In the observation deck of the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw
This leg included a highly anticipated reunion with our longtime friends Sarah and Nathan. The four of us have traveled a lot together in the US, and à la Captain Planet and the Planeteers, I like to think we each contributed a core element to this trip’s success. Nathan – wind – the power of communication…Nathan broke the language barrier with his impressive Polish language skills, interpreting menus for the group, greeting people with ease, and at one point wowing a bartender by ordering, in flawless Polish, the drink with the most complicated title on the menu. Sarah – heart – finding the pulse of every location…Sarah came straight from an intense art week in NYC, almost directly from covering an event to the airport, and by the time she’d landed in Warsaw not only had she perused a Lonely Planet guide thoroughly enough to have a beat on what to see when and where, she’d also organized some welcome packages through the local tourism boards. Matt – fire – power of the hearth…Matt kept the roof over our heads with his exceptional skills at booking awesome lodging and laying out an itinerary to meet our group’s needs comfortably; he kept our bellies full with restaurant reservations at spots that pleased the crowd; he also literally fired up the grill when we did a cookout. And I? – Earth, I suppose, the stuff of maps and hills and wheels on the ground...I drove the rental car.
Warsaw
The view from our Warsaw lodging
It’s a significant city in the history of Poland’s Jewish population. The Polin Museum traces Jews in Poland back to the 10th century and documents the heritage of Poland’s Jewish community up to the present. The “Jewish Warsaw” walking tour through the former Jewish Quarter, the Warsaw ghetto, and the Nożyk Synagogue tells the history from the 14th - 20th centuries. Our Polish guide told directly and unsparingly of the waves of betrayal, antisemitism, and “othering” that Poland’s Jews, a community initially welcomed in and protected by King Casimir the Great, encountered over these centuries, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust. These events decimated Warsaw’s once thriving Jewish population.
Later in the trip we would visit Auschwitz and Birkenau and contemplate the catastrophic loss of life at the hands of the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Auschwitz was a Polish military barracks, and so its buildings were already standing when the Nazis occupied the area and committed their atrocities in that space, but Birkenau -- that, the Nazis built. Today, the Birkenau memorial retains just a few intact buildings to testify to what occurred there, but where the other buildings have been demolished, the museum has chosen to keep a clear footprint of each. Row upon row of these partial structures extend from the central complex and its infamous railway terminus. To visit there is to witness the sheer scale of Nazi evil and the machinery of its lies; it is also to honor those who died there.
Memorial Tablet in Ladino
Warsaw is also a city where you can learn a lot about Poland’s Communist period. We ate at Bar Bambino, which is a lunch counter straight out of the past. You order at a register, pass your ticket to a kitchen, and come back with a cafeteria tray to collect your items when they shout them out. You’ll find milkbars all around the city; this one was in the midst of impressively featureless Communist block-style housing units, which is also an interesting legacy of that era. As is the Palace of Culture and Science. This building, Matt and I were told on a Communist Warsaw walking tour, is “the gift we Poles didn’t ask for,” a 1955 masterpiece of the Soviet era imposed upon Poland and dedicated to Josef Stalin. For some insight into why this monument to Soviet power is so despised by some Poles to this day, you can check out the Warsaw Rising Museum. What I gathered from our visit there is that in 1944 the Polish Home Army launched a heroic struggle to liberate Warsaw from Nazi occupation. Lasting a full 63 days, weeks longer than the Nazis anticipated, this armed resistance ultimately failed when the approaching Red Army halted on the other side of the Vistula River, allowing the Germans to regroup and prevail. Evidence suggests that Stalin directly ordered the Red Army to desist so that the Poles would be weakened enough to ultimately bow to Soviet influence as the war ended.
The Palace of Culture and Science
Warsaw is a fantastic city for music. Chopin was born here, and do they ever celebrate their local son! “Chopin benches” that play his tunes dot the main promenade. The Chopin Museum is an interactive masterpiece; go there to immerse yourself in music through sound-canceling headphones, in small listening chambers, or on an automated piano display synced to the sheet music of your choice. There are so many intimate concert halls offering Chopin recitals that you can catch a show any night of the week. Matt and I attended one and got to hear the famous “Raindrop Prelude” among other pieces. But the best experience of his music here, in my opinion, was what we got to enjoy with Sarah and Nathan the morning after they arrived – an open air Sunday recital beneath the Chopin statue in Łazienki Królewskie Park, held twice every Sunday in the summer season and drawing a massive crowd.
A final note on Warsaw – the nightlife! I made a friend on the Jewish Warsaw walking tour, Mayra from Brazil. A resident of the city for the past year, she was taking advantage of some days off work to finally get to know the history of her new home. She was kind enough to show me the ropes the next evening when we met back up for dinner and a night on the town. To the many readers I'm sure were deeply disturbed that I'd left out the fifth Planeteer back in the intro...not to fear: Mayra – water – my guide to imbibing along the Vistula River. From a tiny craft beers pub, to a karaoke cellar where it was our poor luck to sing immediately after a showstopping rendition of Tina Turner’s “The Best,” to cherry liqueurs at one of the many wiśnia stalls, to a quick pass by one of the hole-in-the-wall shot bars, and finally to the Palace of Culture and Science to admire the transformation of the space into an after-hours disco party…you can have quite the night out in Warsaw, and we certainly did.
