Poland - Warsaw

hello from warsaw!
got here alright, had our first full day out on the town today! it's really awesome here! neat city, very interesting mix of newer and communist/soviet era architecture... basically the entire city (buildings, people) was destroyed in WWII by Hitler. its nuts. went to this amaaaazing museum today about the warsaw uprising (not to be confused with the warsaw ghetto uprising) which was huge, spent several hrs in it, and full of info.

it's been interesting how it's ended up being such a WWII-centric trip. (kelly, il faut que t'y viennes un de ces jours...c ton paradis! et berlin aussi. john m'a rejoint de Berlin et il m'a dit que tout ce qu'on peut faire la-bas au sujet de la 2e guerre mondiale est incroyable, y compris le bunker d'Hitler!) but anyways, warsaw and all about WWII---didn't realize it'd be that way, but like i said, the whole city practically was razed by the germans so nearly all of it is rebuilt, tons of memorials/monuments to those who died, etc. 3 million jews in 1938. 5000-10.000 today in warsaw. crazy. over 300.000 were deported from the warsaw ghetto alone, mostly in 1944 at the end of the war. and stalin/URSS was horrible to the city too, both during and after the war. been quite fascinating. john and i were saying today it's so neat being here as you hear about the warsaw ghetto, the ghetto uprising, Mordechaj Anielewicz (its leader), all the concentration camps in poland, how poland was totally screwed over in the war (in terms of destruction to buildings/infrastructure, death of its jews and gentiles alike, being invaded nearly simultaneously by germany and l'URSS from the west and east, etc) -- but it all seems so far away and distant. but to actually be here, see a remaining fragment of the ghetto wall, see the museum full of stories of people involved in the resistance, monuments/memorials galore is quite incredible and moving and remarkable. so awesome!

anyways, heading to krakow tomorrow midday! hope all's well in chattanoga and none of you have been arrested for underage drinking provoked by intimidating text messages....oh mccallie....some things about you i just don't miss at all!!

i had super awesome falafel last night and thought of stephanie and pete and the awesome falafel fiesta that's going down in chattown this summer.

and lufthansa's hyper nice btw. drinks/sandwiches/refills on both hour-long flights! and free coffee/tea in the munich airport! and, aliza, they came around with "coffee/tea!" you would've loved it!

next day...
ate a great dinner tonight at a place called greenway, an all-veggie restaurant that's apparently growing in popularity in poland. complete full meal for 9 dollars. including drinks. for the both of us! yay non-euro countries! at dinner we ran into this guy we met this morning! it was really funny and fun. we ate w/ him since he was by himself. we bonded over bank difficulties this morning (i can't use my visa credit card as an ATM card to withdraw cash...anywhere. france, poland, etc. weird...) but he's french, from chambery (right near grenoble!..in between it and geneve) and working in poland. he speaks super good english, has lived in the US some, china, poland, france obv. spoke english this morning but then french tonight once he realized we spoke french. it was funny...did he honestly think we'd be studying abroad in france if we didn't know french!?

here in krakow, i ate an incredible vegetarian pierogi sampler plate, including ones with spinach! for 5 bucks. for the entire meal! a platter/assortment of various kinds, including spinach-feta, cheese-onion and potato-mushroom. hyper delicieux! and super cheap too! they're like dumplings in a way, but more like ravioli in terms of the texture of the dough/bread that holds it together. and u just cook them in boiling water (i thoguht they were fried or baked or something for some reason) so its like pasta in that way. YUM!

Krakow
the royal castle was pretty cool. nothing spectacular i didn't think but neat to see. we went back in the afternoon when it got sunny and clearer and went up the bell tower which was neat, nice view over the city, seeing the maaaassive bells. otherwise just walked around town, saw churches nad monuments, ate BORSCHT for lunch! it was good! i officially like beets! you're missing out, mom...

its weird, everyone says krakow's amazing and you can (even should) spend a whole week there, but i haven't really gotten that impression. maybe it's because stuff's been closed, but i feel like you can only see so many churches, only so many 15th, 16th ,17th century old religious paintings that all look the same, etc. i feel like we've doen everything there is to do here, except museums which are closed yesterday and today (and we're doing auschwitz tomorrow so prob won't have time to do them), but again, that'd just be more similar painting/tapestry type stuff that we've seen already. whatevs. not to say that i've been underwhelmed by krakow, maybe more just plain whelmed haha. warsaw was really cool though i (and john) thought, and everyone says that it's lame and not cool and krakow's way better. so who knows!!!

excited about auschwitz tomorrow though (if you're allowed to say/think that...)!