Robin Belinsky-- As American as Apple Pie

Which is to say, not as much as you would think… And for those of you who are completely lost on the joke, “Belinsky” is a very very very Polish name… Which, if you happen to be in Poland, people like to point out to you… a lot… and then they believe you should be able to speak polish, then they question why your parent’s didn’t teach you to speak polish, and then they try to guess when your family moved to America… Its all very odd… But even odder is the Polish claim to apple pie… go figure…

Before we even get started, I just want to say, I don’t think there is any way for me to actually portray how awesome Poland really is or how much fun I had traveling there solo… Its not a place you can go into w/ expectations, b/c its not somewhere you’ve seen tons of pictures of (well you hadn’t before you looked at my blog)… you go in relatively clueless, but w/ excitement and high expectations… and are not disappointed.

So riding the overnight train from Berlin to Krakow I met a fabulous girl, Shiva… Shiva is a doctor form LA, also happens to be an Iranian Jew… Making her probably one of the most interesting people I have ever met, particularly since she lived in Iran until she was 16, so she had some very interesting stories to tell. She also contributed to our trip through Auschwitz. And she took me to an orthodox Jewish service on Saturday, which we wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. I didn’t stay for the whole thing… actually we were there, I ended up leaving for a bit b/c nothing was really going on, until as we were about to leave a bunch of Israeli kids on a trip showed up… apparently the service wasn’t starting till they got there. I wandered about for a bit and met back up w/ Shiva and she took me into the service again, this time it was in full swing. Men and women were separated by different rooms with windows that had lace curtains in between. The Rabbi’s were in full dress… very beautiful to watch, though I Had no idea what was going on… and so we stayed for a few songs, and headed out again.

But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Krakow—Friday, Saturday

Ok, so at this point, I grabbed a train Thursday night from Berlin, where I met Shiva, and we hit it off, and she hadn’t booked her hostel yet, so she ended up staying w/ me at mine. And we headed to Auschwitz, which you should have already read about… but when we got back we were hungry hungry girls. And went in pursuit of a restaurant that my Polish friend at the institute told me about… unfortunately by the time we got there, it was done serving dinner… so we ended up at a fabulous Italian place… that was incredibly beautiful. Then we wandered about for a little while, and saw that Krakow’s nightlife is actually pretty happening. The whole old quarter just comes to life, full or bars, and late night cafes, and night clubs. We ended up popping into the oldest chocolate maker in Poland’s place, E. Wedel… most delicious chocolate ever… no one got any as souvenirs as I don’t think it would have made it home, so I didn’t even try. We didn’t go out out on Friday… as we were pretty tired to begin with, so we just headed back to our hostel for some sleep.

The Hostel was incredible… possibly the best I have ever stayed at. It was called Goodbye Lenin! Its tucked away in the ally, a little bit far from the main area, but it meant that it was quiet to sleep, and central between old town and the jewish quarter. It had a fantastic bar, (with one free drink, including shots of vodka… and Poland is known for its vodka), excellent breakfast… I now eat lunch meat… this is a great milestone in life… and generally just good atmosphere (free internet as well).

Shiva kept poking fun at me the whole time we were in Krakow b/c it was a lot like I know my way around. Which is really rather true… that’s exactly what it was like. I almost never needed the map except to double check names. I always knew which way to turn, how to get back to places, etc. It was really really really, kind of on the creepy side. Past life? Polish intuition? Who knows?

In the morning I easily navigated us to the Jewish quarter, where we found the Market… too early ironically enough as we were late according to the times we were told. We did the Jewish service, and I wandered around and got myself lost in the neighborhood. I was trying very hard to find a bagel place… apparently bagels are also polish… but no one knew what a bagel was nor had they heard of the bakery I was referred to.

