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.