A Very Catholic Sunday

Fitful sleep is almost worse than no sleep.  Despite the warm comforter and the soothing rocking of the train, I kept waking up when the train would stop and start again.  It was frustrating, since the periods were enough to get a tiny taste of reprieve from the endless road, but not enough to get any actual satisfaction.  Tantilus is actually attempting sleep on a train to Warsaw.

We arrived at seven in the morning.  I’d already been up for about an hour, since Gill is a ridiculously-early riser.  My dreams were punctuated with homesickness and visions of my mother, whom I’m coming to miss terribly.  Maybe it’s seeing Gill with her family, and maybe it’s the fact that, since their arrival, I feel like more of a tag-along to a family vacation than a courageous student who paid her way through a European backpacking trip.  I’m not complaining, because it’s afforded me some extra traveling companions and a sense of home while far away from anyone I know, but it makes me a little sad.  I do have a lot of extra time to myself these days.

Anyway, we arrived in Warsaw at seven in the morning, and got a taxi to the hotel.  The driver only spoke Polish, which is further from Russian than Czech in my estimation, though I would occasionally catch a word that sounds like something I know.  Check out at the hotel was noon, and check in was at two, so we had quite a large amount of time to kill.  We spent most of it in cafes in the area, gnoshing on tasty morsels and trying to wake up after a night of no real, satisfying sleep.  

The walk around Poland was nice, and the city is very pretty.  It’s unfair to go anywhere after Prague, because everything pales in comparison.  “Oh, yes, this building is nice, but it’s nothing compared to the residential areas near the Vltava.”  “Hm, that’s a pretty statue.  I think I saw the same one, but better, on Petrin Hill.”  “What a pretty park.  Better in Prague.” 

A castle by our hotel, which is also a castle.  :-)

A view of some houses in our district

A statue with a cross

Pope John Paul II, who was, in fact, Polish

A pretty building, which may or may not be a municipal office

Another pretty building, with a stone giant reaching out

A church, I should guess

Monument to Polish troops in WWI

The park

An interesting, hollow tree

However, I find the streets in Warsaw much cleaner than they were in Prague, and the people are fairly ready to smile, which is different.  Our walk was punctuated with random religious allusions, and I remembered that Poland is one of the most Catholic countries in the world.  There were also large amounts of people carrying Polish flags everywhere, in spite of the early hour.  It is a Sunday, so I assumed it was for some church thing, or a demonstration of some sort.

Giant Polish flag

I napped a little in one of the cafes, and awakened when Gill’s family decided they wanted to eat something more substantial.  I walked with them, and then found something I definitely wanted to see while we were out.

Poland is the site of many of the concentration camps left over from Nazi Germany.  Warsaw, while far from any death camps, being very industrialized, had a ghetto in the center during the war years.  The city has removed most traces of the area today, and instead rebuilt a park around the remains, but there is a monument, and the outline of one of the walls in the foundation of the park paths.

It was confusing to me to be there, walking through the places where people had been herded in 1940.  I didn’t expect to be affected so much.  Gill and her parents were more or less the same to my eyes; tired, cold, cranky, and looking for somewhere warm to spend the time.  I wanted to take some time and sit there, maybe think about the fate of all the thousands upon thousands who’d perished within the walls of the ghetto.  Sanitation conditions were pretty much nonexistent, there was no food, no running water, and no contact with the outside world.  The Warsaw ghetto was the largest of all the ghettos in Europe during the Nazi occupation.  It was difficult to be there, and all conversations seemed flighty and unimportant in comparison, so I was quiet.  There was an uprising in 1943, which destroyed most of the ghetto, according to the Internet.  I’m sure more work was done by the city in an effort to forget.

From there, we went to the archeological museum, which is located conveniently near the park.  It was warm, and that’s about all I can say about it.  There were exhibits of ancient coins, and a series of artifacts chronicling the rise of modern man, but I was tired, and looking forward to a warm bed.

