Finishing Warsaw

Today we finished up Warsaw by touring the Museum of the History of the Jews in Poland at the Ghetto Uprising Memorial. Even though we only spent three hours touring the exhibit, I'm really starting to feel my age. After the tour, and lunch back at Perogarnia na Bednarskiej, we stopped by Costa Coffee to see if that would get me going for the rest of the afternoon. Instead, I fell asleep, and Kathy gleefully snapped a picture.

When we walked over to the museum, we came across a bronze plaque marking the line of the original Warsaw Ghetto, similar to those we saw in Berlin for the Wall.

In the museum itself, we walked through very modern and interactive exhibits, illustrating 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland. Here's a photograph of the Ghetto wall as it was being constructed.

As we got to the modern era, and WWII, the photographs and newsreels were overwhelming; I really felt numb after watching all of them. There is no way we could capture the experience in pictures.

When we got back to our room, I spent some time soaking my feet (and fell asleep again, in the bathtub). Then, we went out one last time for a quick meal at the train station mall, mostly so we could get some more use out of our one-day bus pass.

Kathy's packing up now. In the morning we leave for Krakow.

Touring Torun

The city of Torun is about three hours north-west of Warsaw (by train), on the line to Gdansk. We got up early, skipped breakfast, and picked up the train at 7:00 AM. (For those of you who are interested, our round-trip, first-class tickets were about $30 each.)

Torun is one of the few towns in Poland (or Germany) that was spared in WWII. There are a lot of tourists, but since it was a Wednesday, it wasn' too crowded. The tour groups tend to be either school kids (lots of those), or older people. I'm guessing on the weekends, there would be a lot more 20-somethings.

Torun was founded by the Teutonic Knights after the second Crusade (around 1233). They built a castle and a wall, which then, because it was a port, drew in merchants and craftsmen. In 1280, Torun joined the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns which later dominated the Baltic maritime trade along the coast of Northern Europe.

There is not much left of the original castle, although the city walls of the old town are still standing. (The old town dates from 1233, while the "new" town dates from 1263). We spent a few hours touring the castle and some of the excavations that started in 1953 after the war.

The old town square has an impressive, Gothic, red-brick city hall. Around the square are various statues. Torun is the home town of Polish astronomer Copernicus (although, since Torun was German at the time, Germany claims him as well.) His statue anchors one corner of the square.

Opposite him is a statue of Janko Muzykant, Torun's version of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Instead of playing a pipe, Janko played the violin, and instead of rats, Torun was besieged by frogs.

The other two corners of the square are taken up with a bronze donkey which is a copy of the actual wooden donkey that stood here in medieval times, to which criminals were strapped and flogged. The other corner contains a small statue of Filus the favorite pet of Professor Filutek in the long-running Polish comic strip.

For lunch we stopped in a nice self-service canteen with thatched mini-cottages and stained-glass windows for seating. The food was delicious and inexpensive (about $10 for lunch for the both of us ... including drinks).

Besides Copernicus, Torun's other claim to fame is its piernika or gingerbread. Kathy and I are all about tradition, so we had to try a little of each variety.

Our train back to Warsaw left at 5:00 pm and we got back around 8:00. Walking into town by the train station, we came across a group calling themselves the Street Church who were playing music, preaching  the gospel, and feeding the hungry. They do this every Wednesday night. What a refreshing surprise.

On our way back to our hotel for dinner, we decided to just eat like all the other Poles instead of like American tourists. We had Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Biking on the Vistula

Tuesday morning we got to breakfast a little earlier than usual, (well, 8:00 AM which isn't early at all by our California standards). After breakfast we set off to do some errands. First, we had to head back to the train station to buy tickets for our day-trip to Torun in Pomerania tomorrow. It was a beautiful sunny day as you can see in the pictures.

The train station is right next to the Stalinist Palace of Culture and Science, which to my mind, looks a little like the old LA city hall. I keep fighting the urge to hum the theme from Dragnet. The Polish SIM card we purchased was very inexpensive: about $5 for 3GB of data. However, when we went to make a phone call, we discovered that we didn't have any phone credit on the card. So we set off for the Plus store to have them add some minutes so we could call home.

