Paris/Warsaw Thanksgiving

Just a quick trip across the pond...

Lovin' the Eiffel

 Locks over the Seine.  There must have been hundreds of them.

The main street in Warsaw:  Nowy Swiat, which is pronounced "Novee Sveeat."  Apparently there is no letter v in the Polish alphabet!

Herbert Hoover's sister?  Nope, that's just the way they refer to President Hoover here.  There was also a Washingtona.

The old town main square which was bombed by the Nazis and the Allies and eventually rebuilt when the Soviets occupied Poland.  The architecture is interesting because it looks old, but it's new.  Kind of an eerie feeling.

The other side of Nowy Swiat.  Look how wide the sidewalks are.  The busses and the trams are a very efficient and easy way to get around the city.  Since my friends were working during the day, I got around using a bus pass and looked for college students to help me find my way to historical sites.  Most young people speak English and some of the shopkeepers.  When I was on top of this tower, I asked a man, "Do you speak English?"  He kindly said, "No, do you speak Polish?"  Touche.

This was happy hour at a local bar.  Instead of getting a discounted rate, you got two beers for the price of one.  They failed to tell me this before I ordered!  It's good beer, but nothing like Belgian beer!

This part of town was in the Jewish Ghetto.  One of the few buildings I saw that had been left in its pre-reconstruction state.  The story-high pictures of of people who lived in the ghetto.  Close to half a million people lived in a roughly 1-mile square area.  It was crowded, disease-ridden and cold.  Nobody knows for sure, but estimates of up to 300,000 lost their lives.

Monument to the Warsaw Uprising which lasted about 63 days.  All around Poland you can see the symbol of the resistance which is a P with the bottom of the letter morphing into an anchor.  They place the symbol where fierce fighting took many lives.

You can see in this picture a man emerging from the sewer.  Many people used the sewer lines as a way to escape the patrols of the Nazis.  Young children, because they were small, were often sent through the sewer lines to deliver messages.

This is the outside of the Warsaw Uprising Museum.  It's one of the effective museums I've ever visited.  When you walk in the door, you hear a very loud, intense heartbeat.  It's dark and at different intervals loud sounds of bombs dropping sound like they're actually landing next to you.  The museum is interactive and had three different areas showing movies of what life was like in Warsaw during the war.  There is no love lost between the Soviets and the Poles as the Uprising almost worked but Stalin refused to give much aid to the insurgents.  On the perimeter wall of this museum, they've inscribed the names of all the people who lost their lives during the uprising.

This is a young Polish guy today.  In the main square of town there was a Christmas market selling wine, sausage, clothing, ornaments, cooked nuts, artwork, etc.  The kielbasa was delicious!

I was in three layers, but this woman barely had a coat on!  It was 30 degrees!

 Warsaw embraces its culture:  art, music, history and language.  This was one of many of the outdoor artworks.  I jumped aboard and enjoyed the ride until guards shouted at me and pulled me from the bike. (Just kidding).