Warsaw (Part 2)
I never did finish up my Poland trip, so here goes.
After the first day, I staggered up out of bed tired as breakfast was served early by the landlady of the hotel. Dad also got up and ate with me and then, since I was exhausted and having established that I was not needed that day, I informed him I was going back to bed, where I slept until midday, very soundly.
Once, I would have felt guilty about being in a foreign city and not venturing out of my hotel. However, I'm older and wiser and I knew I wasn't in a fit state to go anywhere, so I stayed in and grabbed the laptop, going onto Dreamwidth. There I discovered a discussion about a suggestion for nested tagging, so I spent some happy time just thinking about it and trying to write out a reply, which became exceedingly long and technical, but helpful in thinking things through. It also meant I'd publicly admitted to tackling that bug, so when I got home I claimed it as mine. After that, I spent some time reading over the shock therapy article on Wikipedia. I was thinking about whether or not to do it then, and just getting my thoughts in order.
I didn't really mind doing all that: the weather was nice, the hotel we were staying in was more like a small apartment and it was gorgeous, really quiet and surrounded by greenery. Eventually, I realised I was hungry. Just as I was going out to do something about it, dad phoned to say he was clear and would I like to come to him.
I met him along a pedestrianised road in a region that seems to correspond to the West End of London. It has the president's palace and the university, and is just outside the old town. We walked down it chatting and figured out where we were going to eat. Eventually, we decided on an Italian, because it was there and the smell was good. The food was pretty good. I'm not used to getting foreign food in Poland, and it seemed like a bit of a travesty not to eat good Polish food while I was there but, as I said, I was tired and recuperating after the mammoth events of the previous day.
After that, we grabbed a taxi to a night club where everyone from the conference was meeting afterwards. I felt pretty uncomfortable but dad dragged me in, and I spent time perched on a bar stool trying to talk to someone who I could barely hear in a conversation I could barely follow while being addressed as Miss on a day where I just did not want that stress. Eventually, I got very angry and just left. I walked down the massive road we were on and discovered that, two roads down, was a street that would lead to the one with our hotel. This was good because I was just beginning to stress about how I'd find my way home.
Dad got in much later, as I was falling asleep, and spent the night writing up his speech so he could give it to other people. As it was past midnight and he'd have to be up at 8 again the next morning, I thought it was insane and I went to bed. Unfortunately, I was on a camp bed in the main room, so while he was working, all the lights were on and I had to make do. But somehow I did and went to sleep, only to wake up the next morning for breakfast again. I blearily wolfed my way through breakfast and went back to bed. Dad didn't even bother to get up this time, but got up a few hours later to eat what was left.
We were meant to be out of the place that evening as the conference finished, and dad had tried to get one more night as we were driving. In the end, we were told we could, but we'd have to pay 150 Euros for it. Initially, I'd heard it was 150 Zlotys, so we thought we would and set out the next day, particularly as
yvi had told me about the German motorways being clear on Monday due to a national holiday. However, later we were rudely awakened and realised we couldn't afford to stay there. So we packed everything into the car and dad went off to the conference.
After he'd headed off, I decided I would definitely go and see central Warsaw that day. I caught a taxi to the street with the restaurants and walked up to the old town. The first point at which I knew I was in the old town was seeing Sigmund's Column and the palace/castle overlooking the Vistula River. It was all very twee. I went inside and asked how much entry was, only to discover it was free on Sundays but I'd need a ticket from the booth. I figured I'd do that later and went off to the main old market square, which was gorgeous. While I was there, it started to rain a little. I bought a waffle and took what shelter I could. Then it started to rain. Really rain. Everyone ended up stood under the outdoor restaurant awnings. The staff from local cafes ran around trying to move any cushions out the way, serve food and prevent patrons from getting wet while eating. They did an impressive job, covering food with trays or their bodies, but the rain intensified even more, and the waiting staff were all completely soaked. So were any patrons not firmly under the covers, as the rain was so hard that it splashed at least a metre inside the coverings, if not more. Then it started to hail.
Eventually, when the hail and rain had eased, I left and went back to the castle, determined to spend some time inside in case there was more. I got a ticket and went inside. The castle was fairly nice. Very much like Hampton Court in style (large quadrangles, sumptuous decoration inside, chambers arranged along one side of each quadrangle). The staff were scary, though. Any possible infraction and they jumped on you.
