Poland: Day 3

We had a little more than half a day in Warsaw before we had to go back to Paris, so we decided to take it slow and easy and mostly wander around. Julia suggested that we check out a milk bar and get a genuine Polish experience, so that was our first stop.

Polish milk bars have a long and complicated history, but the bottom line is that they are crappy little places that serve cheap, homemade-style meals. With the aid of google and good old Nigel, our GPS navigator, we found Familijny Bar Mleczny on Nowy Swiat street. Julia, still overwhelmed form the dinner we had the night before, just had to get more Borscht, and also decided to try the Pierogi. I got the Goulash.

Also, peeking into the kitchen is an experience on its own:

We wandered around the market a little bit, got some chocolates to bring home with us, and left for the old city.

We stopped by the library building of the University of Warsaw, because it’s really pretty:

The old city is really pretty:

and there’s a lot of tourists and touristy stuff going on.

When I grow up I want to be this guy:

Before leaving we stopped at an ice-cream place to get some hot chocolate. I was appalled to see this:

And that, children, is why the Smurfs have gone extinct.

We went back to the car to get to the airport, but it then turned out that Nigel had never heard of it.

We drove around, mostly by instinct (Julia’s, of course) until we hit a small town, which turned out to be Modlin. Julia claimed that the airport should be near, but driving back and forth on the main road led to nothing. We finally noticed a sign that directs to a tourist’s information center. We drove there and I went in.

We were getting tight on time, so obviously there just had to be a tour guide who had some 40 people on his hands for the dude at the desk to deal with. This means that the dude in the desk now has to get 40 maps, 40 booklets and 40 teddy-bear-keychains. This of course, has to take place extremely slowly, and god forbid there will be enough teddy-bears at the drawer, so he needs to go to the back and get some more.

Dude at the desk was finally done with the tour-guide and it was my turn to get help. Now, I’m not saying that everybody should know English, but seriously - the dude at the tourist’s information center?

- “airport?”

nothing

-”Air….port ?”

nope.

I stretched out my arms and whistled (as much as I can)  a descending pitch. Dude nods! Bingo. I grab a map and shove it in his hand, he draws a route, we smile, shake hands, and we’re off!

The tiny airport was just outside the town.

This adventure would not have been complete, of course, without noticing the ringtone-scanning dude who sat next to us in the airport on the first day and in the restaurant on the second day. Warsaw - check!

Poland: Day 2

We had breakfast at the hotel, which was surprisingly good, and set to Grojec, where my grandfather was born. Getting there was fairly easy, since we were smart enough to rent a GPS with the car. We were trying to find some adventures on the way, but only ran into this figure, inviting us to a closed restaurant:

and so, after an hour or so, we were in Grojec.

We decided to start by driving on the perimeter of the town, assuming this is where we would find the cemetery, and indeed, after no more than ten minutes, we found one. It was a Christian cemetery, but it’s a start, right?

Now, I’m sure this is common, but I have never seen this, nor did Julia, so we were quite surprised: the graves seem to have the bodies of entire families – many tomb stones had several names on them, sometimes as many as six or seven, with the years of birth and death written next to each name. The graves had some kind of a drawer, which is probably the way the new tenants find their way in.

The drawers were, of course, sealed, so you couldn’t just open them to see who’s home, but marks of breaking those seals in the past were clearly visible. Obviously, this was an inspiration to us for many jokes , and when we were finally done, we walked along the fence to try to find a Jewish section, but without success.

We went back to the car and drove some more, when we found another graveyard. Again – drawers, jokes, fence – but aha! There it is!

Past the gate, you walk a little, until you encounter this:

The writing in the stone at the very far end , in Yiddish and Polish, states that 200 Jews who were murdered by the Nazis are buried here in a mass grave (“Broder kever” in Yiddish, meaning a grave of brothers).

Further down the trail, we found this:

A Mr. Kalmanzon erected this in memory of his family and the rest of the Jewish community in Grojec. When you look at this memorial from up close, you don’t notice the graffiti. We only discovered it as we were viewing the pictures.

