My SEP Adventure: Landing in Poland 🇵🇱

Okay this week’s trip was bought on impulse because 13 pounds to Warsaw is too hard to resist. After buying the tickets, I didn’t have a lot of time to plan for the trip so I only got to sit down and look at the places properly on Tuesday (after I return from Luxembourg). But you know what, planning just the day before travelling makes me really excited about the trip:) so much that I am not complaining that I have to wake up at 4am to catch the bus to the airport.. Will have to thank Xinyi for inspiring with her idea of food trail in Brno, thus this trip focused more on food😂

It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph. – Henryk Sienkiewicz

On Wednesday, I headed to Warsaw first(since the flight there is dirt cheap). After going to Berlin and learning about the Nazi operations, I became really interested to find out about Poland’s perspective(being the greatest victim of the operation). This explained the motivation to embark on this solo trip even though hopping two cities in two days is quite shag!

Warsaw

The Old Town

Warsaw is a rebuilt city after WW2 when the Germans razed the capital to the ground. Thus the buildings look pretty new even though they were built to look vintage(the rebuilt plans were based on a city blueprint in 1800s). People will say that Warsaw is boring and underwhelming, but I beg to differ.

But to me, Warsaw has a really resilient history behind it. I visited the Warsaw Uprising museum where they talked about Warsaw starting a revolution during WW2 against the Nazi forces. Even though they were smaller in strength and they lacked resources, they were courageous enough to fight back against the Germans (much like the storyline of Les Miserables). However, they lost to the Nazi after 2 months, and the Germans took revenge by razing the city to the ground. After WW2, the Polish needed to rebuild the city and they followed the architecture plan drawn up by an architect in the 18th century. This led to the reconstruction of old town and new town together, preservation of some sites and erection of memorials to remember how Poland suffered under the Germans. Its quite amazing how they managed to rebuild the whole city from ruins, much like Berlin did too!

Sites in Warsaw

Palace of Science and Culture

I visited the Uprising Museum as mentioned above to learn about the history of the resistance of Warsaw during the Nazi operations.
When you arrive in the city by train or bus, you will definitely see a magnificent building that stood out across the surrounding buildings. This is Warsaw’s famous Palace of Culture and Science, which was built to remember the world war as the Nazis robbed the jews from both art and science. This palace houses a complex of theatres, museums and galleries and it is quite popular as an entertainment complex for the Polish teens!

Museum of the Uprising

The other place to check out would be the St Anne Church, located just at the end of the old town. On a clear day, you can climb up (literally climbing – you are WARNED) to the top to catch a clear panoramic view of the city! Plan such that you go around sunset so you will have an amazing view:) I didint got a cool view cause it was raining and the whole place was rather dark and gloomy:/

 

View from top of St Anne in the gloomy weather:/

Food in Warsaw

The other highlight to mention about Poland was the food! Europe food has been much more expensive than Singapore but in Poland, they have cafeterias called Milk Bars. Milk bars are popularised in the Communist era and is like the 茶餐厅 of Poland, selling a variety of cheap Polish meals. After researching about some recommended places to try, I had 2 meals in 2 milk bars in 2 days! The first at Warsaw, I ordered Pierogi Ruskie (Polish Russian-inspired dumplings) and Borsh (beetroot soup). Would say that even though they are all dumplings/ravioli, these pierogi tasted nothing like that in Asia/Italy/UK. The ones in Poland are stronger in flavor and they used potato as a base! The Borsh soup is also quite exotic cause it looks astonishing bloody (i didint know it was beetroot when i ordered), and it tasted sweet (not my kind of soup😅).

Borsh and Pierogi Ruskie (<2 pounds)

Something else I would recommend to try in Warsaw would be Zapiekanka. I went to this place called Zapiexy that specialise in selling these Polish food. These are open faced pizza where they add meat, veg and cheese to baguette bread before toasting it. Sounds like subway but definitely much more delicious and economical than subway! Whats special about Zapiekanka is that they would add three sauces, tomato, horseradish and mayo to the end product which brings out the flavor of the dish really well. Super must try when you go to Poland!

 

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Krakow

Krakow Castle

Krakow on the other hand, is left unscratched during the world war and the buildings are preserved. As a result, Krakow’s architecture are old and beautiful, pretty much like those you would have seen in movies filmed in Arab! Those are the conditions of the buildings.
For Krakow, you can allocate more time such that you spend a day in the old town and another day in Auswitchz Concentration Camps and Salt Mines. I only had a day and I did only Auswitchz and the old town!

