Polish Pretzels and Places

After one of the seemingly longest bus rides ever, we arrived in Warsaw. We arrived at our really awesome hostel which was all eco friendly and they even had a vegan breakfast option which nell was very excited about. Even more of a win they gave us a 4 bedroom room instead of 12 and we were the only ones in it so we took full advantage of that and soon the room looked alot like the ones we left at home.

We started our Jewish polish site seeing with a search for a part of the ghetto wall. We failed. It was complicated. We then moved on to the Jewish Synagogue which had a kosher restaurant which was really exciting and they had felafel for only $3!

We then continued to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which actually had very little to do with jewishness so the theme of the day was pretty much ruined. It was still pretty interesting though

Our second attempt at finding the Ghetto wall then began. And failed. We landed up in the supermarket. Our third attempt however was successful with the help of an old Polish women who saw us looking very confused. I think how confused we were was fully justified because it was in a courtyard of an apartment building and at one point I was quite sure we were trespassing.

After a long and tiring day of being Jewish we went to a vegetarian restaurant and had what was described as “a burger” but it was really just a soy fillet. Which was a bit sad. (says Lee)

The second day of sightseeing began with an artistic and metaphorical tree sculpture called “letters from Jerusalem” which was just a palm tree in the middle of a round abouty thing. We didn’t really get the artistic statement but we posed in front of it anyway

We went through the old town which was so pretty as well as the 13th century royal castle.

(and yes we are wearing matching clothing. we can't help it)

But the day would not be complete without eating everything Polish including pierogi, crazily tall ice-cream, malt beer and of course gelato.

We also went to the Jewish cemetery which is the biggest one in Europe and we bought a candle.

We moved on to see Praga which is an area of Warsaw that is more original as it was less bombed. It was used as the setting for The Pianist.

As we crossed the bridge to Praga we had a bear incounter... there was an advertisement for the zoo in the form of a bear enclosure right on the road, about 10m from the main road.

Not the best conditions ever. It was a bit of a rundown area (as my mum would say ‘not very lebedic’) so we tried to leave before dark.
But before we did we made friends with a kebab shop owner from Bethlehem who made really good falafel.

We went back to our hostel by bus and met Charlie, a Canadian guy, who we went out with for a beer. While we were out at some random bar in Warsaw, we were out we ran into Amanda and Steve, who we met in Vilnius and then ran into again in Kaunas. They joined us and we chilled for a while until the bar was closing. Sadly we couldn’t actually leave the bar because Amanda got stuck in the bathroom but don’t worry the owner gave us free beer and Amanda didn’t even go thirsty and drank some through the key hole.

After about 20 minutes of us trying to break the door down using knives and forks the owner called a locksmith and power tools became involved after about an hour and a half, a destroyed door and Nell completely fallen asleep on one of the tables, she got out.

The next day we got up early to buy tickets to Krakow. After missing the first train, we got on the 2nd and met a Polish/German who seemed to hate most things about Germany (except the kebabs) but was really friendly. We found our hostel really easily even with the constant distractions of cheap pretzels. We put our stuff down and went to check out the supermarket (shocking, I know) and eat pretzels.
(sadly we were too hungry and excited by the pretzels to take a photo)
We went back to our room and met a girl from Alaska (Kerry we think?) and went to book a tour to Auschwitz. It was quite late by then so we went for a bit of a walk around the old town and went back to the hostel.

The next morning we woke up really early to start our tour at 8am. The bus to Auschwitz was about an hour and a half and we watched a movie about the camps for most of it. When we got to Auschwitz we were started our tour by walking around Auschwitz I which is used as a museum. It’s really hard to describe what it was like being there.

In some ways it was exactly as I imagined after years of seeing pictures and hearing stories and going to museums. But the size of it is probably the most confronting part.
At Birkenau all you could see were hundred of brick chimneys were the Nazis had burned down the wooded sheds. It was also weird because it was quite crowded, especially in the museum.

We got back from Auschwitz at about 2.30pm and decided to go on the Jewish walking tour. We quickly found out we were the only Jewish people on the tour which I found surprising. The tour guide was really good and we went around Kazimierz which was the old Jewish area and walked to the old Jewish ghetto

which was a bit better preserved and presented than the one in Warsaw. We finished our tour at Oskar Schindler’s factory, where we didn’t get a chance to go inside but we did learn that he wasn’t actually as great as the movie made him out to be, which was a bit depressing.
That night we chilled at the Hostel with Kerry and Some English people we met, Adam, Alex and Emily. We weren’t in the mood for a crazy night after our pretty intense day and went to bed quite early.
Our last day in Poland started with us attempting to secure transport to Budapest, but failing as it was incredibly expensive. After spending some time studying maps of Europe we decided to go via Vienna and spend the day there.
We then went back to the Jewish quarter to explore a bit more and buy some really good value baguette thing.

We had a really chilled day, wondering around, eating and finally buying a new phone...which was for some reason in Hungarian so the hostel couldn’t help me change the language.

We went back through the old town and watched some gangstaaa street performers who had to be the weirdest break dancers ever. Most of their routine was barking.

Just before we left we got a pretty bridge photo

Then we went to the bus station and headed off to Vienna.