Finally, Kathy needed to pick up some eyeliner, and the stores we visited were all out. So we solved the problem by stopping for coffee and pastries. Once we got recharged, finding the right item was easy.

In the afternoon, we rented two bikes and rode across the Vistula River to the Praga neighborhood and the Warsaw Zoo. We didn't go in; we just rode around the zoo, and peeked over the fence. It was pretty windy so we were able to go down river (North), really fast. We rode past two different bridges, then crossed the river once again and started riding back into the wind.

On the way back we stopped for a late lunch at the Kafka used bookstore by the Copernicus Science Center (which was crowded with tour buses full of Polish schoolchildren). After lunch we got our bikes back by about 3:00 PM. Both of us were a little tired and wind-burned and were happy to get to the room and get cleaned up. (Our room has a bathtub, which I love.)

Since our train to Torun leaves at 7:00 AM, we won't have time for breakfast, so at 6:00 PM we left to go find some sandwiches. We tried Marks and Spenser and Carafour, as well as the various stalls in the subway. None of them looked appetizing. Then, we found a Subway Sandwich Shop and got a large Spicy Italian to take with us for breakfast.

On the way back, we stopped by one of the three or four remaining "Milk Bars" in Warsaw. These were Communist-era cafeterias that serve very inexpensive food. We got an order of meat piorigi (delicious) and two bottled waters for under $5. A nice light dinner. We are heading for bed now, so we can get up early. Good night!

Hello Warsaw

Sunday morning we were up before 7:00 AM, packing and getting ready to leave. We had an early breakfast and then found our way to the U-Bahn and then the S-Bahn, to get across town to the Ostbahnhof, the smaller train station that handles trains going to the east. Our 5-day transit pass had expired at midnight the night before. The entire time we were in Berlin, our tickets were never checked. I'm sure, though, that if we had decided to ride on the expired pass, we would have met a ticket inspector on Sunday morning.

The trip to Warsaw takes about five and a half hours. The first half of the trip we had the whole compartment to ourselves. After stopping in Posnan, though, the train completely filled including our 6-seat compartment, so it wasn't quite as nice. When we got into the central train station, we walked past the Stalinistic Palace of Culture and Science, through the mall, and to our B&B about two blocks away.

We are staying at the Chopin Boutique B&B which was recommended in one of Rick Steves' guidebooks. We have a nice, 4-room suite that is very close to the train station and the main shopping street. We didn't get to our room until after 5 PM. It took us a while to unpack, but we were ready for dinner a little after 7. We strolled through the shopping area, but most of the shops were closed on Sunday. We had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant, which offered a selection of goulash dishes for two.

Monday - Touring Warsaw

Kathy and I usually prefer to do our own touring, instead of taking a pre-packaged tour. That way, we can skip the parts we aren't interested in, making up our itinerary on the fly. Our goal for today was the "royal mile", the old and new towns, and the monuments to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising immortalized in Leon Uris' book, Mila 18.

We started out on Jerusalem Avenue which originally lead to a Jewish settlement. Between the wars, the street was renamed to May 3rd Avenue, celebrating the date of the Polish constitution, while the Nazi's renamed it Bahnhofstrasse (Train Station Street). The communists switched it back to the original Jerusalem Avenue.

The 50-foot palm tree at the corner of Jerusalem Street and Nowy Swait was created by a local artist after a visit to the real Jerusalem. It was originally controversial; when it snowed, the pro-palm-tree faction camped out in the traffic circle, dressed in bikinis and beachwear to show their support. They prevailed and it still stands today.

Novy Swait is a shopping boulevard, lined with boutiques, cafes and restaurants; it is the most up-scale, elegant part of the city. 

A few blocks up from Jerusalem Avenue, we came across the A. Blikle pastry shop and cafe, which is apparently the place to buy pqcski, the rose-flavored jelly donuts that we've heard so much about. Not wanting to flout the local customs, we ordered two. However, it was hard for me to restrain myself when there were so many choices.