Sites in Krakow

Auswitchz Museum

Auschwitz Concentration Camps is also called the “Death Camp” and the “Final Stop”. It is split into camp 1 (Auschwitz) and camp 2 (Birkenau). Auschwitz was built first and started receiving the deported jews from 1941. The exhibition of Auschwitz showcased the various kinds of torture(living or murder) that are inflicted on the prisoners and how the typical life of a prisoner is in the camp. About 90% of the prisoners did not make it out alive when the camp was liberated due to the insane living conditions( The most memorable of the camp is the room that showed the warehouse of properties(such as shoes, bags and glasses) belonging to the prisoners that were confiscated from them when they arrived at the camp. These are material evidences of the crimes committed by the Nazis and were used to show the scale of destruction the Nazis had on the war victims.
The last room that was used as the gas chamber was really depressing as well because when the chemical gas is used to exterminate the jews, they were caught unaware and told to enter the “shower room” to wash up. And that is where they would perish after 20 minutes of gassing, often struggling badly and scratching the wall of the concrete room to ease their pain. These left iconic scratch marks on the wall, as seen below..

If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. – Anne Frank

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After Auschwitz, I went over to Birkenau. On the way out, I saw that the number of visitors tenfolded and thus it is advised to come earlier (I went for the 8am slot) and beat the crowd(remember to reserve online to book the tour – it is free if you are travelling without a guide). And because it was going to be Poland Independence Day the following day, I met a battalion of uniformed soldiers visiting the place as well 😂

I wasn’t the only early bird here:)

Birkenau is about 30 mins away by foot and on the way to the camp, you can see some abandoned factories and houses that were used during the war. There are also random rail tracks that seem to lead from nowhere to nowhere. Well, they led eventually to Birkenau and they are also known as the Railway of no Tomorrow. After discovering that the first camp was too slow in the purging of jews, the Nazi went ahead to build a second death camp. This time, the scale of the camp is far greater and offered worse living conditions. The prisoners are sent to this camp by train and sorted. The women, children and elderly are usually sent directly to the gas chambers upon arrival while the men would be sent to work till their deaths. Even though the camp was razed to the ground, some parts of the camp was reconstructed to show the camp situation in the 1940s. Birkenau is open to public and you don’t need a ticket to enter, but it is recommended to visit Auschwitz before Birkenau as the former offered more explanations than the latter. Going through both camps made me realised the need to understand the mistakes that the past have committed and appreciate that the future can easily commit the same crimes on your country for example. I believe if there was a Chinese Hitler in China/Japan, the extent of world war 2 on Asia would have been far worse than what was what our ancestors experienced.

 

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After the solemn trip to Auschwitz camps, I went back to Krakow to walk around the old town. Did not visit any site in particular but I would recommend to drop by the old town for food and appreciation of the architecture. The difference in Krakow and Warsaw is very evident in the old town as Krakow.

Inside the market square

Krakow’s Market Square

Food in Krakow

The smiley face made my day!

I went to another milk bar and ordered the Bigos (Hunter Stew) and Potato and Leek Soup (yea i love soup alot)! Wanted to try the potato pancakes but they sold out:/ its quite important to go earlier at the milk bars as they prepared limited stock of each dish and will flip the price on the board over to inform the customers that they sold out of the dishes. The hunter stew is quite funny as it looks like a random mess of onions, meatballs, sausages, potatoes and more mashed together. The overall taste is quite normal though, not a must eat in Poland..

Hunter soup and stew. Oops, I spilled some soup

For desserts, I tried Sernik and Chimney Cake(aka Trdelnik) in Krakow. Sernik is a cheesecake made in Poland but it tasted far drier and do not stick to your hands as you eat. I love how it is not too sweet and just nice in terms of custard sugar, which was brushed on top of the cake. Chimney Cake was recommended by Gauri as she said that Prague’s cakes are nothing compared to those in Krakow. Ordered a plain one and it won me over immediately. The chimney cake was really big and the chef prepared each one fresh from the grill for the customer!

 

Lovely Chimney Cake (Thanks Gauri!)

This solo trip has been really meaningful for me because I don’t get to only eat and chill, I got to talk to some of the locals/ tourists too. It makes me wonder why Poland, having significant war histories, is not well known to the world as a model of peace. Poland is indeed one that survived the worst and rebuilt to become stronger today!

Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe – George H. W. Bush

Alright, so this marks the end of the first part of my weekend trip! Do Czech the blog up on the weekends for my post on Czech Republic:)