After I'd exhausted the possibilities of the palace, I went back to the square, sat down outside in a cafe and order myself some drinks while I pulled out my book and read. Eventually, time reached the cut off point me and dad had agreed. I phoned him (no reply) and headed back to the car. There I sat for about two hours waiting for him. Just as I was leaving to find a toilet, he rang and said he was coming. I went off in search of a toilet and found one in a bar. One of the awesome things about Europe is, because everywhere charges you for the toilet, there's not fear in going inside and using one without buying anything. I didn't even know the price, but I had a 2 Zl piece and handed it to the bar lady after I was done and she gave me one back, so that was that.
I got back to the car and dad met me there finally. We got in and headed off, out of Warsaw. It was about 7pm by then, so we drove out along the road to Lodz. We got to Lodz a couple of hours later and we decided that we'd stop there for the night and do all of Germany the next day, so we drove into the centre of town.
Since Dad was bursting for the toilet, we stopped at a big shopping complex that was made out of refurbished textile mills. It looked very nice and atmospheric, but was none the less pretty much standard for a redevelopment as you'd get here in the UK. When dad came back, he told me that he'd already booked us into a hotel. We drove around and entered this 4 star hotel in a converted mill. I found out that we were paying 400 Zl (~100 Euro) and I was pretty furious, as it was very expensive. Although the hotel was a refurbished mill and therefore interesting from the inside, it also had a bad vibe, with our room being furnished in a massively over the top designer fashion, where substance was sacrificed to design. So we had glass doors on the toilet/bathroom and the TV audio was piped into the bathroom, and other really stupid little details that didn't make our lives any easier but which we were paying through the nose for. Poland is full of small, charming and individual inns made out of timber run by families, with a room being quite cheap and we had to pick this monstrosity for obscene amounts of money. Even the wifi wasn't free, which was going some. We were simply paying so we could feel superior to other people. I was not impressed. Worse, the place reminded me of every soulless conference centre I'd ever stayed in when travelling with my PhD.
After we'd checked in, we went in search of food. Eventually, we returned to the hotel as everything else was closing and wouldn't serve us. The hotel had your standard 4 star fine eating menu, which is great, if you're not tired and just want hearty simple food and bed. Me and dad got through a meal with a really nice waiter to chat to. I said the waiter was nice, but still managed to have that supercilious arrogance that every fine dining place has. Thank heavens the Polish are incapable of doing corporate well, as it made the experience bearable.
We went to bed afterwards . Well, I tried to, but couldn't because I was wired up on being annoyed at the place and also stressed out at remembering my PhD trips, which were all, without exception, the times I felt the most alone and vulnerable in the world. Neither of us slept well, it turned out.
The next day dawned and we were up early and out the place. Dad tried to find a place that sold cheap cigarettes so he could take some back and pay for the journey. He found out directions once more thanks to innate Polish helpfulness and their failure to do corporate arrogance well. (please, please stay that way, really).
We got there only to find out that they'd discontinued doing dad's cigarettes. We got mum's plus a few replacements for dad, and I got in the car and drove to the motorway. Since we were on the outskirts of Lodz, we ended up going through some interesting country lanes on the way out, some of which were unsurfaced. Then, we entered the motorway and zipped along it for a bit. I was a little rusty, but soon got into the rhythm again. However, I got tired quickly and dad took over to get to the end of the motorway. We decided to take a different route than the number 2 (which everyone else would be taking to the border) and to cross the border elsewhere. We nipped up along some quiet roads going through forest onto the west/east road to the north and turned west towards the border. It was lunch time, so we stopped at one of those lovely little inns and I finally got potato pancakes :) while dad got dumplings. He ordered way too many, but they packaged them up and we took them with us and I ended up munching on them later in Belgium. They made a really handy snack then!
The next step was for me to drive, and so I did, going along to the border at a town I couldn't pronounce even then with it in front of me, even though I'm Polish. This town happens to be on the confluence of the rivers Odra and Warta. Poland had undergone severe flooding along the Vistula earlier and they were praying for no more rain (which made that rain downpour in Warsaw all the more Ironic). The Odra (Oder) river marks the border between Poland and Germany, and we came in towards the Odra parallel with the Warta. The Warta had burst its banks and flooded the whole flood plain, which was fortunately left empty and wild as a natural park. Our road was on an embankment and, had it not been so, would have been impassable.
