Warsaw!

We entered Warsaw at golden hour, the setting sun firing up the bricks of the Old Town buildings glimpsed from the bridge we were crossing. Arriving without a place to stay, we ended up in an old (late 1800s?) apartment building downtown that had been transformed into a hotel in the distant past. According to my mother, it looked like one of the hotels that had been fancy during Soviet times, now fallen on harder times. Regardless, the marble and granite stairs, the slightly narrow halls, and most of all the strangely tilted yellow corner room in which Kim and I stayed were all very charming. Stepping out for a late walk, we encountered Polish nightlife on the Nowy Swiat (or 'New World') street, closed to cars on the weekend, before grabbing a light and long-awaited bite to eat, then stumbled back to bed.

Warsaw is a big city. The biggest in Poland, and perhaps the most strongly Polish. It feels distinctive, and a little hard, and not too young. They were at the end of a Gay Pride week while we were there, so it might also be the most liberal Polish city (although my mother says that Polish Catholics, while religious, don't hold much with conservative views; for example, they support the right to abortion) During our two days in Warsaw in the mornings we awoke to find our street and the car scattered with ads for sex services like the erotic leaves of some strange tree. Some were even stuck tenaciously into the window cracks and under the windshield wipers of the parked cars. We set off through Warsaw to an outdoor market. Quickly leaving the older and more architecturally charming center, we quickly enter an area of the city occupied by buildings that remind me of Russia; grey, blocky, sometimes decorated with graffiti and occasionally with murals.
The market, set in a residential neighborhood under impromptu shelters and no blankets, had experienced a hard rain earlier in the morning, failing to dampen the spirits of anyone involved but leaving teacups still filled with water.
We also saw the Warsaw Uprising museum, an incredible museum laid out in a large bunker, creatively and effectively using the space to pay tribute to Warsaw during WWII; the invasion, occupation, resistance, devastation and finally rebuilding of a city purposefully destroyed by the Nazis even as they departed, stranded by the Allies despite their need and yet rebuilt by the Polish people. Its hard to explain the power of a museum so visual in writing; suffice to say I did not previously realize the extent of Warsaw's destruction and it made me cry.
The Poster Museum had posters, although sadly none from the Soviet times since they were all contemporary. The famous Lakientovich (thatis surely spelled wrong) gardens were also beautiful, the Old City (resurrected from the ashes of WWII) beautifully painted and ornate, an abrupt contrast to newer, especially Soviet Era buildings. The large pedestrian boulevards filled with street performers in the evening, some spinning fire, many playing instruments, one blowing fire out of a tuba as it played in an inventive combination fo the two. In Warsaw, tired of Polish food from our days of being fed in the country, we tried the Polish take on Mexican food (interesting, although dill is not the same as cilantro), Turkish food (again, dill in with the cabbage in the kebabs, and served in a tortilla of all things) and Asian food (of indeterminate origin and 'spring rolls' that were almost entirely meat but the best of the lot, no dill in sight and seemingly authentic although what do I know).

In short, Warsaw a very interesting, quite big city. It has a large university, a seemingly large liberal and international community and, in short, is a large European capitol. That said, there is something very Polish about Warsaw. Maybe a determination to keep building and moving forward, from a past when there was no Poland. An entrepeneural but also nationalistic spirit.