Weary but wiser in Warsaw

Monday 24 September.  Today is our last day in Warsaw and we have seen more evidence of the atrocities committed on this beautiful city and its people just seventy years ago.  First we walked to the Palace of Culture and Science, a monstrosity of a skyscraper “donated” to the Polish people by the Russian government.  It is more commonly known as “Stalin’s Wedding Cake”. The 30^th floor viewing platform provides panoramic views over Warsaw and again highlights the remarkable effort by the Polish people in rebuilding their city – looking out over the former        ghetto area it is difficult to imagine that this area was almost totally destroyed during the war. We then walked to ul Próżna, a short street that contains one of the few remaining facades that survived the German destruction.  You can still see the bullet and shrapnel scars and where the ornamental stucco has been ripped away by bomb blasts.  Then to ul Sienna 55, where a kind gentleman allowed us into the courtyard to see one of the few surviving sections of the redbrick wall that surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto. 100,000 of the people in the ghetto died of starvation – and that was nowhere near the numbers of Jews who died after transportation from the ghetto to the extermination camps.

Then a walk through Ujazdów Park, where we saw a statue of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, composer, pianist and one-time prime minister of Poland.  We continued on through the Botanical Gardens, and a long, long walk through the Lazienki Królewski Park to the beautiful Palace on the Isle, which has its own lake, amphitheatre and performance stage on the water.  Then the long, long walk back to our apartment.  We found it very easy to walk around Warsaw and did not have to resort to public transport (although we walked about 10km a day).  The only problem we had was finding stamps for postcards; despite numerous enquiries in shops and kiosks we could not find anybody who sold stamps.  We finally found a post office on our last walk back this afternoon – on the street directly below our apartment window, a side of the building that we hadn’t walked along!

Tomorrow: 9.25am train for Krakow.