I also liked the store itself, and I'm thinking that OCC should consider an upgrade on the new Starbucks going into the Computing Center. Something like this would look classy.

After our mid-morning snack, we headed across the street to Warsaw University. They have a very nice entryway.

Further down the street over the doorway to the library I found a group of bearded men contemplating their navels. I decided to join them.

Past the University, we came to the statue of the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz. Every year, 100 days before graduation, Polish high school students have a formal ball. After the ball, students come to this statue and try to hop entirely around it on one foot; it's supposed to bring them good luck on their finals.

Next door was a church with a statue of Cardinal Stephan Wyszynski, the head of the Catholic church in Poland from 1948 to 1981, who was imprisoned by the Communists. Next to that was a park showing photographs of Warsaw from the 1800s. In the park was a statue sitting on a park bench that Kathy had some fun with.

Near the corner of the park is the Bristol Hotel where all of the war correspondents stayed during the invasion of Poland in 1939. I'm reading Leon Uris' Mila 18 while we're in Warsaw and one of the main characters stayed there. Across the street and down a block is Pilduski Square, another local landmark with a plethora of names over time. During the Nazi era, it was Aldolph Hitler Platz.

In recent history, the square is most famous for Pope John Paul II's visit and mass, held in 1979 while the country was still under Communist rule, and the May 31, 1981 funeral of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. A large white cross marking the Pope's visit is the only memorial in the square.

Inside the square, separating it from the Saxon gardens, is the tomb of the unknown soldier (You can barely see the soldiers standing at attention). Back on the royal way, we climbed the viewing tower next to St. Anne's church to get an overview of the Old Town.

What's interesting about the Old Town (and the Royal Palace; the pink building in the foreground), is that everything in it was build after 1948. You'd swear it was 200+ years old. However, when the Germans left Warsaw there was, almost literally, "not one stone left standing on another." As you walk through town, you'll see glass cubes containing paintings showing the same scene back in the 1700s. The Poles used these paintings to reconstruct the old city.

In the center of the Old Town is the Market Square with the statue of the Polish Little Mermaid who lives in the Vistula. Unlike the Disney version, this one carries a sword.

After visiting the Old Town, we were really hungry, so we stopped into a little place on a side street for some Polish filled dumplings (almost like ravioli) called pierogi. They can be filled with almost anything. We got one order filled with lentils and one with meat. I think these might be Kathy's new favorite food.

After lunch, we headed over to the former Jewish ghetto area. At the outbreak of WWII, there were 330,000 Jews in Warsaw; the only city with more Jews was NYC. When the war started, all the Jews were confined to a newly created ghetto area, and Jews from the surrounding countryside were brought in. At its height, the Warsaw Ghetto held almost a million and a half Jews. 

By 1942, almost a quarter of those had died of starvation and disease. That is when the Nazis began "resettling" the remaining Jews in the East; about 5,000 a day. By the time the population was reduced to 60,000 word got back that the resettlement was really extermination. 

On April 19, 1943, the remaining Jews attacked Nazi strongholds throughout the city. Surprisingly, they were able to hold off the Nazis for almost a month before the last command bunker, at Mila 18, was destroyed. Today, at Mila 18, the rubble from that last bunker is the tomb of those who died defending it. The rest of the largest settlement of Jews in Europe is covered in Soviet-style apartment buildings.

Saturday at the Museums

Yesterday, we came back from errands in the afternoon around 3:00 pm and I was able to update the blog before dinner. Afterwards, Kathy and I got on the tram around the corner (the only form of public transportation we hadn't yet tried), and headed out to a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant in the Prenzlauer Berg section of Berlin.

Before reunification, this neighborhood was a gritty, working-class suburb. After the Wall came down, this was the hip, artist's quarter. Today, it's one of Berlin's most desirable residential neighborhoods. We certainly found it interesting, filled with indie boutiques, galleries, and more restaurants and cafes than I've ever seen anywhere else.