Zakopane
It’s a charming mountain town where you can buy fresh produce, the regional smoked mountain cheese (oscypek), and sausages to your heart’s content to cook up in your rented alpine chalet (especially if you have the masterful home chefs Sarah and Nathan and grill manager Matt in your company). You can take a break from Chopin and enjoy the Górale (Polish highlander) string music performed at restaurants around the village.
The traditional buildings of Zakopane feature wooden frames with artfully carved ornamentation. Of course we booked a place with a hot tub and sauna so we could prove to Sarah and Nathan that thermal waters have indeed been a through-line of our year of travel.
Zakopane is also great for alpine hiking. More on this later from the Slovakian side of the range, but from the Polish side we hiked Morskie Oko and some of the Dolina Strazyska trail and both were excellent.
Morskie Oko
Dolina Strazyska
Kraków
It's a beautiful city whose Stare Miasto (Old Town) was left relatively unscathed during World War II. We did many fun things here, and I’ll highlight a few of the best.
We learned all about the origins of Kraków at the Underground Museum directly below the market square in the town center. Love that the first three buildings erected in old Kraków’s town center were a prison, a torture chamber, and a brewery. Also love that people got so worked up over their dice and marbles that the Catholic Church had to issue an injunction against violence resulting from these games. Comforting to know that people have been people for a very long time.
We went to Wawel Castle to be awed by the Polish Golden Age on display. My takeaway: education is always a great investment. The Jagiellonian Dynasty was certainly wise to play catch up to the Czechs and establish a local university at Kraków. Very quickly, Poland had a Copernicus to its name in the science world.
We played on machines dating back to the 1960s at the Pinball Museum.
We saw the “stary dom” of St. Mary’s Basilica and its restored carved wood altarpiece, which had been stolen for the Third Reich by Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of occupied Poland.
We had a few nights out in the Jewish Quarter. You can find food, music, and cool theme bars. Here we tried zapiekanki (Polish pizza subs) and bigos (hunter's stew) in bread bowls.
A final note on Poland
Everyone says when you’re in Poland you should visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine, and everyone is absolutely right. I don’t want to give too much away, but you’ll learn about horse blindness and you’ll see an entire underground cathedral. You can get engaged and married and hold a well-attended reception in this mine.
John Paul II went to Wieliczka during his childhood but never made it back as pope. A visit was scheduled for the early 2000s, but his declining health didn’t allow it. Still, there’s a statue of him there, just like there is a statue of him pretty much everywhere in Poland. When you’re the first non-Italian pope in about 450 years, you’re a big deal.
The Slovakian High Tatras
When people ask me what my favorite part of this trip has been, I find myself naming neither countries nor cities but instead “multi-day hikes.” I love the adventure of having to get on foot to the place I’ll be sleeping each night, the physical exhaustion and accompanying mental respite. So here’s another one for the books. First of all, Slovakia’s alpine access infrastructure gets an A+. They’ve got an extremely well-timed train loop that takes hikers from the various alpine towns to a network of trailheads so that you can day-hike, through-hike, or, in the winter, enjoy a full slate of winter sports. Second, a question: when you’ve hiked your fourth consecutive twelve-mile day up and down a mountain, what type of food are you craving? If your answer is cheese dumplings with bacon grease or a bowl of hearty goulash or Czech bread dumplings with meatloaf and a side of garlic soup (the three menu options at most huts), you are absolutely correct, and Slovakia is definitely a place you should hike.
Finally, a few perks of the Slovakian High Tatras: at some points there are ski lifts and gondolas to ride as little side journeys, a delightful break in a long hiking day. There’s also a photogenic fox that hangs out around one of the ski resorts. Mostly, though, what this hike has going for it are its storied alpine huts. There are 13 mountain chatas in this range, and we stayed at, ate at, or warmed up in seven of them. Each has a different style and history. Chata pri Zelenom plese (Cottage on the Green Lake) has a cozy wood-paneled dining room where we all draped our sweat-damp layers over the wood fired stove and gazed out upon the gorgeous view. Zamkovského chata was used as a haven to partisans, Jews, and political prisoners during the Slovak Uprising of 1944.
Even though we summited Rysy, the highest peak on our itinerary, in white-out fog and horrific wind, accidentally started our descent into Poland instead of Slovakia, and, correcting this, stumbled through a mountaintop makeshift toilet, Matt and I both loved this hike and highly recommend it. If you want to give the High Tatras a try, here’s a great blog that helped us plan it out.
Comments