The reality that I am slowly reaching the end of another Extravaganza is starting to hit home.
While most of yesterday was spent poring over the Interrail map to determine my best course of action, I did after a couple of lessons have my plans somewhat derailed as a student from Warsaw took me to lunch and then introduced me to the joys of Polish home-made spirits. I never knew such a thing as rectified spirit existed and the fact that one can freely buy it in a supermarket to make, essentially, moonshine at home was something of an eye-opener.
For one endorphiny moment yesterday, I had the idea of one last night-train hurrah to Vienna, which is where I’m now going next, apparently, to save on the cost of a hostel, but struggled to book it for reasons best-known to the PKP booking system. The plan today was therefore to sort out what was wrong with my planned train travel and then explore Warsaw a little in the time remaining. In fact, despite some Orzechówka-related discombobulation, I was on the case early and on the phone to the nice ÖBB man shortly after 6am trying to figure out why I could get a price for the sleeper from Warsaw to Vienna, but not a ticket. This confused him at first, but then he explained that there were only spaces left in the female-only couchette compartment and that there was no other accommodation available on that train. Hostess and I tried our collective luck at the international ticket office in Warszawa Gdańska but had the same response there. So hurriedly a hostel was found for tonight, close to Centralna from whence I’m now taking the 06:15 early-morning train to Vienna tomorrow morning, before tourism commenced proper.
We started with a walk to the Jewish Cemetery, taking in some verda stelo-related sights along the way, to visit Zamenhof’s grave because, well, Pasporta Servo. Warsaw is equally proud of Zamenhof, whose family moved here in 1873, and it is where he spent most of his life. Even bus 111, from Gocław to the bus stop on Esperanto Street, pays tribute to him by displaying information messages at its terminus in his language.
The cemetery is easily accessed from the tram stop on Okopowa and stands in the north-west of what was the Warsaw Ghetto, where from November 1940 up to 460,000 Jews were imprisoned before being sent onwards to their fate, if they hadn’t perished already from starvation, disease, or execution. Among them were some 2,000 people from other faiths who considered themselves Polish, but who were considered Jewish by the criteria of the occupiers. Surprisingly, the cemetery was not destroyed during the war. As parts of it have been left to nature, in keeping with tradition, it’s a fascinating reminder that nature prevails in the end.
I’m not usually one to be moved by cemeteries but I was intrigued by the tradition of placing stones on a grave to keep the soul down in this world, or to symbolise the permanence of memory, and for the first few minutes of my visit my ignorance was asking me why someone hadn’t tidied up. It was soon explained to me by Hostess at Zamenhof’s tomb, because upon it are stones which have been brought from other parts of the world by speakers of the language he invented. That struck me as rather cool and I was little annoyed that the best I had with me was a packet of sweets from a shop just down the road. Other graves had paper daffodils on them, leftovers from last week’s commemorations of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Zamenhof died in 1917. His remaining family was exterminated in the Holocaust.
Public transport tickets in Warsaw work on a time basis, and a 75-minute ticket costs 4zł — less than a euro — so there were plenty of exploring options to be had with not too much walking. As time was short, I decided I wanted to visit the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Baroque church which was moved in 1962 to accommodate the widening of a Leszno Street. A student told me about this years ago and as this trip is woefully under-researched, it was the only thing I could think of when Hostess asked me what I’d like to see.
The church was dedicated in the 17th century and had been happily minding its own business from the time of its construction between 1683 and 1731 until 1949, when a new road was opened in front of it which not much more than a decade later was deemed not big enough. There was public outcry at the suggestion that the church be demolished, and the politicians of the time decided that the actual cost of moving 6,800 tons of church far outweighed the political cost of demolishing a church that had (mostly) survived the war and served as one of two active places of worship in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This is how, at 00:54 on 1st December 1962 — after months of preparation in which the church was cut from its foundations and a reinforced concrete grate and six tracks with 420 rollers were put in their place — the church was slowly edged back 21 metres into the monastery garden behind it, at a speed of 0.00558kph. There was no need for exhumations; the occupying forces had already done that when they ransacked even the ashes of monks resting underneath it in 1943.
After 226 nail-biting minutes, the church was in its new home and not a single lamp had gone out inside during the move. The place where the church originally stood is now clearly visible and is marked in the street that displaced it.
The Old Town is not old. My understanding is that except for some churches, very little of what one can see in Warsaw dates from before the Warsaw Uprising when up to 90% of the city was destroyed by hostilities and in systemic retaliation by German troops. After the war, the Old Town was painstakingly reconstructed and now houses churches, palaces, and a market-place.
At 2 Długa, I got to revive the theme of Smallest Things I’d long forgotten, and looked at the poorly-looking house in which historically lived the guard who was responsible for the small wooden bridge over the Vistula. It was once Warsaw’s smallest house, and I think technically still is, as the modern Keret House — the world’s thinnest, apparently — does not meet Polish building codes and is therefore an art installation and not a house, even though someone lives there.
We stopped for coffee and cake, because cake, before it was time to do some work (boo), retrieve bags, and check into my elected hostel for the night. On our way home from coffee, cake, and teeny houses, we walked past the Warsaw Uprising Monument and the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East.
The former depicts insurgents actively engaged in combat and descending into a manhole, a reference to the use of Warsaw’s sewer system as a means of moving through German-held territory during the uprising. The latter honours the Poles killed and murdered in the East, in particular those deported to labour camps in Siberia and killed in the Katyn massacre after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and each of the railway sleepers show the names of places from which Polish citizens were deported for use as slave labour in the USSR as well as their destinations.
After even more coffee and cake, I was left to my own devices and found myself back where my Warsaw adventure had started: standing outside Warszawa Centralna gazing up at the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift from Stalin as a “gift of the Soviet people for the Poles” which opened in 1955. It is monumental and grandiose icon of the city, visible from almost everywhere, which is also a source of great controversy in light of the human rights violations which were taking place during its construction. There have been calls for its demolition, both to remove what some consider an icon of occupation and also to save the enormous amounts of money involved in its upkeep.
I can’t get enough of it.
Hostess and I had joked that with the limited time available, there was no chance for me to see all of Warsaw, but I proved her wrong by paying the 25zł to take the lift to the observation deck and indeed see all of Warsaw in less than half an hour, the time I had before it closed. It’s apparently best when Warsaw is leafy and flowery as the extent of the various green areas available to Varsovians for their leisure activities becomes apparent. Access to the lift is through one of many large marbled hallways that lead to golden elevator doors, from whence one is whooshed silently and in no time at all to the observation deck on the 30th floor which was bathed in glorious setting sunlight shining between the towers that surround it.
In the evening I found yummy foods and then went to sleep.