We didn’t see any graves though. There must have been graves there from the time that is before the second world war. We did find maybe five or six scattered stones that could have been parts of graves.

From what I read and understand, the Nazis destroyed the graveyard as they moved through the town. The Jews they did not kill in the town and are buried at the mass grave were sent to concentration camps. I’m not sure what happened to my great-grandparents – whether they died before the war, murdered in Grojec or sent to the camps. I am pretty sure somebody in my family knows. Anyway, we had enough. Our mission was accomplished, and we decided to move on.

We drove around until we got to what looked like the town square. It was a drizzling Saturday so everything was pretty quiet. We found one open restaurant and by using some common sense and pointing at the menu we managed to get two bowls of soup – one was a chicken noodle soup, and the other had pieces of sausage, hard boiled eggs and lots of dill, and they were both heavenly.

As we continued to walk around the town, we passed by a race - perhaps the annual Grojec race, if such a thing exists. I also want to comment here on the appearance of the Polish people: everybody looks like they’re up to no good. The men, the women, the children, the elderly – they all look like they’re up to no good. I don’t know if it’s the facial features or expression, the clothes, the body language – they just look like they’re up to no good.

We wandered into a supermarket, where we bought some snacks – Some chocolate and kefir (a yogurt drink) as a dessert for our lunch, some mystery Polish meat and two small loaves of bread. We also bought me a nice scarf, which cost one Zloty , which is about a quarter. Don’t you just love Polish supermarkets?

We had enough of Grojec. We turned on our GPS navigator and changed the accent setting to “New Zealand”, cherishing the couple we left behind in the taxi stop in Modlin. We named the GPS “Nigel”, and selected randomly the town of Garwolin, about an hour away, as our next destination.

We stopped in some village to watch a casual soccer game.

There is nothing in Garwolin. We walked around, looking for something to see or do, but other than a lot of signs for dentists, there was nothing interesting - not that I’m saying that signs for dentists are interesting. We had to go to the bathroom, and the best opportunity looked like the church. There was a service taking place, so we walked around, and near the back door there was a sign saying “W.C.” and some other words in Polish. We got in through the back door and found a urinal. I stopped to take a leak and Julia kept on wandering in the corridors of the church. Then I heard somebody yelling at her in Polish, and then in English: “not a bathroom. This is church!”. I did what every good boyfriend would have done - closed the door behind me and remained quiet in my hiding place with my genitals in my hand. I heard Julia leave the church, and so I was relieved and continued to (ha ha) relieve myself. Suddenly the door opened and a dude wearing a robe was behind me. Even with a robe, or maybe because of it, he looked like he’s up to no good. Again, some Polish, and then in English, but for Christ’s sake – let me finish! “no, not a bathroom. This is church!”.

I left, found Julia outside, and we got away as fast as possible. As we were walking, I picked up some words on that sign. I think it said “there’s a restroom at the culture center”. Oops.

Garwolin was obviously not cooperating with us. We were getting really tired and couldn’t even find a place to get some coffee. We decided to leave back to Warsaw. We stopped at a MacDonald’s right outside Garwolin for some coffee and a cake, and continued driving back to Warsaw, with good old Nigel leading the way.

We got a room at a Holiday Inn, looked on-line for a traditional Polish restaurant and after a glass of wine at the hotel bar, we walked towards the Folk Gospoda restaurant. In the restaurant, sitting with his friends but constantly messing with his phone, was no other than ring-tone dude from the airport at Modlin. anyway, the food was soooo good. I leave you with pictures of wonderful, wonderful food.

Starter 1: Borshct (barszcz)

Starter 2: goose drippings (not to be confused with goose droppings)

Main course 1: pork knuckles (golonka)

Main dish 2: duck

Poland: Day 1

On the road again! And this time, Poland. This adventure actually took place two weeks ago (21-23, September 2012), but I was lazy to write about it. I will still keep the “1 day = 1 post” policy here.

