Problem
Flying into Poland's current capital, Warsaw, first you must see Poland's two major cities of Warsaw and then smaller Krakow, the former capital. We flew from Warsaw to Krakow to save time. Then what?
Answers
Start with the monument to Chopin in Warsaw, and end by eating one of his favourite foods, gingerbread, in Torun.
Warsaw - the huge capital city, with museums and monuments - and music.
A city tour will take you past the
1 Chopin monument,
2 Jewish Museum,
3 WWII museum,
4 Old quarter, walls and reconstructed streets of boutiques, restaurants, many arched roof cellar restaurants. Eat Borsht, beetroot soup.
A big city, concert halls and massive WWII monuments and memories: on a general tour our guide talked about Poland versus Russian occupation, the Katyn massacre, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. On my second day I took a Jewish tour and visited a Jewish cemetery and the Jewish orphanage, still in use, with the statue in the front garden of the orphanage director who could have escaped when the orphans were taken to Auschwitz but chose to stay with them and accompany them and comfort them on their last journey.
If you have a third day:
5 Fryderyk Chopin Museum in O Castle
The Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, Poland, established in 1954 and dedicated to Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.
Wikipedia
Address: Pałac Gnińskich, 00-368, Okólnik 1, 00-368 Warszawa, Poland.
Krakow
Second city you must see is quaint little Krakow with its pretty medieval cathedral square. It's in the south, just over Germany's northern border. The Nazis captured it quickly and made it their HQ so it was preserved. Walk to the old Jewish quarter and Jewish museum. Next day take a tour to Auschwitz.
Recover eating an Ashkenazi Jewish favourite food, which is a national Polish dish, borsht, beetroot soup. The Polish version is rich and thick and creamy and filling, unlike the Russian version which is a clear soup.
Borsht. Photo by Dmitri Dzema in Wikipedia.
Beauty and the beast. Every school in Poland and almost every brochure includes trips to:
1 Auschwitz and Birkenau;
2 Schindler Museum; and the
3 Salt Mine.
Why do you have to see the sister site of Birkenau after Auschwitz? Auschwitz is compact, like a boarding school with a series of houses. Each room has exhibits explaining something different.
One room explains why Auschwitz was the camp where people were tattooed after being photographed. Those 'lucky' few who were kept alive to work had shrunk and wizened with hollowed cheeks so that after three months the second photos shows they were unrecognisable. Therefore prisoners were given identity numbers on their arms.
See suitcases with names painted on the outside, a pyramid of shoes, a mountain of children's toys - a small, dirty torn teddy bear.
Auschwitz gives you claustrophobia. Birkenau gives you agoraphobia.
Birkenau is a huge empty space surrounded by barbed wire. Walk inside two or three reconstructed aircraft size hangers, with tiered wooden bunks, no bedding, rebuilt by survivors who had built the originals.
The guide tells you: "This field is not the whole area. It's just the crematoria and the hangers housing Dutch people whose relatives have been gassed. This field for the men. The next field for the women. The next was for the French. The one after that for the Germans. The one after that for the Greeks. The one after that for the Romanians. The one after that for ..." All surrounded by watchtowers and barbed wire, for miles. I may have got the countries in the wrong order, but you get the point, the horror of the sheer scale.
Why so much Jewish memorabilia in Poland? The Russian ruler, after the assassination of his father, pushed out the Jews over the Western border. So more Jews lived in Poland than any other European country. The Jews were forced from the continent-size area of Russia into the smaller country of Poland.
A century before Auschwitz, a small number of organized Jews set up textile factories and built mansions, whilst the poorer ones were the tailors, workers, scholars, painters and writers.
Anne Frank was in Auschwitz, and survived. Anne's mother passed her small rations to her daughters to keep them alive. The Germans retreated back to Germany, dropping off the skeletal Jews into Belsen, where the Red Cross food parcels were stored outside the camp. Inside, the prisoners starved to death or died of disease, like Anne after her sister. Some survived, you will know if you watch interviews with survivors in the documentary film Shoah, by eating dead bodies.
