Warsaw. The city with rich, though once painful history. The city built up from the debris. The
city with the biggest number of catholic churches I've ever seen in my life. The city which Polish people I met didn't approve to be the best place in Poland. The city where distant history is embodied in 50-year-old buildings. The city where architecture shows how well past interrelates with future. The city in a foreign country I didn't feel like a foreigner in. The city hosting the International Congress 2006 of AIESEC...I had three days available for exploring places around the city and communicating with the @ members. I spent three amazing days almost on my own and I didn't feel alone even for a second!
At first it was a bit difficult for me to get oriented in the city. This huge building at the photo - the Palace of Culture and Science - is so big and looks the same from all 4 sides and in the beginning when entering one of the boulevards around it I co
uldn't understand where I was. :-D But in the end it was much better. I even almost succeeded in pronouncing the name of the underground station (see photo on the left) which is also the name of a boulevard crossing the centre at the Palace of Culture and Science. So this name is pronounced like [svientokrshuska] or something similar to this (I never managed to pronounce it in the proper way) and means "Holy christ" ("Sveti krast" in Bulgarian). Although the sounding of the language is similar to Bulgarian (Slavic language as well), it's very, very difficult even for a Bulgarian! All these consonants in one place... :)
Anyway, the city centre is one thing, but just go to see the Old Town! You look around and you can't believe it's rebuilt 1:1 almost from nothing after WW II! I fell in love with all these beautiful houses, painted in different friendly coluors :) The atmosphere there is amazing, you hear around you more foreign-speakers than Polish-speakers :-D Everyone taking photos (of course). My camera almost froze because of the cold weather (it was rather cold there, while Sofia enjoyed 20 C, Warsaw temperatures were no more than 0-3 C!!! Anyway, it was not a big problem as long as you find a place to drink a cup of hot tea. I understood that Polish people are quite keen on tea, probably trying to break the record of british people, but I think they drink the tea without milk unlike the UK :-D So I dound myself in the Old town, looking at the Royal Palace (the red painted building on the photo)On it's left (if you look from the same perspective as on the photo) is the statue of king Zygmunt, also
rebuilt after the war (like the castle and everything around). And between them - a small square (see photo below).The day I took this photo there was a celebration of something - I couldn't understand what exactly. There was a stage with musicians in front of the castle and there were some funny men and women dressed like some kind of flowers probably - each one i
n different colour. They were walking on high stilts and amuzing the audience which consisted mainly of children and their parents/grandparents. It was such a lively scenery, all these people walking around, making funny gestures and moves :-D Why don't I see similar things back in Sofia??
I kept on walking, walking, walking in and around the old city, capturing views like this one below showing Wisla river in the background. Everytime I entered an unexplored street I was amazed by the colours used for the buildings and especially the combination of colours of neighbouring houses! It reminded me very, very much of the Old town of Plovdiv back in Bulgaria and this was another reason why I felt this place so close to home :) These narrow streets, and when you look above you see almost nothing else but the roofs of the buildings and the blue sky between them :)
Something I really admired were all those ornaments and metal
things hanging on the walls of the buildings, also the clocks on the walls... each one totally different from the other! I wonder how much time they've "played" creating them... They really give a unique spirit to the whole place. Without them, all these buildings would have looked dull even with their lively colours. So I tried my best to capture as many of them...to keep
them for memory, otherwise you just have to have one at home... You see, I adore these kind of small things, they are my passion, really :-D
So, on my way around the Old town I reached the Old town square! You can see on the photo (left) all these buildings I was talking about, each one with different colour, ornaments, height and decorations :-D And a carriage in the foreground! People like this man are making city tours with their carriages starting from the...
graveyard. It might sound weird (really, it sounded pretty wierd for me at first), but then I
understood that the graveyard in question was a very old one and it was alsmost untouched by the city bombings during WWII. So in a way it was a preserved original piece of history in a city almost destroyed. At the square there are some benches where people can sit and admire the view. And lots of pigeons!!!! :-D Also a statue of a syren which is something like a symbol for Warsaw (or Poland - I didn't quite understand of what exactly). On the right you see a photo of the square seen from a small street flowing into it. What is interesting here are the walls of the building in the right part of the photo. It's like a small fortress - it;s ecause in past this was actually the very inner part of the city, the most important place in Warsaw and actually the city consisted only of the Old town surrounded by a thick wall. And for defence reasons buildings near the centre of the town were built in a way so that the streets leading to the centre get narrower and narrower.
That's me on the right! :-D One of the few photos of me in the city! Luckily (not only for photos) I found out that I've got a relative of mine in Warsaw. He's several years older than men but he's something like a distant uncle of mine :-D And he's half Polish, lives in Warsaw so he was like a tour guide for me and actually he told me most of the stories about the city I've mentioned here.
So my way leads to the Old town walls and this small fortress with towers called Barbakan. This is where the gate of the Old town leads to the so called "New town", which is at least several hundred years old, but it's newer than the Old town and it's outside the walls and that's why it's called "new town" :-D
On my way to the new town I saw this beauthiful thing. (see photo on the left) Everything made of grass! All sizes! Some of them painted in lively bright colours! Grass suns, grass pumpkins, grass cats, dogs, donkeys, rabbits, hedgehogs...everything :-D I bought a small hedgehog, they were pretty expensive and I couldn't afford neither a bigger one, nor a second or third grass animal. But nevertheless it's a good souvenir. The photo as well. I was a bit embarrassed to take this photo and I pretended as if I'm taking photos of Barbakan (which is next to it). And I guess they didn't see me. :)
So that's the end of my story. I'll finish with this last photo. It describes the best how I felt in the end of my journey in Warsaw and Poland. Discover. Feel. Inspire.
Nothing more... Nothing less...
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