Post Jewish district we did breakfast back at the hostel (free breakfast) then headed out to explore old town during the day. Extremely lovely. Krakow is one city in Poland not destroyed during the War… so everything is old and original… and that is Krakow’s appeal. We did a bit of shopping, and took coffee in the main square, which is the largest market square in Europe… Just behind us a stage suddenly went up, and the next think you knew we were listening to polka music, and it turns out there was a whole polish folk festival going on behind us. There were dancers and bands from all over the world. After watching a few songs, we decided we wanted to do a walking tour of the city.

This was a fabulous idea (at least for me… b/c I love wandering around for hours listening to guides tell stories… no I’m serious… it goes hand in hand with my love of piles of rocks). I can’t remember for the life of me what our guide’s name was… but he was fabulous… though a bit on the enthusiastic side right to the end where he was like… ok, normally the tour ends here, but I want to take you to see this one last thing… I thought it was great. We wandered all around the old town, visited the University, where Copernicus and Pope John Paul studied…we hit up a Franciscan Church, where a wedding was going on, which we actually walked in the middle of a bit… sort of odd, as our guide walked ahead of us, and we all just sort of stood there and stared like, “are we really supposed to follow him????”… Then I got to do some Pope stalkin… for those of you new to my world, I have a reputation for Pope stalking… at least the old pope, not the new one… it just happened to be whenever I show up in Rome, the old pope would be out there blessing people… and I got pictures, etc. so… pope stalker. Seeing as he was from Poland, I got to do a bit more pope stalking… There were memorials and statues set up everywhere. It turns out he even used to teach classes at the Uni. Could you imagine wandering into class one day and the Pope being your professor???? I would have totally studied in Krakow if I got to have the pope as my Prof. We headed up to the castle, though didn’t go inside… It was pretty nice… the king at one point had an Italian wife and built her a court yard in Italian style to make her feel more at home. Oh and while we were there, there were soooooooo many weddings going on, and couples doing pictures, etc. It was very romantic, even for the single women running around.

The tour lasted a little over 3 hours, ending with the old fortress. By that point Shiva was rather tired of walking, and I volunteered to run back to the tour office to grab our jackets and some bags (it had gotten rather hot, and they had a place to keep our stuff)… we had picked up a guy from our tour, Steve, and Aussie that had been living in Scotland. We agreed to meet back up at the restaurant that we had tried to eat at earlier… on the way, I ran into a bunch of break dances… on the way back I ran into a shoe store… We had plans to go out that night, but according to my guidebook… sneakers and sandals were a no no… and as I only brought sneakers, shoes were a necessity… *hush you laughers*… necessity I tell your… and I’ve gotten many compliments on the shoes and their awesomeness since. Dinner was fabulous, traditional polish food… downstairs was unfortunately booked, and set up in the style of 18^th century bourgeoisie, upstairs was styled like a stable… we got to eat in the stable… it worked. We then agreed to meet up w/ Steve later to go Dancing!

And dance we did. We went to a club called Prozac… which had multiple rooms, dug into a cave like basement, a hookah bar, and light up dance floor. Turns out Shiva and Steve are both big into trance music… I just like to dance. Here was a very interesting situation though… it was all guys on the dance floor. Now, this wasn’t a gay bar, it just happened to be guys. And while this might be something every girl going dancing may have dreamed about, the fact is… its really awkward to just have a dance floor of boys… actually dancing… with each other… But we ended up having a fantastic time for most of the evening… though both Shiva and I were harassed a bit by some over enthusiastic guys, but by then it was around 3am, so we decided to call it a night… particularly since I had a train at like 8:30 am to catch.

