Warsaw : a history lesson

Ever since I saw The Pianist I have wanted to come to Warsaw. The music, the history, the re-building. It seemed like such a cool place to visit and I wasn't wrong. I felt automatically at home when I arrived in the central train station and began my 15 min walk to my hostel.

My hostel is located just off a main street and a 20 min walk from Old Town. It’s a vibrant area with lots of restaurants, bars and cafes. Food of any kind is at your fingers tips and history is just around the corner. Best of all the hostel serves home made waffles every morning for breakfast!

I’ve spent 4 nights here, made friends with the American and 4 English chaps in my room and been on 3 walking tours. The first walking tour was fab and ironically called 'the Old Town’ tour, even though Old Town is probably only 60 years old.

Warsaw was decimated during WWII. After an uprising from the Poles, an angry Hitler order for the destruction of the city and to kill anyone they found still alive. The pictures afterwards are unreal. On the Jewish Quarter Tour the guide told us that the reason Warsaw has hills is because they couldn’t remove all the rubble from the town, as it would’ve cost too much, so they turned them into hills around the city to build houses on. Otherwise Warsaw is traditional a very flat town.

Over two days I completed the Old Town, WWII and Jewish Quarter walking tours. I love walking tours, it’s a great way to get your bearings for the new city your in. The Old Town tour ended with us participating in a traditional Polish activity, the act of drinking vodka. We were told that you always eat something afterwards either, a piece of bread with lard, a pickle or salted herring. We were lucky enough to receive lard on bread with a slice of pickle. Yum yum haha.

We walked past the museum for Marie Curie, the first person and only woman who has ever received 2 Noble Prizes and for two different fields and learnt about this awesome woman and her awesome family. Her husband and daughter are also Noble Prize winners and her other daughter, or refers to herself as the black sheep of the family, is an accomplished musician who has received equal awards in her own field.

Things I learnt on the tour: old town and new town, the area of Praga, WWII and the Warsaw uprising, Jewish culture and history and how they came to live in Warsaw. We walked through the Jewish Ghetto and saw bullet holes in walls. There are signs all around the city that state how many people were killed by Nazis and on what date as a sign of remembrance.

We walked past statues and monuments for Jan Karski – he presented the first reports on the Holocaust, but the Allies couldn’t believe what he was telling them, the train station where the Jews were boarded, and different war memorials.

We learnt about L. L. Zamenhof who felt that with an international auxiliary language we could achieve a world without war, presumably so we couldn’t get lost in translation. As such he created his own language, Esperanto, apparently up to 2 million fluently speak it worldwide.

The walking tours were extremely informative. It would appear that it has been a very, very long time since Poland was it’s own country, which is sad.

The other great thing walking tours do is tell you about great places to eat and foods to try. Some of the foods I sampled included: dumplings, honey mead, local cheese with jam, a cheesecake type dessert, z thing and various vodkas. I’m sure there was more, but I’ve forgotten.

I went out a couple of nights with my new American and English friends, trying various Polish vodkas – as was of course expected! And watched a concert of famous Polish pianists music played on the organ in an old church. It wasn’t very good and I wished I’d gone to the Chopin concert instead.

I also visited the National Museum hoping to see any paintings as mentioned in the Monuments Man book I did not.

All in all, Warsaw has been just as amazing as I wanted it to be. It was fantastic and I recommend visiting it any day!

Next stop: Greece

Where I stayed
New World St. Hostel - ul. Nowy Swiat 27, Warsaw, Poland

Great place to stay. Beds are comfy and there is lots of space between the top and bottom bunks. Really, really friendly staff. Washing machine, a dishwasher, great kitchen, really well located. They make homemade waffles for breakfats. However! There are 84 steps to climb to get there. Great cardio haha.Read more