The Russians liberated Auschwitz in a cold January, celebrated, solemnly, as Holocaust Day. The Americans and British arrived in Belsen.
(The Jewish Museum in London has archives of photos available to historians but photos are not displayed because it is too upsetting for descendants. Instead the museum shows jollier exhibitions about happier, later times, such as designers, and singers such as Alma Cogan, Amy Winehouse in their heyday.)
Why is no mention made of Anne Frank in Auschwitz? Because she is already well demented where she lived in Amsterdam where she is a Dutch heroine. Her memorial wooden name marker is in Belsen where she died. Poland prefers to tell the story of Poles, such as the Polish priest who took the place of a man condemned to die, and not of one individual already so well documented elsewhere, when no trace of her is in Auschwitz. (I presume they have her photo on arrival at Auschwitz?)
What other cities and sights can you see and admire in Poland?
Answer
Here's an A-Z of cities' highlights:
Bialystok
In the nineteenth century it was home to many cultures and languages. Inspired the creation of Esperanto by Ludwig Zamenhof.
Bydgoszcz
1 Museum of Soap and the History of Dirt (Museum Mydla I Historii Brudu)
Gdansk - known for its
1 Amber Museum, and
2 Neptune fountain landmark in the old town.
You see amber everywhere in Poland, the shops along the streets of Warsaw. Little red yellow and green ovals set in 925 silver - or maybe silver plate, for under £100, in the UK.
Gdansk adjoins Sopot.
Amber Story
In the UK watch out for cheaper pieces which are very pretty but probably fake amber. I saw a bargain in a window in the UK. I asked for it to be shortened to fit my wrist. The shop did not charge for the time spent chopping and re-attaching the clasp, but kept the bit cut off to sell it.
I asked the shop for a receipt saying it's amber, for insurance - at a jewellery shop in Hay on Wye in Wales. After some reluctance, the shopkeeper wrote the receipt.
I grabbed the receipt and ran off to catch my coach. Later I read the receipt and found my bargain amber was described not as real amber but synthetic amber. Now you know why you are being asked to pay higher prices for larger pieces on pendants in the top hotels in Poland. (If it's beyond your budget, or you can't decide between two or more pieces, try to bargain for a reduction on buying two or more.)
Lodz
Physically, geographically, the heart or centre of Poland. Sad stories of WWII.
Lublin
Read The Tailor of Lublin - a short story in a collection of stories in book of the same name by Isaac Bashevis Singer, was a Yiddish tale of a tailor, immortalised by a prolific author who went to the USA and wrote nostalgically about the characters from his former home in poorer areas of Poland.
That's why you feel you have heard of Lublin, and feel warmly towards it, even if you know nothing else about it. (Check for copies of The Tailor Of Lublin on Amazon if you like to read a proper paperback or hardback book.)
Olsztyn
1 Landmark St James's Basilica, is a bishop's seat, and towers over the town.
2 Astronomer Copernicus lived in the city as a church official. See his astronomical instruments in the castle.
3 Astronomical Observatory and Planetarium.
4 Gothic and art deco buildings and lakes.
Poznan
Rzeszów
Southeastern Poland. See the
Rzeszów Cellars (Rzeszówskie Piwnice) under the main square. The cellars were used for storage by merchants and under wartime attack as a place of refuge.
Sopot
Sopot seaside - part of the Tri-city with Gdansk and Gdynia
1 Poland's most photographed building is Sopot's Crooked House, a wonky pub, part of a shopping centre, in a pedestrianised outdoor street.
Everything is crooked, curved. The roofline is like a boat or spoon. The top edge of the windows dips. The doors curve in like a waist - not just the door but the whole, large centre section of the building. You wouldn't think it could stand, but it does.
Indoors are illustrations by the (Jewish) artist who inspired the building. His tombstone, which you can see on the internet, is dramatic.
