Warsaw

I am a bit behind on the Blog posting as so much has been happening on the travel front.

Although we arrived late into Warsaw from Berlin due to some train disruptions, we settled into great accommodations, walked around Stalin’s “gift” to Poland, the “Palace of Culture” and found a wine bar to get some pre bedtime ablutions on our first night :)

Next day we had a very informative 3hr walking tour and had a traditional lunch (pork, cabbage, potatoes) and copious wine. We had started a fantastic 2.5 day first visit to the Polish capital Warsaw.

The striking thing about Poland is that the more you learn and understand about their recent history the more you:

a) appreciate the suffering they have experienced and

b) the resilience and extraordinary rebuilding of the nation and capital Warsaw.

Hitler raised the Warsaw Ghetto after the Jewish uprising and those few Jews that did not perish left for Israel and other countries. There is no significant Jewish population here anymore. Then after the Polish resistance uprising, all of Warsaw was flattened in 1944 as an act of reprisal. Only 1000 people of a pre-war population of 1.3 million remained. No other city in WW2 suffered this level of destruction.

But it wasn’t over. While the red army had watched this all going on, without offering any help, they subsequently occupied its land when it was over and killed many of their heroic resistance fighters. Both the Hitler and the Stalin tried to destroy Polish culture and replace it with their own. To literally wipe it off the map.

But Poland is back !!

They have already rebuilt the flattened old city brick by brick in replica and now the post war communist buildings are being replaced by shiny new glass ones.

Warsaw is being transformed into a modern and dynamic city with a young population. The population is now 1.8 million, finally recovered and indeed surpassed its pre-war levels

Respect to the Polish people  🫡  ✊