At 11:00 pm, the streets are still filled with people, something I associate with Madrid, and not the staid and orderly Germans. We finally found the restaurant, Oderquelle, around 8:00 pm. Half of the tables were empty, but reserved for late diners. Only one other couple had arrived by the time we finished eating at 10:00 pm.  The food was delicious, wonderfully prepared and inexpensive (around $12 per plate).

On the way home, I lead us to the wrong tram, as I'm apt to do, and we ended up in the middle of Hackescher Markt, at the S-Bahn station. The entire plaza was filled with people dining and we found just what we were looking for: a gelato shop. We sat and listened to a performer singing Hallelujah (which always makes me think of Shrek), and then headed to bed before midnight.

The Neue and Pergamon Museums

Our timed museum tickets were for a 12:00 noon entry at the Pergamon, so we decided to see the Egyptian exhibits at the Neue Museum first. (The one-day ticket gives you entrance to all five museums on Museum Island, but, I can really only handle about 4 hours in a day. So, we decided to visit the two we were most interested in.)

The Neue Museum has the Egyptian and pre-history exhibits, but the Egyptians are what everyone shows up for, including the original bust of Queen Nefertiti. (You aren't allowed to photograph her at all, so the picture here is from the cover of a book in the museum bookstore.)

There is also a complete tomb that was moved from Egypt and reassembled in Berlin.

In addition to the Egyptian artifacts, there was also an exhibit on the "treasures of Troy" which we were interested in because of the jewelry that was recovered. (Our daughter, Hosanna Rubio, is a metalsmith, studying at East Carolina University.)

The archaeologist who discovered what he felt was the city of Troy, mentioned in Homer's stories of the Trojan wars, (later changed to the city of Priam), took the jewelry and had his wife model it before giving it to the museum. After the second World War, the Russians moved it to a museum in Moscow.

When we arrived at the Pergamon Museum we were awe-struck by the sight of Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar gate from Babylon. It was huge, and, because it was built of fired-ceramic-glazed bricks, has survived the ages as almost no other material could have.

When I look at archaeological treasures like this, my sympathies usually lie with those who have had their antiquities taken (like the Elgin marbles in the British museum). In this case, though, I can't help but think how lucky we are that those turn-of-the-century Germans packed everything up and brought it to Berlin. I'd certainly hate to see a news-reel of these being dynamited.

In addition to the gates, several panels from the processional way leading to the gates, covered with ceramic lions, is also just jaw-dropping.

In addition to the Babylonian artifacts, there were two other exhibits that we found fascinating. Across from the Ishtar gate, is a completely reassembled first-century market gate from the town of Miletus in Turkey. This is the largest reassembled exhibit in any museum.

Miletus was one of St. Paul's stops on his Third Missionary Journey. According to Acts 20:16-38, Paul was on his way back to Jerusalem, and in a hurry because he wanted to reach the holy city by the day of Pentecost. Coming from Troas, he bypassed Ephesus but paused at Miletus and called for the elders of Ephesus to come meet him there.

We also saw some glazed bas-relief figures from the palace of Darius the First. These three guys could be the guards that threw Daniel into the Lion's Den. Very cool.

After the museums, we still had two things to see on our last day in Berlin. I'd seen the Maurpark (the Wall park) while watching the Rick Steves special on Berlin. The park got rave reviews in Lonely Planet as well. I wasn't that impressed. While the earlier graffiti was quite artistic, it seems that anyone can just paint over what is there; most of it is starting to look more like portions of the LA River than the edgy and artistic endeavor it once was. We were also a little uneasy. We've felt safe everywhere in Berlin, but the atmosphere here was not that inviting.

After the Maurpark, we headed all the way across town once again (stopping in Hackensche Hofe for a Turkish takeaway lunch) to the Apple Store where Kathy wanted to get her Apple ID updated with her new Calvary Chapel email. The Apple Store is on Kurfürstendamm in West Berlin. On our way back to our hotel, Kathy remarked on how West Berlin seems much more affluent, but lacks the charm of the areas we visited in the East.

A few more tram-rides and we made it back to our neighborhood. Coffee and falafel for dinner, and an early wake up for the train to Warsaw.