Back in the square near our hotel, we saw more and more of the Polish flags, and finally figured out what the teeming hordes were all about at around the time of the arrival of foreign dignitaries and the city red berets of Warsaw.  Today is the one-year anniversary of the Air Force Tu-154 crash near Smolensk, which killed 96 people, including the Polish president, his wife, the chief of the general staff in Poland, the president of the national bank, the deputy foreign minister, 12 members of parliament, members of the clergy, and family members of the Katyn massacre.

That stone square on the bottom right is the window ledge

The street around the corner from the hotel

Some view, huh?

They were all traveling to Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the Katyn massacre, which was a systematic extermination of Polish intelligentsia by Stalin’s communist regime in 1940.  The official death toll is around 2,000, but everyone knows that this injustice occurred in prisons all over the former USSR, and included more than 14,000 victims.  It’s a little ironic that the way the Polish government officials met their end was during travel to remember another gross injustice performed by the totalitarian paranoid idiocy of Stalin’s government. 

In memory of almost every high official in their government dying, the Polish people organized a day of remembrance and prayer today.  Lucky us: our hotel is literally on the edge of the square where this demonstration is taking place.  I’ve seen more Polish flags today than I have in my entire life, and a lot of them have a black ribbon attached.  All day, there’s been crappy modern Polish music, church bells, broadcasted Roman-Catholic prayer in Polish (think call: response, but with an entire city responding), the sound of a press of humanity, and the tempting smell of street vendors’ waffles covered in confectioner’s sugar.

I’ve been extremely tired, and feeling sickly all day, so when we got to the hotel, I went immediately into our room and fell asleep.  We’re staying at the Castle Inn, which had a different artist design each floor.  I don’t know what they were thinking with ours: the walls are so busy, I almost expect them to hum at me when I close my eyes.  The hotel staff was kind enough to provide ear plugs, so I had a great nap, and awakened as Gill and her family were leaving for a day out in Warsaw.  Having seen the one thing I definitely wanted to see, and feeling as crappy as I was, I elected to stay behind and do some writing.  Besides, all I need to do is open the window to hear the most interesting thing going on in Warsaw today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Breaking News Update:  The demonstration in honor of the Smolensk Plane Crashes just took a turn.  I went upstairs to our room after a walk about town, during which I found a dessert waffle and spoke Russian to the barista because I thought it was close enough to Polish, and it worked with the Czechs.  I think I chose the absolute worst night to speak Russian in Poland. 

A waffle with whipped cream and preserved cherries, because it is exceedingly delicious

When I walked into our room, I immediately ran to the window to see what was happening outside.  The hymns and speeches that have been in progress all day had taken a distinctly angered air, and though I didn’t understand a word of what was being said, I understood the gist.  The Polish people are incensed by the fact that the official investigation of the plane crashes is falling to the Russian authorities, headed by Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia.  And the blame is falling squarely on no one higher up than the pilots flying the plane. 

I can’t read Polish any better than I can speak it, but there were signs with Stalin and Putin’s face on them, and all sorts of different slogans.  The crowd, which was peaceful during the day, turned angry with the sunset.  Crowds must roar, and flags must be waved.  This Smolensk situation seems to me like the outlet for a lot of latent Polish rage against the Russians, who’ve had the Polacks under their heels for centuries now. 

For a good part of the protest, I was hanging out my window, taking footage of the giant horde underneath.  It was a good angle, and I have slightly over fourteen minutes of people waving signs and walking unbelievably slowly.  I didn’t get any of the chants, because for some reason my camera decided not to record voices, and all the zoom-in shots are a little annoying because my camera wasn’t intended for shooting film for extended periods of time, but it’s an interesting video, and I’ve updated it below, or will have, as soon as youtube decides to stop taking forever.  

Below is the link to the video:

If that doesn't work, here's a direct link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOOVZ77ntE