, sadly. Once we got outside, we attempted to avoid the fool in a dragon costume that was preying on unsuspecting tourists. I can’t recall the name of the lovely little restaurant we stopped off for lunch at, but it had a bizarre botanical theme, pretty waitresses, yummy apple pie and served hot mead. We then ended up at the Czartoryski museum, which houses a large collection of old paintings, including a Rembrandt and a da Vinci (very pretty!). In th evening, we trailed through the park around the edge of the city walls to reach Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. Not entirely clear why we’d been recommended to go here, as it looked a bit drab and run-down, although it did have a certain charm. We found a cosy little place that served hugely filling and truly delicious portions of pierogi (polish dish, a bit like ravioli) for next to nothing (meal for 2 with drinks for less than £3!). Very yummy. *lickslips*
The most famous Pole, in my opinion, is Nikolaus Copernicus. So a visit to the Collegeium Maius, where he lived as a student, was a must. Maius is one of Europe’s very old medieval colleges, and houses an entire museum. In both appearance and atmosphere, it bore strong resemblance to many Cambridge colleges. Including the inevitable unhelpful staff willing to strangle tourists like us. When we tried to buy museum tickets on the Friday, even though it was open, they glared at us and went into a strop and decided they were closed and ordered us to return the next day. So on the Saturday we turned up nice and early, and was delighted to find out that tickets were free on Saturdays (so maybe they were being helpful after all!). Highlight of the museum was the Copernicus room, which houses many of his original astronomical instruments, and his great masterpiece De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Also other historical oddities, such as the first globe to depict America (albeit in totally the wrong location!) and the first Oscar (!!). All very nice. *impressed*
We popped into the elegant, yet strangely English Cafe Europejska for raspberry tea and cake. This was right next to the Historical Museum of Krakow (also free!) - this contained many interesting paintings and maps and scale models of Krakow, but my knowledge of pre-20th Century Polish history is somewhat missing, so most of it was utterly incomprehensible to me. I always love old maps, even if I don’t understand them. Yay for old maps. Now, we’d noticed posters all over Krakow saying that the National Museum (a truly horrible piece of architecture in itself) was celebrating its 125th anniversary with an Art Nouveau exhibition, of all wonderful things. Sadly, the Art Nouveau floor was shut when we arrived. We were slightly consoled by wandering through the Deco furniture gallery, which contained items either completely tasteless, or truly beautiful. *giggles*
By this time we’d noticed that Poland was so cheap we’d hardly spent any of our money, so it was time to indulge ourselves. The poshest and nicest restaurant in Krakow is the elegant Wierzynek. All old beams and medieval tapestries and the like. The beautiful waitresses wore dresses to die for. There was a real piano being played in the background. We ordered a nice bottle of red wine, I ate salmon for first starter, pierogi for second starter, quail, venison and wild boar for main course and a delicious chocolate dessert, along with 20 year old port, and Hungarian Tokaj. A lovely way to say farewell to Krakow. *happy*
The train back to Warsaw the next day was most delightful - it was one of those old-fashioned ones with compartments, and very pleasant. We returned to the Oki Doki Hostel. The art students in the room we stayed in this time had painted everything white, and then put black hand prints over everything, including the ceiling. It was most striking. I love that hostel. Tried to arrange to meet up with Agata again, but she was sadly ill, so we were on our own for Halloween. Poland is very Catholic as a whole, so Halloween and All Saints Day are taken very seriously. In fact, All Saints Day is a national holiday, and everything of interest was shut, because everyone was going to church! People were going about carrying flowers and candles and laying them on gravestones and memorials, of which Warsaw has lots. Seems they choose this day to remember the dead. It was saddening, but very pretty to see Warsaw lit up by all these candles and decorated by flowers. Slightly frustrating as we’d hoped to see a few more places before we left. We returned to Stacja Rynec for mulled wine, and found a lovely Thai restaurant nearby, with nice Thai food and Polish Wodka (an intriguing combination!). Mmmmm. *yummy*
And then it was farewell to the land of pretty people. Impressed even myself by working out the Polish for “Two bus tickets” to get to the airport. Small pleasures, eh? *smallsmile* And the flight wasn’t cancelled, and the plane was still pink, and the air hostesses still pretty. I’m sure I’ll be back there someday, as I loved the place, the people and the food. There was so many more places for me to go there. *yay*
Selection of my photos of Krakow and Warsaw have been uploaded to my website. Enjoy. *bounce*
snow_leopard before now, but I’ve been a little distracted. My sweeties, Poland is truly lovely and I have many fond memories of my time there that I must write down before I lose them. Poland has much richer culture than I’d expected at first, thats despite all the urban decay and poverty manifestly pervading the country. Knowing the pretty alektoeumenides (who is half-Polish) I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to find that Poles are very beautiful people - the streets are full of highly distracting eye-candy. Lots of pretty Polish women!! Ahem. And everything is so cheap - nothing like Eastern Europe for making one feel excessively rich. *yay*Our flight got cancelled. So the first day was spent very frustratingly in Luton airport, waiting 6 hours for the next flight. There was a very strokable Ukrainian woman at the airport, so we spent the time teasing each other about fancying her. But it was still Luton airport, and therefore terminally dull. We were flying to Warsaw with Wizzair, who partially redeemed themselves by having pink aeroplanes and cute air hostesses. By the time we arrived in Warsaw, it was almost midnight, defeating our plans to meet Agata (