Friday - Chocolate and Checkpoint Charlie

Probably one of the tackiest, overrun tourist traps in Berlin is the site of the former crossing from the American to the Russian sector, called Checkpoint Charlie. Think of the Roman Colosseum where actors are dressed as gladiators and they pose for pictures for a tip. Here we have actors playing American border guards during the Cold War.

We spent only a few minutes here this (Friday) afternoon before heading over to Potsdamer Platz and the mall (Arcade) to grab some lunch. Afterwards, we stopped by the bank to get some cash and picked up some Starbucks to take to our room. In about an hour we'll be Face-timing with our grandchildren (Whoops...try again tomorrow!).

This morning, we went to Museum Island and picked up tickets for tomorrow. For $20 you can visit all four of the museums in a day. For the Perganom you have to pick an entry time, but for the others, you can just show your ticket. However, there is a special exhibit of impressionistic painters at the National Gallery, and the line for that today looked to be about a half-mile long.

On the way to the museum, we also stopped by the O2 store because Kathy's phone stopped working when she turned it off and on. It took the clerk at the store about a second to show us how to enter the PIN to re-enable the SIM card. He was smiling.

On our way to Checkpoint Charlie, we stopped by a beautiful, almost Parisian square called Gendrmenmarkt, anchored at both ends by a French (Huguenot) and a German (Lutheran) cathedral. What we came for, though, was Europe's biggest chocolate store, Fassbender & Rausch.

They have an endless variety of individual fine chocolates. Instead of buying a pre-built assortment, you get an empty container, and they fill it with your selection. Here's the selection that we picked out.

The Checkpoint Charlie tackiness only extends about a block. Another block beyond that is another block-long section of the Wall build upon the foundations of an earlier building, that contained the offices of the Gestapo and the SS. Those buildings have been torn down and replaced with an outdoor exhibit called the Topography of Terror, which traces the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany. Compared to the carnival atmosphere two blocks away, the hundreds of people were respectful and somber.

Leaving the exhibits and heading to Potsdamer Platz, you'll find a cobbled line buried in the street that traces the old line of the Wall. From time to time, you'll also find a plaque like this embedded in the cobbles.

Thursday - Friends at the Wall

Today we got up earlier than Wednesday and had a nice breakfast before meeting Paul Rostig, the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Berlin. Paul took us (by subway and bus) to his church in the Wedding section of Berlin.

We were excited to see that the church has rented its own building, so they can have a sign outside.

We sat and talked for an hour or so, and then went and climbed to the top of a large WWII bunker that looks like a mountain. Local climbers use it to practice free-climbing. After tiring ourselves out, we walked back into town and met another member of the congregation, Vesni, for a Turkish lunch and some fellowship.

After lunch, Paul had to leave, so we headed home via the Berlin Wall Memorial along the two block stretch of Bernauer Strasse. The local Berlin government has been investing a lot of money into this area, avoiding the commercialization of Checkpoint Charlie. From ground level, the Wall looks a little plain.

But, when you climb the three-story observation tower across the street, you can see the guard-towers, the two walls separated by no-man's-land and get a feeling for the daunting ordeal it would be to try and get across to the West.

Painted on the walls of the houses surrounding the memorial, are pictures from different years of the Wall. The original houses on Bernauer Strasse butted up right against the wall, so in the first year, (1961) many people escaped to the West by jumping out of windows and then being caught by the West Berlin First Department.

The East German authorities bricked up the windows, and, over the next few years, demolished all of the houses that directly abutted the Wall.

After reunification, several sections of the Wall that had been covering an old cemetery were removed and now they are being reclaimed by the vines.

By the time we got back to our hotel, it had started raining. Since we hadn't eaten yet, we headed out on the S-Bahn for a restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg, the former workers, then artists, now yuppie eating district. Kathy had a schnitzel (which I love). However, I've vowed to be a more adventurous eater, so I ordered goulash with pickled red cabbage and potato dumplings. It was interesting, but I don't think I'll be trying it twice. (Hourik, I forgot to take pictures; sorry.)