Walking around Warsaw
My feet are very glad that I bought that pair of yellow sandals. So much walking for the poor things!
Today was a very eventful day. I am so tired and I wish I was hungry because I want sushi, but I am not hungry. Yet...
I started the day by taking the tram to Nova Praga, my grandfather's old neighbourhood. I was almost at his street when I noticed that my uncle had not provided me with the actual house number. Grr. Plan aborted. Back into central Warsaw, via the island of bears.
The island of bears or bear park or whatever it is called is a gate with a little moat behind it with a bunch of bears on rocks behind that. I know. Cruel for the bears etc. etc. The bears however were quite happy begging for food from the children whose mothers held them up over the fence (!)
I decided that I would spend most of my time in Warsaw visiting Jewish sights. I started with the Yiddish theatre, where I picked up my ticket for tomorrow night. There was a little Jewish shop beside the synagogue where I bought a Jewish charm. The shopkeeper guarenteed that it was silver. I pointed out that it had no stamp and he said that it was too small to stamp. I did not believe it was silver, but it was really cute, so I bought it anyway and my skin is now GREEN. Does green come off? Some of his charms DID have the stamps, so I am going back tomorrow to exchange it. It was only 3$, but HONESTLY!
Next I visited the synagogue, where I met Adi, a Jewish traveler from Melbourne, Austrilia. Who doesn't want to spend the day with someone who apologized for his somewhat ragged appearance, explaining that he had snorted way too much Cocaine in a club the night before...
We spent the rest of the day together, visiting the remnents of Jewish life in Warsaw. There are not many. A bit of Ghetto wall in a private courtyard (we had to ring and yell until someone let us in), a few monuments, the gate from Pawlak prison, a plaque at a mass grave between two apartment buildings. I saw everything except the Umshlagplatz and the museum (tomorrow).
The cemetery was the best I've ever visited. It is a huge walled area beside the Christian cemetery, with 250 000 graves. THAT many. It was crazy. A lot of it was damaged and there were open crypts and smashed headstones, but it was a beautiful place. Really nice to have a companion to trek through the woody cemetery, as it was easy to get lost in the towering brush and masses of stones.
At the cemetery there was a troupe of hasidic students from Brooklyn, only a few blocks away from where I used to live. Adi and I watched them crown around one grave to discuss it, and suddenly there was a crashing and a huge branch fell from the tree right above them. It must have hit them by inches. That would have been horribly dramatic, getting squished by nature in a cemetery... The nice caretaker looked up on his computer for relatives I am looking for. He has catalogued 7000 of the graves - just a beginning, but he found one Machtinger. I wonder if he is a cousin...
Afterwards Adi and I went for traditional Polish food. We had boiled Peirogies (mine with blueberries inside) and borscht with dill and cream. Ugh! The best part about Eastern Europe is that food is so so so cheap. Huge lunch, 3$! I love cheap (good) food!!
That's all for now. I am pretty annoyed about the necklace, but if I can't exchange it tomorrow I will use it for... well, scrapbooking I guess. When I wore it at the restaurant the man at our table (there were long tables) looked at it and then apologized for eating pork at my table. HA! I graciously told him that I did not mind if he ate pork (and then Ari ordered some...;) He explained that his mother had been adopted by gentiles during the war, who had then destroyed all records of her past so they could bring her up as fully theirs. Hmm! There are certainly interesting people to meet! He then told us all about living in the communist era, and how when one wanted to travel they were (hopefully)issued a passport to go overseas, but then had to turn it in when they returned to Poland. Adi made some kind of Secret police joke and got a lecture from the guy. Heh heh, I am so glad it wasn't ME who said anything about the Russian police !!
Okay, time to let someone else use the machine...
Today was a very eventful day. I am so tired and I wish I was hungry because I want sushi, but I am not hungry. Yet...
I started the day by taking the tram to Nova Praga, my grandfather's old neighbourhood. I was almost at his street when I noticed that my uncle had not provided me with the actual house number. Grr. Plan aborted. Back into central Warsaw, via the island of bears.
The island of bears or bear park or whatever it is called is a gate with a little moat behind it with a bunch of bears on rocks behind that. I know. Cruel for the bears etc. etc. The bears however were quite happy begging for food from the children whose mothers held them up over the fence (!)
I decided that I would spend most of my time in Warsaw visiting Jewish sights. I started with the Yiddish theatre, where I picked up my ticket for tomorrow night. There was a little Jewish shop beside the synagogue where I bought a Jewish charm. The shopkeeper guarenteed that it was silver. I pointed out that it had no stamp and he said that it was too small to stamp. I did not believe it was silver, but it was really cute, so I bought it anyway and my skin is now GREEN. Does green come off? Some of his charms DID have the stamps, so I am going back tomorrow to exchange it. It was only 3$, but HONESTLY!
Next I visited the synagogue, where I met Adi, a Jewish traveler from Melbourne, Austrilia. Who doesn't want to spend the day with someone who apologized for his somewhat ragged appearance, explaining that he had snorted way too much Cocaine in a club the night before...
We spent the rest of the day together, visiting the remnents of Jewish life in Warsaw. There are not many. A bit of Ghetto wall in a private courtyard (we had to ring and yell until someone let us in), a few monuments, the gate from Pawlak prison, a plaque at a mass grave between two apartment buildings. I saw everything except the Umshlagplatz and the museum (tomorrow).
The cemetery was the best I've ever visited. It is a huge walled area beside the Christian cemetery, with 250 000 graves. THAT many. It was crazy. A lot of it was damaged and there were open crypts and smashed headstones, but it was a beautiful place. Really nice to have a companion to trek through the woody cemetery, as it was easy to get lost in the towering brush and masses of stones.
At the cemetery there was a troupe of hasidic students from Brooklyn, only a few blocks away from where I used to live. Adi and I watched them crown around one grave to discuss it, and suddenly there was a crashing and a huge branch fell from the tree right above them. It must have hit them by inches. That would have been horribly dramatic, getting squished by nature in a cemetery... The nice caretaker looked up on his computer for relatives I am looking for. He has catalogued 7000 of the graves - just a beginning, but he found one Machtinger. I wonder if he is a cousin...
Afterwards Adi and I went for traditional Polish food. We had boiled Peirogies (mine with blueberries inside) and borscht with dill and cream. Ugh! The best part about Eastern Europe is that food is so so so cheap. Huge lunch, 3$! I love cheap (good) food!!
That's all for now. I am pretty annoyed about the necklace, but if I can't exchange it tomorrow I will use it for... well, scrapbooking I guess. When I wore it at the restaurant the man at our table (there were long tables) looked at it and then apologized for eating pork at my table. HA! I graciously told him that I did not mind if he ate pork (and then Ari ordered some...;) He explained that his mother had been adopted by gentiles during the war, who had then destroyed all records of her past so they could bring her up as fully theirs. Hmm! There are certainly interesting people to meet! He then told us all about living in the communist era, and how when one wanted to travel they were (hopefully)issued a passport to go overseas, but then had to turn it in when they returned to Poland. Adi made some kind of Secret police joke and got a lecture from the guy. Heh heh, I am so glad it wasn't ME who said anything about the Russian police !!
Okay, time to let someone else use the machine...
posted by Melamondiale @ 9:17 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:41 PM,
Wendy said…
You always have such grand adventures! I hope you are taking lots of pics and keeping a journal (although your blog is a pretty good journal on its own). You will have a lot of scrapbooking to do once you get to me!
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