Soon we passed into Germany and we were whistling along the route 1, which was a pretty good road. It started raining quite hard and I got to experience some wet driving. Eventually, it joined into the motorway from the border and I went on the Autobahn.
The Autobahns were as empty of trucks as
yvi had said they would be. I came in on the autobahn quite shakily and felt obliged to test myself by moving out into the faster lanes. However, the slow lane was doing 70mph alone, so soon I ended up in the slow lane just poodling along. Dad meanwhile went to sleep next to me, which filled me with confidence...
At some point, a lorry (there were a few, just a very few) forced me out into the middle lane. Staying in the middle lane was scary and then I had to overtake someone else in the middle lane because I had to. This, then, was how I came to be in the fast lane doing 110mph down the autobahn quite comfortably. In this way, I ate up the miles, going around the Berlin Ring and onto the 2, which goes through most of Germany east to west.
I had just crossed out of where the East German border used to be at Magdeburg when dad woke up. It was good, because I was just beginning to flag. He was surprised by how much I'd done and how quickly. We then swapped over and dad took over driving. We whizzed past Hanover and into the Ruhr Valley as night was falling. We should have stopped somewhere there again, but dad had the bit between his teeth and wanted to get home. So we sped down the motorway into the Netherlands and then Belgium. By this stage, I was fairly exhausted and tried to sleep. I managed a little in Germany but generally failed otherwise, and it just made me more tired. Dad, meanwhile, broke every speed limit in his desire to get home. The motorways in the Netherlands and Belgium were, fortunately, quite empty.
We hit the ferry dad had booked, at 4am. We were back on Norfolk Line, as they were the cheapest, and had a two hour crossing. Dad had bought first class travel, so I stretched myself out on the sofa and slept.
This did nothing for my tiredness, so when dad drove out and stopped at a service station to let me take over for the home stretch, I was not convinced. However, I drove back and we managed to be welcomed home with a great big traffic jam in the Blackwall tunnel. Ah, how that brings back memories...
Eventually, we arrived home just as mother was leaving for work. It was really good to see her and she seemed happy to see us. The cats were particularly happy to see us, as mum hadn't been feeding them much at all and they'd lost weight. Then we went to sleep.
After the first day, I staggered up out of bed tired as breakfast was served early by the landlady of the hotel. Dad also got up and ate with me and then, since I was exhausted and having established that I was not needed that day, I informed him I was going back to bed, where I slept until midday, very soundly.
Once, I would have felt guilty about being in a foreign city and not venturing out of my hotel. However, I'm older and wiser and I knew I wasn't in a fit state to go anywhere, so I stayed in and grabbed the laptop, going onto Dreamwidth. There I discovered a discussion about a suggestion for nested tagging, so I spent some happy time just thinking about it and trying to write out a reply, which became exceedingly long and technical, but helpful in thinking things through. It also meant I'd publicly admitted to tackling that bug, so when I got home I claimed it as mine. After that, I spent some time reading over the shock therapy article on Wikipedia. I was thinking about whether or not to do it then, and just getting my thoughts in order.
I didn't really mind doing all that: the weather was nice, the hotel we were staying in was more like a small apartment and it was gorgeous, really quiet and surrounded by greenery. Eventually, I realised I was hungry. Just as I was going out to do something about it, dad phoned to say he was clear and would I like to come to him.
I met him along a pedestrianised road in a region that seems to correspond to the West End of London. It has the president's palace and the university, and is just outside the old town. We walked down it chatting and figured out where we were going to eat. Eventually, we decided on an Italian, because it was there and the smell was good. The food was pretty good. I'm not used to getting foreign food in Poland, and it seemed like a bit of a travesty not to eat good Polish food while I was there but, as I said, I was tired and recuperating after the mammoth events of the previous day.
