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 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.