Here’s our reasoning for going to Poland:

1. We should take advantage of the fact that everything in Europe is fairly close to us now
2. Since these are the last days of warmth, we should go somewhere that we can’t go later, when it’s too cold
3. So… eastern Europe, right?
4. Hey, why don’t we go to Poland and look for my great-grandparents’ graves?

And so, our three days vacation in Poland was on its way. Getting to Warsaw cheaply means flying with Wizz airlines. This means that rather than flying from Paris to Warsaw you fly from Beauvais to Modlin, and if you ask “where are those places?” my answer is “exactly”. So on a Friday evening Julia and I met after work on Gare Du Nord train station. Of course, we missed the express train to Beauvais, so we hopped on one train, then switched to another, and we found ourselves on a tighter schedule, but still in Beauvais.

Now getting to the airport itself, which was about a 15 minutes drive away – that turned out to be more complicated than expected. Outside the train station there’s a taxi stop, but no taxis stop at it, which makes it a very poor taxi stop. A bus that goes to the airport was scheduled to arrive five minutes after our flight leaves. We asked a policeman standing nearby for advice, and he just called, from his own phone, to the number listed on the taxi stop sign, but got no response. After a while, a New-Zealandic couple joined our efforts in, well, waiting, and we, in turn, actually started recognizing the fact that most chances are that we will, indeed, miss our flight. Suddenly, a car drove by, and the driver signaled us that he will pull over further down the road. As Julia and I started walking towards him, some random guy yelled at us not to go, pointing out that the dude is running an illegal taxi. “so what?” we asked. “Well, if you get into an accident then you’re not insured”. “Awesome!” Julia and I yelled and ran to the dude, leaving our new New-Zealandic (should I just say “very New-Zealandic” instead?) friends behind to rot. The dude turned to be a Moroccan, who in a mixture of French and Arabic expressed his disappointment of us for cutting it so close to the time of the departure. I, in return, expressed MY disappointment of him for driving so slow, and yelled at him “yalla, udrub!”. We got to the airport exactly half an hour before departure, just to discover that the flight was delayed an hour and half. As we were waiting we had dinner next to a guy that checked all the ring-tones in his phone. This piece of trivia will be important later on.

FYI: Flying Wizz airlines also means that your flying in a pink airplane, and that there are no reserved seats. You are basically seated like you would be on a bus. In Modlin airport we rented a car and drove to Warsaw. We checked in at a hotel that Julia booked for that night. Very quickly we were reminded where we actually are:

It was already getting late. We went for a walk and hit a cluster of three tiny bars in the outskirts of the city. Three drunk British kids greeted us and started giving us directions to all kinds of places that we weren’t intending to go to. We got a beer for me and a strange pink cider for Julia and went back to the hotel to get some sleep.

Day 20: We made it!

What do you know - it worked. We live in Paris.

We landed in Paris at about 6AM. We got our luggage by 7AM. Our landlord is away for a vacation, but he gave his friend the keys and emailed us his phone number. We called the friend from the airport with Skype. Unfortunately, the guy doesn’t speak English very well, but I managed to communicate to him that we’re on the way to the apartment. He, on the other hand, said he’ll be there at 10, which meant we’d be stuck outside the apartment for a while, and all my attempts to convince him to come earlier were blocked - I’m not sure whether by the language barrier or his laziness.

We got to the apartment at about 8, and even though we were exhausted we had to wait for him for two hours, with our luggage, in the middle of the street. Eventually, he arrived, and little earlier than expected.

So here we are. We don’t have air conditioning, we don’t have an oven, but if you stick your head out the window, you can see the Eiffel tower. I really can’t believe we made it. Julia starts working on Monday, and I’m supposed to start in the beginning of the month. No more “Person on the Road” for a while. I might post updated in the future, maybe on a different blog. I really don’t know -  so thanks for following so far, and stay tuned.

Day 19: Iceland

So…we landed in Iceland. That sentence alone sounds weird to me.

