Day 8: A Busy Day in Warsaw

[Saturday, June 15]

[Click on any photo for a bigger view]

Today was our first day with the Gate 1 tour group, and it would be a long one. With a Gate 1 tour, you can sign up for optional things to do above and beyond the basic tour. We had signed up for four options, and two of them would be today in addition to the morning activity.

A morning tour of Warsaw was part of the basic group activities. We all hopped on the bus that would take us by a few sites in Warsaw. As with many of the Gate 1 activities, this morning tour was meant to give tour members ideas for places in the city they would like to revisit in more detail during their free time. People in our tour group who did not sign up for options would have the entire afternoon and evening to go to some of the sites only briefly seen in the morning tour.

Gate 1 also provides local experts to guide tours in the various places we visit. For our morning tour it was Filip, a funny and engaging fellow. Our first stop was Łazienki Park in the central part of the city. Łazienki Park is huge, nearly 200 acres, and is the largest park in Warsaw. It was designed in the 17th century as a bathhouse park by a Polish nobleman. The park contains fountains, gardens, bathhouses, greenhouses, canals, palaces, statues,...the list goes on. We saw only a small part of it that contains a gigantic memorial to Frederick Chopin set next to a large pond. We left the bus near a statue commemorating Marshal Józef Piłsudski, a military hero instrumental in the resurrection and survival of Poland after World War I. We walked into the park through a rose garden. There was a statue of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, a sometime friend, and sometime rival contemporary of Chopin. Then we came to the Chopin memorial. The statue is beside a pond and shows the composer under a willow in a windswept setting. The setting romanticizes this great Romantic Era composer.

Statue of Marshal Piłsudski in Łazienki Park

Statue of Franz Liszt

Memorial to Frederick Chopin

Vicky and Marty at the foot of the Chopin Memorial

After visiting the park, the bus tour of the city continued. We crossed the Vistula River, viewed Warsaw's big athletic stadium, then crossed the river again and entered what was once the Jewish ghetto. Before World War II, Warsaw's population was over a quarter Jewish and many of them lived in the ghetto. The Nazis eventually forced all of the Jews into the quarter and severely restricted their movement and access to food and other necessities. They were essentially in a holding tank and after 1942 waiting to be shipped to extermination camps. There was a ghetto uprising in 1943 which was crushed by the Nazis. Those Jews who survived were sent to the camps. Few survived the war. Warsaw now has a Jewish population of just a few thousand. There is a large holocaust memorial museum in the old ghetto. We visited the museum briefly.

A recurring theme in our days in Poland was that Poland was and still is a tolerant, cosmopolitan, and multi-ethnic country. Jews were for most of Poland's history under much fewer restrictions than in other countries of Europe. In fact, Jews were often invited to settle in Polish towns and cities in the Middle Ages. This was in part due to the fact that Poland had for many years a mostly rural economy and needed populations and services in the towns. Jews were not allowed to own land in Poland at that time (as was true in much of Europe). But as city dwellers, they contributed significantly to making Poland one of the great countries in Europe during the late Middle Ages. As a result, the Jewish population of Poland was among the largest in any country in Europe. Their number was about 10% of the population of the country, but in cities it was generally 25% or more. The Nazis devastated this population, slaughtering millions in Poland alone, and using camps located in Poland as places to murder Jews from all across Europe. The Jewish population of Poland has never recovered, and Jews are now much less than 1% of the population of the country.

Entrance to the Holocaust Museum in the old Warsaw Ghetto

Sculpture commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

After visiting the Holocaust Museum, we got back on the bus and headed for the Old Town part of Warsaw. Warsaw was almost completely destroyed in World War II. In the late summer of 1944, the people of Warsaw engaged in a general uprising against the Nazis. This uprising surprised the Nazis and engaged them for about two months. The people fought valiantly in a cause they knew was probably doomed. They waited for what they hoped would be help from the Russians, advancing near the eastern edge of the city. But the Russians decided to let the Poles and Nazi engage with and slaughter each other, leading to a general decimation of the city. By then end of the war, only a few thousand people remained of a pre-war population of about 1.3 million.

After the war, large parts of the city were rebuilt almost exactly as they had been before the war. This kind of rebuilding also occurred in other Polish cities, in particular our next stop, Gdańsk. The Old Town in Warsaw was one of those rebuilt areas. The buildings look old, but were mostly constructed after the late 1940s. Warsaw's Old Town is a premier tourist site. On any given day during the good weather months, there are thousands of people there sightseeing, souvenir shopping, and visiting the many cafes and restaurants.

The market square area in Warsaw's Old Town

Warsaw's Old Town is a UNESCO Heritage Site, one of many in Poland

We did a little sight-seeing and souvenir shopping in the Old Town. In the center of the main square is a statue of the Mermaid of Warsaw. She is part of the founding legend of the city. She rose out of the Vistula River and, in one version of the myth was released from imprisonment by Polish fishermen, who later founded a city in her honor. She is the protectress of the city and is featured on its coat of arms. We stopped at a shop that dealt in crafts from all over Poland. In the shop were traditional Polish folk clothes, linens, pottery, amber, and other arts and crafts. We then stopped for lunch at a small cafe off the main square that was recommended by Filip. I had the best gołąbki (cabbage rolls) of the trip at that place. After lunch we had just enough time to do a little more shopping, and hop back on the bus for a quick ride back to the hotel. We still had our two optional activities to do!

The Mermaid of Warsaw

Traditional Polish folk costumes

Small cafe where we stopped for lunch.

Delicious gołąbki

Gary Cooper from High Noon on a gift bag, from an iconic Solidarność poster

After a short rest at the hotel, we were back on the bus heading for the Wilanów Palace for the first of our two optional tours. The Palace was built in the late 17th century for Jan Sobieski, King Jan III, hero of the Battle of Vienna, which repulsed the Ottoman invasion of Central Europe. The palace is on what was a huge estate in the woods about 8 miles from the Old Town, and connected to it by the Royal Road. The palace is now a museum housing paintings , sculpture, and decorations from the time of the last Polish kings. In later years after the partition of Poland in the late 18th century, the palace served as a haven for Polish nobility, enabling them to discuss affairs away from the prying ears of their Russian overlords, but has mostly served as a museum since the early 19th century. The palace was damaged by the Germans in World War II, but was not demolished after the Warsaw Uprising.

Outside the Wilanów Palace

The entry hall of the palace

Equestrian statue of Jan Sobieski

Part of the art collection in Wilanów Palace

Oil portrait of King Jan III

Painting of the Virgin Mary at prayer

Geometric floor design

Bejeweled clock

Fountain outside the palace

Outside view at the palace

After the trip to the palace, we barely had time to freshen up before we were whisked to the second optional activity of the day, a late afternoon performance of piano music by Frederick Chopin at the Fryderyk Concert Hall in Warsaw. The music was performed in an intimate setting by Maciej Poliszewski, a professor of music at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. Poliszewski performed a selection of Chopin's music: mazurkas, nocturnes, waltzes, finishing with the famous Grand Polonaise. It was a wonderful show!

Maciej Poliszewski

The professor signed our programs

By the end of the show we were very tired, but we hadn't had dinner yet. We had heard good things about the Czerwony Wieprz (The Red Hog), a restaurant about a half mile from our hotel. The restaurant serves hearty Polish food in an atmosphere that brings back memories of Communist times in a puckish, tongue-in-cheek way.