After that, we grabbed a taxi to a night club where everyone from the conference was meeting afterwards. I felt pretty uncomfortable but dad dragged me in, and I spent time perched on a bar stool trying to talk to someone who I could barely hear in a conversation I could barely follow while being addressed as Miss on a day where I just did not want that stress. Eventually, I got very angry and just left. I walked down the massive road we were on and discovered that, two roads down, was a street that would lead to the one with our hotel. This was good because I was just beginning to stress about how I'd find my way home.
Dad got in much later, as I was falling asleep, and spent the night writing up his speech so he could give it to other people. As it was past midnight and he'd have to be up at 8 again the next morning, I thought it was insane and I went to bed. Unfortunately, I was on a camp bed in the main room, so while he was working, all the lights were on and I had to make do. But somehow I did and went to sleep, only to wake up the next morning for breakfast again. I blearily wolfed my way through breakfast and went back to bed. Dad didn't even bother to get up this time, but got up a few hours later to eat what was left.
We were meant to be out of the place that evening as the conference finished, and dad had tried to get one more night as we were driving. In the end, we were told we could, but we'd have to pay 150 Euros for it. Initially, I'd heard it was 150 Zlotys, so we thought we would and set out the next day, particularly as
yvi had told me about the German motorways being clear on Monday due to a national holiday. However, later we were rudely awakened and realised we couldn't afford to stay there. So we packed everything into the car and dad went off to the conference.
After he'd headed off, I decided I would definitely go and see central Warsaw that day. I caught a taxi to the street with the restaurants and walked up to the old town. The first point at which I knew I was in the old town was seeing Sigmund's Column and the palace/castle overlooking the Vistula River. It was all very twee. I went inside and asked how much entry was, only to discover it was free on Sundays but I'd need a ticket from the booth. I figured I'd do that later and went off to the main old market square, which was gorgeous. While I was there, it started to rain a little. I bought a waffle and took what shelter I could. Then it started to rain. Really rain. Everyone ended up stood under the outdoor restaurant awnings. The staff from local cafes ran around trying to move any cushions out the way, serve food and prevent patrons from getting wet while eating. They did an impressive job, covering food with trays or their bodies, but the rain intensified even more, and the waiting staff were all completely soaked. So were any patrons not firmly under the covers, as the rain was so hard that it splashed at least a metre inside the coverings, if not more. Then it started to hail.
Eventually, when the hail and rain had eased, I left and went back to the castle, determined to spend some time inside in case there was more. I got a ticket and went inside. The castle was fairly nice. Very much like Hampton Court in style (large quadrangles, sumptuous decoration inside, chambers arranged along one side of each quadrangle). The staff were scary, though. Any possible infraction and they jumped on you.
After I'd exhausted the possibilities of the palace, I went back to the square, sat down outside in a cafe and order myself some drinks while I pulled out my book and read. Eventually, time reached the cut off point me and dad had agreed. I phoned him (no reply) and headed back to the car. There I sat for about two hours waiting for him. Just as I was leaving to find a toilet, he rang and said he was coming. I went off in search of a toilet and found one in a bar. One of the awesome things about Europe is, because everywhere charges you for the toilet, there's not fear in going inside and using one without buying anything. I didn't even know the price, but I had a 2 Zl piece and handed it to the bar lady after I was done and she gave me one back, so that was that.
I got back to the car and dad met me there finally. We got in and headed off, out of Warsaw. It was about 7pm by then, so we drove out along the road to Lodz. We got to Lodz a couple of hours later and we decided that we'd stop there for the night and do all of Germany the next day, so we drove into the centre of town.
Since Dad was bursting for the toilet, we stopped at a big shopping complex that was made out of refurbished textile mills. It looked very nice and atmospheric, but was none the less pretty much standard for a redevelopment as you'd get here in the UK. When dad came back, he told me that he'd already booked us into a hotel. We drove around and entered this 4 star hotel in a converted mill. I found out that we were paying 400 Zl (~100 Euro) and I was pretty furious, as it was very expensive. Although the hotel was a refurbished mill and therefore interesting from the inside, it also had a bad vibe, with our room being furnished in a massively over the top designer fashion, where substance was sacrificed to design. So we had glass doors on the toilet/bathroom and the TV audio was piped into the bathroom, and other really stupid little details that didn't make our lives any easier but which we were paying through the nose for. Poland is full of small, charming and individual inns made out of timber run by families, with a room being quite cheap and we had to pick this monstrosity for obscene amounts of money. Even the wifi wasn't free, which was going some. We were simply paying so we could feel superior to other people. I was not impressed. Worse, the place reminded me of every soulless conference centre I'd ever stayed in when travelling with my PhD.
