Warsaw, day 1

As I mentioned in a recent posting, it's always a little disorienting (or disorientating, if you will) to land in a strange, new place. I had lined up a taxi ride from the airport to the hotel the night I arrived, and the hotel was very nice, so everything went fine the first night other than the fact that even though the hotel desk clerk spoke English, her accent was so heavy that I could only understand about half of what she was saying. I just smiled and agreed with everything she said and hoped that I hadn't agreed to anything too crazy.

The next day, I started with a visit to the Palace of Culture and Science. This is an interesting building. It was a "gift" from Stalin to the people of Warsaw. To them, though, it was a constant reminder that Big Brother was watching. One Polish guide book said that the building looks like something out of "Ghostbusters." Judge for yourself.



But it had a nice view from the top:



After I finished with that, I tried to go to the National Museum. Hah! The joke was on me. Even though it was supposed to open at 10, I found a sign saying that it wouldn't open until noon. (This was after I had walked quite a distance to get there.) So I walked another long distance to get to Łazienki Park. I suppose you could think of this as the Warsaw version of Central Park. It's a nice oasis in the middle of the city with lots of ponds, trees, and a few cool buildings.

Chopin is to the Polish what Sibelius is to the Finnish--their best-known composer and a national hero. There's a Chopin monument in the Park.



After that, I made it back to the National Museum. I didn't take any pictures, but it was interesting to see lots of Polish artwork and other aspects of Polish history.

My next stop (after much more walking) was the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The Warsaw Uprising was one of the aspects of my visit that interested me the most. Again, this wasn't the kind of experience that merits much picture-taking, but it was a very interesting visit. The defeat of the Warsaw Uprising is still a scar on the Polish psyche, sort of the Polish version of September 11. You can hear about all kinds of heroic and terrible experiences. In some ways, it was as brutal as the concentration camps.

There was still plenty of time left in the day, so I took a short bus tour of Warsaw. After that, I wrapped up with the dinner that I described in my earlier posting. After all of that walking, my legs were shot. Whew! By day 2, though, I'd figured out much more about the Warsaw public transportation system.

There's lots more to come in future postings. There's another day of Warsaw, the trip to London, my trip to Lugano, my trip to Zermatt and the Glacier Express, and a day I spent taking pictures around Zug.