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22.8. and 23.8. - First day in Warsaw

Travel in the night train and arrival in Warszawa

This was not only my first travel to poland, but it was also my first travel in a night train at all. My mother had warned me of night trains, where some people go through the train when people are asleep and steal the property of people (that was a night train to Vienna I think), but this was related to a different type of train. Basically there are three options for going on a night train in germany:

1. Sitzwagen (you sit in some comfortable chair)
2. Liegewagen (you have some sort of bed, which is transformed to a seat group during daytime)
3. Schlafwagen (the same as a Liegewagen, but you also have a sink and a closet and they are a bit more comfortable)

The Sitzwagen are more open and the stealing happened in one of those, so one should probably be a bit careful. I booked a three person Schlafwagen on the way to poland and a six person Liegewagen on the way back. The idea is neat in principle - you enter the train at the evening, can sleep during the night and arrive very relaxed in the other country on the next morning. However as I had some stomach problems the days before and on that night I couldn't sleep much.

The other two people in my cabin were both polish, one younger (in the 30s I guess) and one elder man. They were already going to sleep, when I entered the train (Embarrasingly I didn't notice the ladder in the cabin and climbed over their beds up to my uppermost bed). When I woke up, they got some coffee from the conductor, who asked me also something in polish, which I couldn't understand - anyway, with the beds still expanded there was only place for two people, so I decided to take another nap. When they left the cabin I also went out of bed and sorted myself. Leaving the cabin I greeted the elder one, which was standing near the window with a (probably horrible pronounced) "Dzień dobry!" to which he happily replied. He didn't talk any english or german, but maybe he realised, that I was travelling the first time with a night train - and very supportive he showed me the hidden sink, the washing soap, towel, the bottled water and the chocolate croissant for breakfast. So I could at least have a small catlick - there are two showers in a night train, but it had written something with emergency over it and two showers wouldn't be enough for all people, so I think you are not supposed to take a shower in the train (although it would be fun, I guess).

I also exchanged some words with the younger man, which could speak english and told him about my travel plans, which impressed him. He had to go out at Poznań (which was the last town on my trip) so I couldn't talk so much to him. I could get a tea from the conductor (even though I didn't knew at that time, that it is "herbaty" in polish) and thanks to the cheat sheet I made with the help of my nice polish coworker before, I could answer the question of the older one, that I was visiting a friend in Warsaw (pl.: Warszawa). At that time and a lot of times later I regretted, that I didn't do my homework before and learned more polish. Polish is a nice compact language, which allows you to express yourself very exactly. Some sounds are difficult for the german tongue, there are the nasal sounds, which one might know from french, and there are also some sibilant consonants, which one might know from russian, but I still have huge problems with some sounds which are called postalveolar consonants if I read the wikipedia article correctly. But I have to admit, that the biggest hurdle learning the polish language is my laziness.

I wrote a SMS to my friend (Let's give her for internet anonymity reasons a synonym, let's say Wisława. Hi Wisława, if you want a different synonym, please tell me :).), when I thought I would arrive, but shortly after that the elder passenger told me that we arrived in Konin and that we would arrive in Warszawa in roughly two hours, so I wrote another SMS. Unfortunately I forgot to add a 0049 to the mobile number, so Wisława never received these SMS.

I was very happy to see her and her boyfriend on the platform and didn't felt so lost at the ugly train station. I want to apologize in advance, but there are two kind of ugly buildings in Poland (and lot's of really nice building, this is just a stupid rant about socialist architecture, please skip :)): train stations and some socialist buildings. I just noticed that there is a certain architecture I don't feel comfortable with - an architecture, which is build to make you feel small and unimportant. Buildings should be warm and welcoming and not try to put you down. Thinking about it, I feel the same in some parts of the old town of Dresden. It is impressive and beautiful - yet at the same time the narrow alleys whith the black stone and the real sized sculptures make you feel like you are nothing. Also in Düsseldorf there is an gallery building, which has the same problem - the problem is definitly not limited to east Germany or Poland.

Anyway, back to the real stuff. I was really happy to be invited by my friend Wisława and her boyfriend to her place and I was quite curious what to expect from poland. From talking to her I got the impression that the polish mentality is quite different from the german mentality (Who is like the germans anyway?), so I wanted to get my own impressions. One can only scratch the surface, if one doesn't speak the language of the people, but I still think I could observe some differences.

Old town of Warsaw

As mentioned before, after the Warsaw uprising, Hitler ordered to burn Warsaw down and the nazis did it. On theses pictures you see the old town as it was rebuild after the war.

For a long time Kraków was the capitol of Poland. Warsaw became capitol when the king of Poland came from Sweden and wanted to have the capitol more close to Sweden. Even the ruins of the town wall were rebuild.

St. John's Cathedral is one of the oldest churches in Warsaw and some important Poles are buried inside like the polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz.

Handworking crafts are still going very strong in Poland. I think you can find much more on the markets than in Germany.

Polish restauration workers have the reputation of beeing the best in the world. Here one can see why.

The old town was rebuild using photographs but also paintings from Canaletto (which is also famous for one specific view of Dresden, which is named after him.