2022 World Tour – Warsaw Poland
Hello from Warsaw, my 43rd stop on the trip, not a new country.
Below is the standard summary:
– Cool Ranch Doritos: No
– Thai ATM Card Works: Yes
– Thai Debit Card Works: Yes
– Thai Internet Purchase Works: Yes
– USA Credit Card Works: Didn’t try
– Worldwide Telephone/Data/SMS eSIM Works: Yes
– Spanish SIM Card Works: Didn’t try
– Magic Jack Works: Didn’t try
– VPN Works: Didn’t try
– COVID Compliance Chronicles: No Requirements
– Internet Works: Yes
– Drone Flights: Didn’t check
– Cost of Living: $$$
– Currency: zÅoty zÅ 4.73 = USD $1.00
– Language Issues: None, but I noticed Poland has the least other-languages on signs
Your Short History Lesson, specifically about Warsaw since I already outlined the country earlier:
Warsaw started out as a small fishing village, then in the 16th century Sigismund III moved the Polish capital here until 1795 when it was annexed by Prussia. In 1806 Napoleon grabbed the region as the Duchy of Warsaw, but it became independent again in 1815. Gaining prominence through the Industrial Revolution, Warsaw became one of the largest cities in Europe. It was occupied by Germany during World War I, and was heavily bombed marking the start of World War II, followed by brutal Nazi occupation with all Jews herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. 85% of the city was destroyed by the retreating Germans at the end of the war, followed by the entry of Russian forces leading to 44 years of Soviet control.
My travel options are extremely limited coming down the east side of eastern Europe since Belarus and Ukraine out of bounds. I could only come south from Vilnius through that narrow Lithuania-Poland border and end up in Warsaw. I had a glitch leaving Vilnius on the bus – if you remember my hotel is basically right across the street from the main bus & train station but when I got over there my bus isn’t listed on the big board. I checked my ticket and somehow I’m leaving from a station in the north part of town. Aargh! I have zero time to waste getting there so I paid â¬15 to a taxi driver who thankfully drove like a madman through the city. He pulled up to, literally, a city bus stop on the side of a deserted divided highway and waved his hands saying this is the bus stop. No fucking way! I got out and stood on the curb shouting very bad things about Flixbus after all of the good words I’ve said about them in the past. The clock ticks past my pickup time and I’m sure I’m in the wrong place and my whole day of traveling and paid-for hotel is fucked. Then across the divided highway I see a Flixbus pull up to an identical bus stop on the other side! I waved madly at the driver and I think he saw me. I ran, bumping my rolling bag behind me up to an overpass, across the highway and back down, about 400 meters total. As I approached, heaving air, the bus assistant waves at me to go faster. Fuck you buddy! He says “Passport and ticket” so I show him my passport and he says “No, ticket first.” Now I just want to punch this whole company in the throat. I fall into my seat and the bus is almost empty. Then we drove into the city, through narrow streets and arrive at, and I’m not kidding, THE ORIGINAL BUS STATION. You can’t make this shit up. Why would Flixbus send me way up there to a side of the road city bus stop when the bus was coming here to the real station? Ugh. We started rolling again but as I’m tracking the trip I realized we’re headed straight to the Belarus border! This can’t be happening! Luckily we turned away within 5 kilometers of the border to hit a derelict bus stop in the middle of nowhere, then on to Warsaw with a total trip time of about 8 hours. I’ve never been happier to get off a bus. Flixbus made the mistake of sending me a customer satisfaction survey.
Getting to the hotel via the M1 and M2 metro was easy. Checked into my hotel, two grumpy women really didn’t want to be working there. Room is OK, shower stall is ridiculously small.
The next morning I made up a list of things to see in Warsaw and headed out. First up was the Copernicus Science Museum, local boy does good defining our heliocentric planetary system. Everything inside is a hands-on experiment, like the Ontario Science Center where I went on my birthdays as a kid, because me. Strangely, nothing about space or the solar system. The only downside was the scheduling of short videos, they need to fix this! From there I walked to the Royal Palace then down a cobblestone road when a sign caught my eye – it’s the Marie Curie birth house and now museum! I totally forgot she was from here. It had good displays and audio commentary of her family and early life, then her move to Paris, marriage to Pierre and their groundbreaking work on radioactive elements, leading to Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the husband of Marie’s second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. Nice family tree! From there I walked to the Museum of Occupation but it’s closed on Tuesdays. I really wanted to see this one, because Warsaw was the epicenter of Nazi shitfuckery. Nearby was a marker and brass inlay in the ground showing a boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto, a 1.3 square mile area imprisoning 460,000 Jews at its peak, with constant executions and streams of deportations to concentration camps. It was demolished in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings and only a few markers now show its boundaries. From there I took the tram to the massive Museum of Culture and Science where I had to walk around 3/4 of it to find the right entrance. I tried to go inside but there was a “geo-synthetics” industry conference going on and, according to the girl working the check-in desk, the entire museum is closed. Ugh. Some days you just can’t win.
Is it worth a visit? Yes, more than most places, history is everywhere around you in this city. Just don’t go when important venues are closed.
Next Stop: Kosice, Romania