After getting all our suitcases we went to the car rental area and got a Honda Jazz. Now, if you know me, you know I don’t care too much about cars, and maybe this is a result of having a ‘96 Renault Express as the most fancy car I had ever owned, but the Jazz is Soooo cool. First, we could fit all of our shit super easily in it, and had room for another person if it we had too; Second - it’s super smooth and fun to drive; and last, but most important - it has heaters inside the seats.

I looked at the guy at the car rental and said: “now that we have the car, where do we drive to?”. He was confused for a second, but then took a few minutes to consult with his friends. They decided we should go to see the blue lagoon and then hang out in Reykjavik.

We started driving in impossibly thick mist. We could see only a few meters ahead, and the image was pretty weird - some kind of green/purple surface of moss. We stopped in  a turnout, where some empty hippy-mobile was parked, to investigate. So weird: 

Suddenly, we heard voices - it was the missing hippies, emerging from a lava cave that we totally missed:

We fished for flashlights in our bags and went in. It was, just like the outside, creepy and awesome at the same time:

We drove on and got the the Blue Lagoon. I really don’t know what to say, other than share this with you:

and maybe this one:

We were getting pretty hungry, so we drove to the nearest town, Grindavik. Although an information sign on the road promised that “Grindavik is a lot of fun for tourists”, We couldn’t find much to do there, or any place to eat that was open before 11AM. We drove to the bakery and bought two small bread loafs, and then to the supermarket where we bought two tomatoes, some cheese and chocolate milk. We drove with the loot the harbor and had an awesome breakfast on the dock.

As we left Grindavik, the mist was clearing, and we could see the angry mountain that overlooks the town:

Julia drove on to Reykjavik while I collapsed into sleep. When we got to Reykjavik Julia was also exhausted, so we parked the car in an apartment building’s parking lot and napped for a couple of hours. After changing cloths and brushing our teeth in a close by mall’s restrooms, we drove to the Reykjavik’s downtown area. It’s really cool. We visited the Hallgrímskirkja church, with its beautiful organ:

We had lunch - we shared a dish of lamb shank, and a dish of whale. Don’t worry, it was a Minke whale, and environmentally, they are doing great. And since you’re curious - whale tastes like and average of steak and tuna.

We walked around some more, and passed by the HARPA, which is an impressive theater:

Then we went to get coffee and Icelandic pancakes - which are more like blintzes. We actually just wanted a place with Wi-Fi so we can coordinate getting our keys in Paris. 

We left Reykjavik, deciding to head back to the airport, but through another route. We found ourselves in lake Kleifarvatn, in pouring rain, where we saw a couple of flip-flops on the lake bank. we didn’t see any people though. that was a little disturbing. 

We left, and then drove by the hot springs in Krysuvik. If anybody ever again tries to convince me that God exist because “look how beautiful everything is!’, I’ll send him to Krysuvik. It’s not only ugly, it stinks too. And it’s fascinating.

At this point, we were getting tight on time. We drove quickly to the airport, with a beautiful, nine-o-clock Icelandic sunset keeping us company was we leave.

Day 18: Passports!

We woke up for the day of our flight, still no passports in our hands. The tracking showed that my passport has left Ellicott City’s post office, and Julia’s passport has left the post office in Baltimore.

Julia drove to her sister’s house in Baltimore to wait for hers, while I stayed in her parents’ house waiting for mine.

Express mail is guaranteed to arrive by noon. At half past twelve I was already engaged in a pointless conversation with the post office (me: “where is the envelope that I was supposed to get by noon?!”. Lady: “sir, we just got it today!”).

I called Julia, to see how she was doing, and as we were both sighing on both sides of the line, she started yelling “somebody just knocked on the door!”. A minute later she called me and reported live the opening of the envelope and the revealing of the visa page in the passport.