Warsaw-- Sunday, Monday

And so my great Poland adventure continued on to Warsaw. 3 hours of sleep is not the best way to do this kind of trip, but at the same time led to one of the most interesting nights ever… but as usual, jumping ahead. So after I got to my hostel, I learned check in wasn’t till 3… it was around 10 or 11. So I dropped off my bags, and headed towards old town. Now Warsaw was basically flattened during the war. And Rebuilt afterwards. When you first get off the train you just go… wow, this is big… and it is… the first building you see is a giant soviet sky scraper… the palace of science and technology or something like that is the name… the roads are wide… for soviet parades and tanks. Then in the distance you see the modern skyscrapers… totally glass, springing from the skyline in fabulous modern design. So the last thing I was really expecting as I walked up the road was to find myself in Baroque Europe. But there it was… with bright colors on a bright blue sky… beyond picturesque. I wandered around for a few hours, and ended up at a hole in the wall restaurant specializing in … pirogues. Now I have objected to the existence of pirogues for years… the idea of potato inside noodle is well… unnatural.. real pirogues however is a different story. For instance I had a baked pirogue w/ cheese and pumpkin seeds… mmmmm… and the best beer… it was Honey beer… wow.

I wandered around a little longer, then headed back to the hostel. The Okie Dokie hostel. It is probably one of the more famous hostels… each room is designed by a different Warsaw artist. My room turned out to be the Communist room… woot woot… sigh… I should have brushed up on my commie knowledge before coming out. I used to be so good… Anyway, as I’m standing in line, the girl in front turned around, and it was Tanya, who I met during our Auschwitz tour. Small world. But she was going to see her room and I was in line. After I got settled in I went to look for her with no luck. And then… I made the fatal mistake of lying down for the first time all day… and totally passed out for couple of hours. I awoke to the sound of a new person coming into the room ( I stay in co-ed dorm style rooms… cheapest, best way to meet people). Once coming through a little bit, I had a rare moment of boldness and asked if the new kid wanted to go do dinner. Turns out he had just gotten in, and was also hungry. And he does have a name, Cyril, from Lyon, France… 24… engineer. To my relief he also spoke pretty decent English. So off to dinner we went.

We just randomly picked a little Italian place… and to my overwhelming amusement he ordered my food for me. I’m about 95% sure, no one has ever… I mean ever, ordered me my food… hilarious. So the night goes on, and just as we’re about to head out to find another place to grab drinks, the couple next to us starts talking to us due to the overwhelming slowness of the wait staff. After we paid, they insisted that they buy us drinks. About 5 hours after we went to dinner, we finally rolled back into the hostel. The couple, Stephen and Victoria, nearly got their very own blog post. They are a British couple, who had been living in Poland for some time. Victoria’s daughter was about our age and living in South Africa. They had been married for a few years, and reminded me more of brother/sister-best friends than your normal married couple. Steve had done more or less everything from leading tours for famous people in Italy, to being the economist who brought Ford to Poland. He seemingly had knew everyone in Warsaw, with connections everywhere. They bought us drink after drink, and were incredibly nice. Unfortunately, this might be why you aren’t hearing more about them… When we got back to the hostel we headed to the bar, which has cheese graters for lights… there were a bunch of Canadians there and Tanya… but as we sat for one last drink, they were headed out to the clubs… mind you, its after 1am at this point. So we just chilled out, until it was closing time.

Next morning I woke up early, ate breakfast… Cyril came out as I was near finishing so I opted to stick around for a bit longer. His plan was to pick up a friend at the airport and I wanted to really tour the city and do the castle and museums etc. And so, we parted ways. *side not to Mom—this is debatable as to whether or not I blew him off, its not like we had plans to see things together, and I wasn’t about to sit around the hostel “hanging out” when there was a city to see…*

And see it I did… The castle is free on Mondays, which was awesome. Of course none of the stuff is entirely real… which is amusing, but it was still pretty nice to see people’s ideas of what should have been there. I explored all the churches, Chopin’s old hang outs, etc. Once I was exhausted I jumped on the tourist bus, No guide, just riding around seeing things. This was great, b/c really… Warsaw is huge. By bus you can see the whole contrast of old and new.

I ate more perogies for lunch… and had some fabulous Balkan food for dinner…where all the waiters were like, “you are here alone?” My train didn’t leave until 11:30 pm… and I learned a valuable lesson about checking, double checking, and using visuals such as a calendar when booking tickets in other languages for night trains… as it turns out my ticket was for the next day… but managed to change things around w/ out too much trouble.

And thus ended my grand Poland adventure!