Carol's Diary, Day 3 Berlin - Warsaw 572 Km

Day 3, Poland! And it’s getting warmer. We left the stark functionality of the Intercity Hotel in Berlin’s Ostbahnhof at 6.30 this morning and have been trundling through the vertical flicker of pine forests and flat golden fields and conurbations filled with brightly coloured square boxlike houses and square grey flats. The tracks are significantly inferior and the train sways and jerks cheerily. A couple of hours rocking in and out of consciousness and its time for a visit to the Wars restaurant car for a welcome plate of freshly made scrambled eggs sprinkled with chives and raw onions and a cup of tea.
Day 1, for me, consisted of trying to stuff an ever increasing pile of Essentials into an impossibly small backpack and grappling with a never decreasing To Do list. How do you pack for climates as diverse as the Gobi desert and the Himalayers? I asked the cool well dressed shop assistants in Globetrotter who all shrugged their shoulders with a scornful glance and suggested I buy a jacket that looks like a binbag and baggy trousers that can breathe by themselves. By the time the others arrived, glowing with excitement and carrying suspiciously large bags, I’d manage to shove most of my excess items into a drawer and shut it firmly. Spent much of Day 2 regretting the decision and buying more Essentials to replace the ones shut in the drawer. Still, we all seem to be wearing the same trousers, though this may not be a good sign.

Warsaw is surprising. We were greeted on the platform by Piotr, a colleague of Tom’s, with a firm handshake and a warm smile. The station was surrounded by a gridlock of taxis and the dominating presence of the Palace of Culture and Science. We took 2 taxis in tandem to find our apartment in the entirely rebuilt old part of the city. The keys opened an iron gate into a courtyard filled with struggling hydrangeas and young cats. Through another locked door into the stairwell and the odour of the cats became rather overpowering but our apartment on the second floor was light and pleasant and we drew back the curtains and opened all the windows to views of the river Vistula and the rebuilt cobbled streets. We dumped our stuff quickly and set off to find lunch. Piotr talked about the history of Warsaw, the Warsaw uprising of 1944 when 180,000 people were killed by the Nazis in less than 3 months while the Russian army waited on the other side of the Vistula.
There are signs of the 2nd world war all around. Photographs of the rubble after the bombings, placed infront of the reconstructed buildings. Everything here in the old city feels a bit like a theme park.
In Royal square, a large bicycle protest was taking place below Zygmunt’s statue. It happens once a month in an effort to get bicycle lanes implemented. Most cyclists were kitted out with flash gear from head to toe and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Later Tom and I went for an evening stroll, along the new, old streets and the wall of the city and through the old gate. A group of teenagers were standing by the wall holding axes and swords and we greeted them out of curiosity. They surrounded Tom and told him to give them some money. We laughed and Tom told them yes he’ll give them some money but they should tell us why they are hanging about with swords and axes. Warsaw history, they said with earnest faces.
carol