She came back to her parents’ house and we had lunch with her parents who were working from home in order to take us to the airport, but it was already two o’clock, and my passport’s location was still a mystery. In an act that I interpret as “I can handle my daughter leaving, but not leaving her terrible boyfriend in my house”, Julia’s mother called the post office and started yelling at them. Turns out that the envelope was left in their mail box. Julia and I ran outside and obtained my passport. Let me say this one last time: we had the two passports six and a half hours before we were moving to another continent.

So I’m writing this from the airport in Washington DC, and we fly in one hour. We stop in Iceland for an 18 hours layover. The plan is to rent a car and drive a little bit, and then continue to France. We can’t believe we made it. Really, we can’t.

There are, however, two more days of adventures until we finally settle down in our new home in Paris. Stay tuned.

I will leave you with something to think about – take a look at the sign for the chapel house in the airport. Is it just me, or does this sign portrays a child preparing to give a blow-job?

Day 17: Train wreck

We were both a nervous wreck when we woke up. We fly to Paris the next day, and we still don’t have our passports. We called lady B, and she said she didn’t go to the consulate to look for our passports, since they haven’t returned her email. This was one of those times when my implosive Israeli side has to battle his well-trained American counterpart. “It was my understanding that you are not waiting for their response, and just planned to go there. Our flight is tomorrow. I’m not sure I communicate well how stressed we are.” Let me translate to this my Israeli friends: “would you get your fat ass up and MOVE!”. As you can see, I have learned a lot during my two years here.

Lady B. had a brilliant idea – she would cancel her meetings and go to the consulate. Duh. An hour later we got the report: Julia’s passport was sent the day before. That’s already weird and distrurbing, since we can’t track the envelope on-line. Please don’t tell me they have lost it. The good news about this were that lady B read to me the tracking number as was given to her by the consulate, and it was the same number we had, so somebody had a visual on that envelope at some point. Well, whatever. Where’s MY passport?

“Ah,” said lady B. “I have it! They didn’t want to sign you visa because.. (something about a missing document) so I told them it’s OK, they approved it, and gave me your passport which I will send you right away!”

The fascinating thing here is that if we hadn’t insisted the she goes herself, that morning, without waiting to be invited, to the consulate – I would have never known there’s a problem. My passport would have not been sent to me, with or without a visa. I would just be sitting like an idiot in Baltimore waiting for something interesting to happen. I couldn’t believe it.

So now we wait for the envelopes. In the meantime, we went to the Baltimore railroad museum:

Lot’s of trains, lot’s of history of trains, two very big mode train layouts. Not enough technology to my taste, but it’s still a pretty cool place:

In the afternoon we checked our envelopes trackings, and it was bad. My envelope was already tracked, but Julia’s wasn’t. It’s either somebody in the consulate is just being lazy taking the box with letters to the post office, our that the envelope is indeed lost. We called lady B. again. She was getting impatient, which really annoyed me, because patience and support were exactly the things I needed. She said that if the passport doesn’t show up by noon the next day, I should fly alone, and Julia will join me when the passport shows up. Very saddened, we started adjusting ourselves to the idea.

And just as we were about to turn the lights off at night, I decided to try just one last time. We couldn’t believe it – BOTH envelopes were tracked! Making their way to Maryland, and should be in our hands by noon, less than nine hours before the flight.

Day 16: Philadelphia, PA

So the day before we checked once again on our visas’ status on-line. Finally, it had changed from something like “what visa are you fucking talking about” to a more “oh yeah, we have made a decision”, not stating what it is exactly that was decided. We assumed, of course, that had there been a problem, they would have let us know. So now we need to track the envelopes that we gave the French consulate in which our passports should be sent back to us. However, nothing yet at that point.

We didn’t want to arrive at Julia’s parents’ place before they do, so we decided to make a detour and stop by Philadelphia. We found a bar in which the special of the day was Philly cheese-steak sandwich and beer. Of course we had to go in, even more so since we both never had a Philly cheese-steak sandwich. I liked it. And the beer.

