Friday, July 06, 2007

Poland - Warsaw and Gdansk

I took the bus from Vilnius to Bialystok in Poland, which was the closest major railway station so that I could start using my Interrail european rail pass. I took the train to Warsaw and was greeted by my friend, Kuba.

Warsaw Old Town

He briefly showed me around a few of the major sites in the evening, including the old town and the tomb of the unkown solider. I gathered that he didn't seem too impressed with the city.

Tomb of the Unkown Soldier

The next day I went to Gdansk for the day to meet my housemate from London who was there with her friends for a music festival. Interestingly this involved getting the train to 'Hel', which is obviously a lovely name for a town. They were already very drunk but we met up and went for a few beers before arranging to meet in their hometown, Lublin, later in the week where they promised me lots of partying. I'm going to hold them to that!

I'm going to Hel...

Gdansk was very nice, with lots of historic buildings but it was easy to see everything quickly and the one thing I really wanted to see, the Solidarity movement museum, was closed.

Gdansk Old Town

I headed back to Warsaw and spent a full day sightseeing. I went to the top of the Stalinist 'Palace of Culture' to get a good view of the city and explored the old town in more detail. Warsaw is really nice but I can understand why the Poles don't seem too impressed with it. It's more a place of business and work than a tourist destination. Having been completely destroyed in WW2, only the reconstructed old town really stands out as something to see.

View from the tower

In the evening I stayed the night at Kuba's place with a bunch of other Polish students. They couldn't really speak much english but we had a great time drinking together and watching the Polish team play volleyball (which is really big over here apparently). Luckily they won!

The Stalinist 'Palace' at night

Unfortunately I have to drag myself up early in the morning to get the 7 hour train to the Polish border. Ukraine here I come...

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posted by Dave @ 7:53 pm   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 6:05 pm, Blogger Mieke de Regt said...

Hi Dave! Just by coincidence I bump into your blog and I red everything about your interrailing and travelling. It's good to hear that you're still as wild as before, and you seemed to be pretty lucky with always bumping into aquintances. I also loved to travel alone in Scandinavia. I've been also to many places in the Baltics where you've been, so thats nice to read.
You should become a couchsurfer! I couchsurfed a lot in Scandinavia and it's great. But I see you are already practicly couchsurfing, but only without using the system, that's great ;)
If you pass Netherlands or Belgium, let me know (TEL: 0031.115562480)
\Cheers,
Mieke

 
At 5:15 pm, Blogger Dave said...

Hey Mieke! It`s great travelling alone isn`t it? I`m in a small village in Bosnia right now, it`s so amazing here. Haven`t had time or internet access to update my blog in weeks, suppose I`ll have to do it when I get home!

I might be going to the Netherlands for the Lowlands festival, but I doubt I`ll be in any of the cities. Not sure yet though...

 

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