alektoeumenides‘ cousin) that evening and leaving us with a problem of how to get to the Hostel. We found a night bus, but the driver spoke no English so that plan was doomed. Taxi turned out to be cheap, and we arrived in style at the Oki Doki Hostel. Now I must write a few words about this Hostel, as it was truly something. Each room was an individual contemporary art project. Sometimes formal, sometimes pretty, sometimes just downright odd. The bar area had cheesegraters hanging from the ceiling for use as lightshades. Every room with its own name and was unique, with its own theme. They’d obviously let a lot of pretentious art students loose in the place and the result was stunning. Our room that first night was highly Deco in style, with big bold iron bedframes, and the like. I was delighted to see the outside wall was massively thick, with two layers of windows, creating a sizable window-seat between them that I could sit on and look down on Warsaw below. Everything was warm and cosy and friendly. *happysmile*Woke up early to find a lovely sunny crisp autumn morning, and we set out to explore Warsaw. We first headed for the train station (some monstrous communist building from the seventies) to buy tickets and dump our baggage there. On the way there and back we circled the gigantic Palace of Culture and Science. A gift from Stalin to Poland, this apocalyptic piece of stalinist architecture is the only nice post-war building in Warsaw. There’s still communist statues dotted around it. Also a lovely park, where the red leaves were falling thick and fast, and I had some fun kicking them around. We then trekked out across Warsaw towards the Old Town. Most of Warsaw is large grey comminust tower blocks, quite ugly. But we knew we were approaching the old town - the architecture started becoming nice again. The Rynek Starego Miasta (Old square) had originally buildings dated from the 14th century. Tragically, World War 2 resulted in the entire old town area begin razed to its foundations. Nothing is original, but the good news is that its all lovingly restored the the 14th Century, and is charming with many pretty coloured buildings. In the middle of the square is the gurgling fountain of doom, which amused me much more than it should have done. Sitting in the gurgling fountain is Syrenka, the Little Mermaid. Warsaw is full of mermaids, lots of buildings have mermaid emblems, as to buses and taxis and the like. It’s odd that an inland city should have a mermaid as its emblem, but apparently there’s a good story behind it somewhere. The old town is full of little pretty alleyways and bizarre murals. We found a decadent cellar bar, Stacja Rynec in one corner of the square. Decorated with twisted risque art, the bar was decadent, warm, friendly and stylish, and served amazing authentic Polish food, and some of the most delicious spicy mulled wine I’ve ever had, which warmed us up. We liked the place so much it had become a regular haunt of ours by the time we left Poland. After a delicious lunch, and feeling a little wobbly, we explored the Royal Castle, the former residence of Polish kings when the capital moved from Krakow, also destroyed in World War 2, now rebuilt and houses a museum. Although it had its pretty bits, we felt it seemed historically detached, more like a aristocrats folly than a ancient castle. Pity, maybe something was lost in the restoring, or perhaps it just didn’t click for me. But there were lots of mermaids, so that was nice. We then rushed back to the station to catch the Krakow train. *smiles*
I love long train journeys - the world just passes quickly by, and I can stare endlessly out of the window and everything drifting past. Poland is mainly forest, so lots of trees, the odd bridge, occasional village and scattered farms. Real peasant farms, small little plots with people farming purely for themselves for subsistence, not at all like the huge agricultural food-factories we have over here. It looked alien, different, fascinating. And beautiful, but then I do like nature a lot. Someday I’d love to explore this places glimpsed briefly a bit more. *wistfulsigh*
In Krakow we stayed at Greg-Tom Hostel, a small and cosy place conveniently located very close to both Krakow old town and the train station, although at the top of a soul-destroying number of stairs (oh how we hated those stairs!). By this time it was evening, so we had a quick explore of the Rynek Glowny (the largest medieval market square in Europe), which was breathtakingly pretty by night. In stark contrast to Warsaw, Krakow survived the Second World War mainly intact. It’s also the old capital, so the buildings date back even further. It was all magical and pretty and beautiful. Dragon symbols all over the place - the symbol of Krakow is the Dragon, although there appears to be a wide variety of different stories about this mythical dragon and its importance to Krakow. Still, Dragons everywhere, which is nice. We found a quiet candlelit pizza restaurant just off the square for dinner. Heading back to the hostel, we found a cheap polish supermarket and grabbed some supplies of breakfast and beer. They have apple beer in Poland. This is not the same as Cider. And it’s very nice. *grins*