Philadelphia is, well, interesting. Very different than any city I’ve been to:

We walked on and stepped into the big indoor marketplace, and wandered there for a long time. Then we went to see the liberty bell, but only from the outside, since we didn’t want to stand in line. We also checked out a religious bookstore. Just for fun. We were pretty stressed about the visa situation at this point. We called Lady B. I’ve mentioned her before as the lady who takes care of MIT students going on internships in France. We’ve been trying to communicate our stress since this whole thing started going wrong, but from some reason she is not getting it. We explained the situation to her – We’re going to be in Baltimore, and our visas are processed, but our passports, which are still in Boston, haven’t been sent, and if they are not sent by tomorrow morning – we’re fucked. She said she’ll email the consulate and ask to come herself, pick up the passports, and mail them to us. We fell slightly, just slightly better, knowing that she has waken up and might take some actions.

We left Philadelphia and drove to Ellicott City MD, near Baltimore, where Julia’s parents live. Her sister, along with her corgy dog were there. We had dinner and went to bed seriously frustrated.

Day 15: Corning, NY

We started the day and went straight to the Corning Museum of Glass. Holy crap, that place is huge. There’s a contemporary art exhibition, a history of glass exhibition, an entire area dedicated to the science of glass and so much more. There were some live demos of artists, including two glass blowing demos. In one of these demos, kids submitted pictures and the staff made it for them. We got to see them make a lady bug – the kid was so happy!

Well, here are some pictures, naturally of glass musical instruments:

and finally, a glass chess board and pieces – Hasidic Jews Vs. Roman Catholics:

Other side:

On the Jewish side, please pay special attention to the dude waving a chicken over his head (Kaparot for Yom Kippur) anb the Mohel (the one circumcising a baby).

We practically had to force ourselves to leave. We started driving towards Baltimore. We got hungry pretty late, and local restaurants in… whatever town we were, were already closed. We decided to pop my KFC cherry, and yes, it hurt pretty bad. Who eats that crap, and why?

We spent the night at the Comfort Inn in Bethlehem PA. That’s pretty much it.

Day 14: Beacon, NY

We woke up at Sturbridge. Turned out we had a nice porch with a view to a pond.

Our aim was to get to Corning NY at nighttime, so we can have plenty of time the next day to spend at the Corning Museum of Glass – I saw signs for it about a week before, as I was driving through the state of New-York, and Julia and I decided we’ll check it out together on our way to Maryland.

We started by stopping at a Shaw’s to get some veggies, bread, cold-cuts and cheese. We then drove a little and stopped at a rest area for one of those wonderful fresh, basic kind of lunches. As we were driving on, we saw a sign that said “Hudson Beach Glass”. Well, we thought, we might as well follow. Adventures!

We found ourselves in Beacon, NY. It seemed to be a pretty small town. In a small park on the main street there were some young heavy metal bands performing to mostly to themselves. They were pretty terrible.

We walked up and the street and came across Zoradora, a home-made Popsicle shop. They had flavors like lychee-sake, vanilla-beet, avocado, and pumpkin-chiptole-chunk. I had the blueberry pie and Julia ha the strawberry-kiwi-ginger. That was awesome.

We then found Hudson Beach Glass, a glass studio and gallery. The shop store had a lot of beautiful pieces:

Julia mentioned to the dude that she blows glass, and of course a very vivid conversation started. He was sad to hear we were just passing through the town, and suggested we go up to the gallery on the second floor, where artist Jill Reynolds was installing her works for an exhibition. Reynolds herself and and her husband who was helping her were both extremely nice. Even as they were working towards the opening of the exhibition, they took the time to talk to us about the works, which were very interesting:

We then continued all the way to Corning. We got a room in a motel (with Indian owners, what do you know…) and drove to the downtown area. It was very cute with tons of glass shops on the main street.

We decided to go for a semi-fancy dinner at the Cellar. Unfortunately, NASCAR was also taking place in the area, so we shared the restaurant with a table of loud, drunk drivers and their… I don’t know, women. Complaining to the waiter resulted, as expected, in a free dessert.