Warszawa and Bydgoszcz

I went to Poland from 27 Jun to 02 Jul.



I flew in Friday night, having an "interesting" taxi ride to my hotel. It felt a bit like being in Turkey, with the taxi drivers driving at two times the speed limit, without seat belts. I got to my hotel in one piece, so no harm done. I suppose that's what you get for riding fixed-price taxis rather than those with meters.

I took the morning train to Bydgoszcz, having no problems buying a ticket even though the cashiers didn't speak English. Luckily, I had memorized the line for buying tickets before going, so no big deal. It took me some more time to figure out their timetables, since they used text rather than numbers a lot. I had memorized the basic Polish numbers before leaving (after having been stuck in Belgium at one point without knowing the French words for weekdays, and the basic numbers, I make sure to get up to speed on this up front...)

I figured out that the word for station seemed to be "Glowna", which helped me to find the right place to get out. Bydgoszcz stretches out over a large area, so it has like five different railway stations, and the one you're at is not announced, so I was peering out through the windows to find out if this was my stop. I got off at the right station, and found my hotel. This was a supposedly four star hotel, which turned out to be rather crappy. I think the star system they use for hotels is flawed, because it only seems to take into account whether there is a mini-bar, or if the have laundry service. If you fill the services check boxes, it seems like the rooms can be as crappy as they like.



I spent the day walking around and had dinner at a decent Italian restaurant. I spent some hours in a "jazz club" before turning in. Overall Bydgoszcz seemed like a nice, but somewhat small city (The Bydgoszcz area is supposed to have like 370.000 inhabitants. Didn't really seem that way). It seemed a bit less developed than Warsawa or Krakow, with lots of derelict houses and run-down streets. It was a very long four hour train ride back to Warszawa.

I spent the next couple of days walking around the old town, which is on the UNESCO world heritage list. In the weekend the touristy area was very crowded, but on weekdays it was more tolerable. There were lots of aggressive gypsy beggars everywhere around the old town, but that's Europe for you.

I've spent a lot of time looking at all the nice palaces in this town, appreciating the fact that all of them were rebuilt, since they were razed during WW2. Some 85 percent of downtown Warszawa was in rubble at the end of WW2, so they had their work cut out for them rebuilding.



I visited the science museum in the palace which was ...unimpressive, except the steel works part, I don't remember ever seeing that in a science museum. I visited the royal castle, which was rebuilt from nothing - it was completely razed in WW2. Some nice rooms, but overall not that interesting.

Churches in Poland are different from the ones I'm used to seeing in Belgium/France/Italy, so I liked seeing how the interiors differed. Poland is a very religious country, though, so often there's people praying while you visit. These things always make me uneasy, as if I am not supposed to be there. The churches obviously mean a lot to these people, and to me it's just some nice buildings, so I suppose that's what makes it feel awkward.

I visited the Polish Army museum, which was very nice. On the ground floor they had a fairly large collection of medieval suits of armor, and paintings portraying important battles in Polish history. The suits of armor worn by the hussars were impressive. One funny thing about this museum was that they had very aggressive museum guards. In every room they would walk up to me and shout a long serious speech of some kind in Polish. I would reply back with "Nie rozumiem. Nie mowie po polsku." (I don't speak polish), they would go "NO FO-TO!", I would show them my entry ticket with the nice stamp saying I paid extra to be able to take photos, and then they would back off wih a muted "Dziekuje bardzo..". I swear this happened in every room in the museum, and it got really old after six or seven repeats. I guess they really wanted those 5 zlotych extra...



In general I felt that Warszawa would be nice for a weekend visit, but there just wasn't enough museums and such to keep me busy for the time I was there. Also, I was staying in an inconvenient location, so I was walking a lot. Some parts were prettier than others, and seeing the central station was an experience. The heat and nauseating smell in combination with lots of people, and the maze of narrow corridors made this a new experience. Railway stations usually smell like urine in combination with mold and steel. In this one there were kebab grills everywhere, bakers pushing pastry and butchers selling meat(!), and there seemed to be no airco, so it was probably like 30 degrees in the hallways. I had to walk through this thing a couple of times every day to get to the metro or the shopping centers or the palace of culture and science, so over time I got desensitized to the thing, not to mention really proficient in navigating the maze to get to exactly the street I wanted. Still, a new experience in the field of nasty public transport infrastructure...

I've eaten lots of traditional Polish food and procured a number of bottles of Polish vodka, so I feel I have been sufficiently "exposed" to the Polish culture. I will have to throw a party soon to taste all the different cherry-, honey- and mint-vodkas I purchased, not to mention the downright scary Sliwowica.

Pictures are here( Bydgoszcz ) and here( Warszawa )