When I think
about my trip across Europe through the lens of what my expectations were for
each country, Poland is the one that was not only the most “blank”, but also
turned out to be most unlike what few pre-formed impressions I had before we
set foot there.
Enjoying some raspberries |
My very first
thought when getting off of the train was, “Such a gorgeous day!” That may
sound kind of unremarkable, but after living for 5 years in a polluted
megacity, being in an urban environment that is so full of green and with
clear, blue skies is something that makes quite an impact. In fact, after we
checked in with our hosts, we could not help but take our time walking to the subway. We stopped at a fruit stand near
the train station, relaxed in the warm sun and indulged in some (what felt like) decadent snacking as we
waiting for our train into the city center.
Our goal for the
first day was to walk around the Old Town section of the city. And by “Old” I mean
older than Beverly Hills 90210, but
not Hill Street Blues.
A little too perfect? |
Warsaw’s Old
Town is gorgeous. Tragically, it is merely a reproduction of what it looked
like before the Nazis leveled it during WWII. As you walk around, everything is
so clean and beautiful… it reminded me of a Disney version of a city. It was
true to its original form, to be sure, but it had an unmistakable aura of
“fakeness”. It was too perfect.
Seeing such
painstaking recreations all around, it made me think about just how traumatic
WWII was. On top of all of the devastation and lives destroyed, the loss of so much physical
history in such an ancient country must have taken an incredible toll on the
population, which was made ever more horrible by the Soviet occupation that
followed.
An aerial view of Old Town after the war on display in the city castle museum. |
Part of my
erroneous (if limited) expectations of Poland came from this period of Soviet
occupation. Having come of age during the Cold War, my mind was filled with
images of gray buildings, potholed streets and drooped shoulders on
uniformly-dressed people. Now, before you go getting all “But that all ended back in 1989,” on me, I KNOW that these ideas/images
come from what amounts to a generation ago. I wasn’t really expecting to see an
ex-Soviet satellite still grappling with crushing poverty and colorless facades
everywhere. But it was all that I had.
And it’s not
only me. Since my visit there, every time I’ve told folks how much I loved
Poland, almost to a person they’ve been surprised. It’s not that there is a
pervasive feeling out there that Poland is a crappy place to go, but people
generally have no idea what to expect. It has no reputation.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum |
Warsaw was like
a big wake up call. On my first day I was learning that the city was not only
lousy with history, much like my hometown, but that it has eerie memorials to
it all over the place, of which Old Town was only the biggest. After a stop for
lunch (where I was completely blown away by the food and some incredible hard
cider), we went over to the city’s museum dedicated to the Uprising in 1944.
This was an
awesome place, though I had actually assumed that it would be dedicated to not
just the 1944 city-wide uprising, but also to the Jewish ghetto
uprising in 1943. There was acknowledgement of the ghetto
and the resistance there at the start of the museum, but it was more to set the
stage for what came later.
The Red occupation. |
For history
buffs like us, it was an incredible place to lose ourselves in… which we
promptly did. (This would not be the first museum that we ended up spending
much more time in than we had originally budgeted.) Full of incredible
artifacts and detailed testimonies of what happened during the tragic battle to
liberate Warsaw from the inside, it was an exciting, moving place. The final
exhibit, which acknowledges the Soviet occupation that came right after the
rebellion had been crushed (and the city had been leveled as punishment by the
retreating Nazi forces). It was a wonderfully evocative space that brings home
the tragedy of what happened.
Just down the
street from this space came what was to be my only disappointment with Poland:
The Ghetto. Or, rather, the lack of it.
Only a couple of
blocks from where the beautiful Uprising museum stood as a monument to heroic
resistance against the Nazis, the spot where the Jews of the day made their
stand -and, arguably, inspired the city-wide revolt more than a year later- has
only a marker on the sidewalk and a plaque on a wall to bring attention to it.
A memorial map of the Ghetto, giving an idea of how small it was. |
Marking the wall of the Jewish Ghetto that stood from 1940-1943 |
When we came across this comparatively insignificant remembrance, I remembered the warnings of some of my Jewish friends who had told me that when they’d visited Poland they detected a slight, yet clearly present, undercurrent of anti-Semitism still in the air. It made me sad.
(NOTE: This
lapse was partially rectified earlier this year by the opening of the new Warsaw Jewish
Museum in the area.)
After some more
walking around the city we finally headed back to our hosts’ home, where we
enjoyed an awesome dinner with them and shared some lovely conversation. It was
such a fantastic way to end an incredible (and tiring!) day.
On day 2 we
decided to rent some bikes, and it turned out to be an awesome choice. We set
off early and did a kind of circuit around Old Town, venturing out into the
gorgeous parks and along the city’s river. I was blown away by just how
wonderful Warsaw’s green spaces were, and moved by how many reminders of WWII
there were everywhere.
The mine-clearers' memorial. |
Scattered all
across the city are markers and monuments. Some are small, while others can be
quite large. They commemorate everything from specific atrocities committed by
“Hitlerites” (I love how the Poles decided to call the invaders that, instead
of “Germans”), to soldiers who were killed while trying to clear the city of
mines.
Our final stop
on the second day was at what would be the first in a series of what I ended up
calling our “Holocaust Guilt Trip,” the Pawiak detention center and transfer
depot,
Since it was
closed on that day, the place was abandoned and almost empty, save for a single
Chinese tourist who wandered through while we were there. This seemed fitting
somehow, as it was a very haunting place; a crowed would have seemed wrong. We
took our time and soaked it all in. Being the history junkie that I am I knew
that I’d be totally engrossed by WWII sites like this, but I wasn’t really
prepared for the utter sorrow that the place evoked.
It was kind of
like I was outside myself. I am aware that all of this happened in the past, so
there is nothing that I can do about it. Part of me said that I shouldn’t feel
saddened or angry by it, but another part of me wanted to feel it. I wanted to
bear witness to what happened, in whatever limited way that I could.
And so we
lingered.
After a while we
drifted back towards our bikes for the ride back to the cafĂ© where we’d rented
them in the morning, but we decided to stop in one more beautiful park along
the way, to kind of balance out the sadness that we’d just dipped ourselves
into. As if on cue, however, a rainstorm blew in and caused us to take shelter
under a building on the edge of the park, forcing us to sit and stew with our
dark feelings for a little while longer.
Eventually the
clouds passed and we got our time in the lush beauty of yet another park before
it was time to head home for the night. And as we stepped off of the train to
walk back to our hosts’ home we were greeted with a brilliant rainbow, and I
couldn’t help but feel like this was Warsaw in a nutshell: Gorgeous spaces with
dark shadows that sometimes creep up on you, but that are never around for long
before the sun returns to push them back again.
I wondered what
our next stop, Gdansk, could possibly have in store to top this physically and
emotionally exhausting city.
Wake me when we get to Gdansk! |
*NOTE: To see
the full-size version of the pictures included here and the entire album of photos from our time in Warsaw, with lots more details and
stories, click here.