Sopot's other claim to fame is
2 Europe's longest pier. The pier extends back to a town square which becomes an
3 Ice rink in winter.
Spot adjoins Gdansk.
Szczecin (Pronounced Stetchin, hear it in Wikipedia)
1 Gingerbread biscuits with sea symbols such as sailors, ships, and anchors. Eat them.
2 Buy them as gifts or souvenirs They can be used to decorate Christmas trees.
Tarnów
Tiny Tarnów is warm, with narrow streets. In addition to
1 Jewish sights: trail: cemetery gates with stars; graves with blue ribbons and blue railings; plaques on walls; brick bimah (pulpit) in street mini park with inscription and protective roof. (Photos in TripAdvisor.)
2 The Ethnography museum has 'Europe's only exhibition on the Romanis', says the Poland Cities guidebook. (I thought Romania had something. I must check.)
Torun - Birthplace and home of astronomer Copernicus. World's capital of Gingerbread.
1 Copernicus Home Museum.
Muzeum Mickolai Copernica.
1 Amber Museum, and
2 Neptune fountain landmark in the old town.
You see amber everywhere in Poland, the shops along the streets of Warsaw. Little red yellow and green ovals set in 925 silver - or maybe silver plate, for under £100, in the UK.
Amber Story
In the UK watch out for cheaper pieces which are very pretty but probably fake amber. I saw a bargain in a window in the UK. I asked for it to be shortened to fit my wrist. The shop did not charge for the time spent chopping and re-attaching the clasp, but kept the bit cut off to sell it.
I asked the shop for a receipt saying it's amber, for insurance - at a jewellery shop in Hay on Wye in Wales. After some reluctance, the shopkeeper wrote the receipt.
I grabbed the receipt and ran off to catch my coach. Later I read the receipt and found my bargain amber was described not as real amber but synthetic amber. Now you know why you are being asked to pay higher prices for larger pieces on pendants in the top hotels in Poland. (If it's beyond your budget, or you can't decide between two or more pieces, try to bargain for a reduction on buying two or more.)
2 Cosmopolis Fountain.
3 Gingerbread Walk Of Fame in Old Town Square. Brass plaques in the shape of gingerbread biscuits. Make gingerbread in shop's workshop.
4 Actors in 16th century costume walk the old town at night.
Wiki says: The precocious 15-year-old composer
Frédéric Chopin stopped over in Toruń, where he sampled the city's famous confection and grew so fond of it that he wrote a letter about it to his friends and colleagues. He even sent some to Warsaw. In honor of this, Poland's largest producer of Toruń gingerbread, the
Kopernik Confectionery Company, has created a special heart-shaped gingerbread called
Scherzo, bearing Chopin's likeness on the wrapper.
Toruń holds an annual celebration of gingerbread called Święto Piernika (the Gingerbread Festival). It's in
June.
Wroclaw
Wroclaw had the tallest and the smallest.
1 The tiny dwarves, statues, only knee high or smaller, beside little doorways or other delights. You can take a guided tour or buy a guidebook.
2 Salvador Dali sculpture, in front of the Sky tower.
3 The Sky Tower, Europe's tallest skyscraper.
Easy To Learn Polish Words
Polish - English
aquarium - aquarium
historii - history
i - and
Muzeum - museum
mydla - soap
stary - old (remember as old as the stars)
English - Polish
and - i
aquarium - aquarium
history - historii
Museum - Museum
old - stary
soap - mydla
Useful Websites
Pl at the end of the website name stands for Poland. EU stand for the EU or European Union.
en stands for encyclopaedia.
www.akwarium.gdynia.pl
www.planetarium.torun.en
www.poland.travel/en
www.rzeszow.pl
www.szczecin.eu/en / www.seaofadventure.eu
www.torumtips.com
www.visittorum.pl
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my later post on the dwarves. Please share links to your favourite posts.