Next morning, which was wonderfully very warm and sunny (I thought Poland at this time of year was supposed to be cold!) we headed for the pretty Wawel (Castle). Ancient and Gothic, this castle overlooks the whole city. Inside, I was surprised but very happy to find extensive Italian renaissance architecture in one courtyard. An Italian princess was married off to Poland, and she took a few architects along with her to show the Poles how to build things properly. Yay pretty. Lots of pretty state rooms, with maps and gorgeous decorations, and Roman statues. Also the huge and highly Gothic Wawel Cathedral, full of ancient tombs and monuments. And there are real dragon bones hanging over the entrance. Or so they claim. Big bones anyway. We then descended from the Castle via the Dragons’s den, a pretty natural cave under Wawel hill. We failed to spot any dragons in the den, sadly. Once we got outside, we attempted to avoid the fool in a dragon costume that was preying on unsuspecting tourists. I can’t recall the name of the lovely little restaurant we stopped off for lunch at, but it had a bizarre botanical theme, pretty waitresses, yummy apple pie and served hot mead. We then ended up at the Czartoryski museum, which houses a large collection of old paintings, including a Rembrandt and a da Vinci (very pretty!). In th evening, we trailed through the park around the edge of the city walls to reach Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. Not entirely clear why we’d been recommended to go here, as it looked a bit drab and run-down, although it did have a certain charm. We found a cosy little place that served hugely filling and truly delicious portions of pierogi (polish dish, a bit like ravioli) for next to nothing (meal for 2 with drinks for less than £3!). Very yummy. *lickslips*
The most famous Pole, in my opinion, is Nikolaus Copernicus. So a visit to the Collegeium Maius, where he lived as a student, was a must. Maius is one of Europe’s very old medieval colleges, and houses an entire museum. In both appearance and atmosphere, it bore strong resemblance to many Cambridge colleges. Including the inevitable unhelpful staff willing to strangle tourists like us. When we tried to buy museum tickets on the Friday, even though it was open, they glared at us and went into a strop and decided they were closed and ordered us to return the next day. So on the Saturday we turned up nice and early, and was delighted to find out that tickets were free on Saturdays (so maybe they were being helpful after all!). Highlight of the museum was the Copernicus room, which houses many of his original astronomical instruments, and his great masterpiece De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Also other historical oddities, such as the first globe to depict America (albeit in totally the wrong location!) and the first Oscar (!!). All very nice. *impressed*
We popped into the elegant, yet strangely English Cafe Europejska for raspberry tea and cake. This was right next to the Historical Museum of Krakow (also free!) - this contained many interesting paintings and maps and scale models of Krakow, but my knowledge of pre-20th Century Polish history is somewhat missing, so most of it was utterly incomprehensible to me. I always love old maps, even if I don’t understand them. Yay for old maps. Now, we’d noticed posters all over Krakow saying that the National Museum (a truly horrible piece of architecture in itself) was celebrating its 125th anniversary with an Art Nouveau exhibition, of all wonderful things. Sadly, the Art Nouveau floor was shut when we arrived. We were slightly consoled by wandering through the Deco furniture gallery, which contained items either completely tasteless, or truly beautiful. *giggles*
By this time we’d noticed that Poland was so cheap we’d hardly spent any of our money, so it was time to indulge ourselves. The poshest and nicest restaurant in Krakow is the elegant Wierzynek. All old beams and medieval tapestries and the like. The beautiful waitresses wore dresses to die for. There was a real piano being played in the background. We ordered a nice bottle of red wine, I ate salmon for first starter, pierogi for second starter, quail, venison and wild boar for main course and a delicious chocolate dessert, along with 20 year old port, and Hungarian Tokaj. A lovely way to say farewell to Krakow. *happy*
The train back to Warsaw the next day was most delightful - it was one of those old-fashioned ones with compartments, and very pleasant. We returned to the Oki Doki Hostel. The art students in the room we stayed in this time had painted everything white, and then put black hand prints over everything, including the ceiling. It was most striking. I love that hostel. Tried to arrange to meet up with Agata again, but she was sadly ill, so we were on our own for Halloween. Poland is very Catholic as a whole, so Halloween and All Saints Day are taken very seriously. In fact, All Saints Day is a national holiday, and everything of interest was shut, because everyone was going to church! People were going about carrying flowers and candles and laying them on gravestones and memorials, of which Warsaw has lots. Seems they choose this day to remember the dead. It was saddening, but very pretty to see Warsaw lit up by all these candles and decorated by flowers. Slightly frustrating as we’d hoped to see a few more places before we left. We returned to Stacja Rynec for mulled wine, and found a lovely Thai restaurant nearby, with nice Thai food and Polish Wodka (an intriguing combination!). Mmmmm. *yummy*
And then it was farewell to the land of pretty people. Impressed even myself by working out the Polish for “Two bus tickets” to get to the airport. Small pleasures, eh? *smallsmile* And the flight wasn’t cancelled, and the plane was still pink, and the air hostesses still pretty. I’m sure I’ll be back there someday, as I loved the place, the people and the food. There was so many more places for me to go there. *yay*
Selection of my photos of Krakow and Warsaw have been uploaded to my website. Enjoy. *bounce*
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-21 10:10 am (UTC)Sounds great, maybe next time?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 03:36 am (UTC)