Global Wanderer

26/11/24 – 27/11/24

A quick cross-platform train change as Mockava, and a cursory glance at passports by the Polish border guards, and we were on our way to the capital, Warsaw! Despite being to Poland before, I’d never had the chance to check it out – the train route we were taking offered us the opportunity to spend a night, and I wasn’t about to pass that up!

The train pulled in to Warsaw Central Station at around 8pm, and we headed straight to our accommodation – Hotel Metropol – to check in. The first sight you are greeted by as you leave the station is the skyline-dominating Palace of Culture and Science. Built in 1955, the Stalinist icon is probably Warsaw’s most defining monument, and it was certainly an impressive sight, lit up at nighttime!

The Palace of Culture and Science lit up in violet

We dropped our bags off, and headed off out to find some pierogi, which was absolutely the best way to begin our time in Poland. About 10 minutes walk from where we were staying, we found a busy little restaurant dishing out fresh pierogis and cold beer – safe to say we walked back that evening feeling nicely full!

The next morning, after having an enormous breakfast, we began our full-day exploration of the Polish capital. We had a train booked to Krakow that evening, which left us with about 10 hours to walk around the city. Our first stop? Warsaw’s incredible, rebuilt old town! During the Second World War, Warsaw became a city of smouldering ruins, with an estimated 85% of the city’s buildings destroyed. After the war, something miraculous happened though – Warsaw underwent an intensive, years-long campaign to rebuild, with architects consulting artwork and photographs from before the war to ensure a faithful reconstruction of the city’s historic centre. Nowadays, Old Warsaw is a bustling inner-city neighbourhood, with beautiful buildings, busy cafes, and some incredible architecture – and to top it all off, funky Christmas decorations!

Cool Christmas decorations, and Warsaw’s town square

A photograph from an outdoor exhibition in Warsaw showing the results of rebuilding efforts in the city post-war

We made our way through Old Warsaw to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, housed in the only part of the Saxon Palace that survived the Second World War. Amazingly, restoration and rebuilding works in Warsaw are still ongoing – there is a current project underway to rebuild the entire palace!

We were lucky with the timing, catching the changing of the guard ceremony at midday!

Continuing on our whistle-stop trip through Warsaw, we made our way to the Palace of Culture and Science (known in Warsaw as the PKiN, after its Polish name, Palac Kultury i Nauki). It is a very different building in the daylight, but no less impressive – it is such a dominating building! I recall being in awe at the Latvian Academy of Sciences building in Riga – the PKiN is like its much larger brother! Some restoration works were being done on the left side of the building, but were pretty unobtrusive, meaning we had wonderful views of the site from the surrounding gardens.

The impressive PKiN

On our way back from the PKiN, we sought out the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, probably one of the more infamous in Europe thanks to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Uprising resulted in the almost-complete decimation of the ghetto, save for a few buildings and some sections of wall.

Walking down the surviving part of Jewish Warsaw

As the sun began to set, we headed back in to the city centre – this time to check out some of the larger buildings in the vicinity, including the Presidential Palace, and the Polish Academy of Sciences, all of which were beginning to light up.

The Polish Academy of Sciences, on the left, features a large statue of famous astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who developed the heliocentric model of the universe, sparking the Copernican Revolution in astronomy

Our last stop in Warsaw was something that had been on my bucket list for a while – a milk bar! Milk bars, developed during the Communist era in Poland, were communal cafeterias, where people were able to eat food at affordable (government-subsidised) prices. Whilst lots of them closed after the fall of communism in Poland, there are still plenty around, still offering very cheap traditional Polish food. We headed to Wegetariański Bar Mleczny, a vegetarian milk bar not too far from our accommodation (meat rations and general unavailability meant that milk bars in Poland served predominantly vegetarian meals). The spinach and cheese pierogi, and potato cakes absolutely hit the spot!

After collecting our bags at the hotel, we made our way back to Warsaw Central Station for our train to Krakow. We’d spent time in Krakow before – this was really just a quick overnight pitstop prior to our 4am train towards Ukraine the next morning! We arrived a little late into Krakow, but with plenty of time to check into the Ibis (right next to the train station for easy access in the morning!), and head out to a restaurant we last ate at in 2012 – Bar Smak – still just as good! After a short walk around Krakow’s town centre, we headed to the hotel for a (short) night – with an early start the next morning for our journey eastwards!