After we'd checked in, we went in search of food. Eventually, we returned to the hotel as everything else was closing and wouldn't serve us. The hotel had your standard 4 star fine eating menu, which is great, if you're not tired and just want hearty simple food and bed. Me and dad got through a meal with a really nice waiter to chat to. I said the waiter was nice, but still managed to have that supercilious arrogance that every fine dining place has. Thank heavens the Polish are incapable of doing corporate well, as it made the experience bearable.
We went to bed afterwards . Well, I tried to, but couldn't because I was wired up on being annoyed at the place and also stressed out at remembering my PhD trips, which were all, without exception, the times I felt the most alone and vulnerable in the world. Neither of us slept well, it turned out.
The next day dawned and we were up early and out the place. Dad tried to find a place that sold cheap cigarettes so he could take some back and pay for the journey. He found out directions once more thanks to innate Polish helpfulness and their failure to do corporate arrogance well. (please, please stay that way, really).
We got there only to find out that they'd discontinued doing dad's cigarettes. We got mum's plus a few replacements for dad, and I got in the car and drove to the motorway. Since we were on the outskirts of Lodz, we ended up going through some interesting country lanes on the way out, some of which were unsurfaced. Then, we entered the motorway and zipped along it for a bit. I was a little rusty, but soon got into the rhythm again. However, I got tired quickly and dad took over to get to the end of the motorway. We decided to take a different route than the number 2 (which everyone else would be taking to the border) and to cross the border elsewhere. We nipped up along some quiet roads going through forest onto the west/east road to the north and turned west towards the border. It was lunch time, so we stopped at one of those lovely little inns and I finally got potato pancakes :) while dad got dumplings. He ordered way too many, but they packaged them up and we took them with us and I ended up munching on them later in Belgium. They made a really handy snack then!
The next step was for me to drive, and so I did, going along to the border at a town I couldn't pronounce even then with it in front of me, even though I'm Polish. This town happens to be on the confluence of the rivers Odra and Warta. Poland had undergone severe flooding along the Vistula earlier and they were praying for no more rain (which made that rain downpour in Warsaw all the more Ironic). The Odra (Oder) river marks the border between Poland and Germany, and we came in towards the Odra parallel with the Warta. The Warta had burst its banks and flooded the whole flood plain, which was fortunately left empty and wild as a natural park. Our road was on an embankment and, had it not been so, would have been impassable.
Soon we passed into Germany and we were whistling along the route 1, which was a pretty good road. It started raining quite hard and I got to experience some wet driving. Eventually, it joined into the motorway from the border and I went on the Autobahn.
The Autobahns were as empty of trucks as
yvi had said they would be. I came in on the autobahn quite shakily and felt obliged to test myself by moving out into the faster lanes. However, the slow lane was doing 70mph alone, so soon I ended up in the slow lane just poodling along. Dad meanwhile went to sleep next to me, which filled me with confidence...
At some point, a lorry (there were a few, just a very few) forced me out into the middle lane. Staying in the middle lane was scary and then I had to overtake someone else in the middle lane because I had to. This, then, was how I came to be in the fast lane doing 110mph down the autobahn quite comfortably. In this way, I ate up the miles, going around the Berlin Ring and onto the 2, which goes through most of Germany east to west.
I had just crossed out of where the East German border used to be at Magdeburg when dad woke up. It was good, because I was just beginning to flag. He was surprised by how much I'd done and how quickly. We then swapped over and dad took over driving. We whizzed past Hanover and into the Ruhr Valley as night was falling. We should have stopped somewhere there again, but dad had the bit between his teeth and wanted to get home. So we sped down the motorway into the Netherlands and then Belgium. By this stage, I was fairly exhausted and tried to sleep. I managed a little in Germany but generally failed otherwise, and it just made me more tired. Dad, meanwhile, broke every speed limit in his desire to get home. The motorways in the Netherlands and Belgium were, fortunately, quite empty.
We hit the ferry dad had booked, at 4am. We were back on Norfolk Line, as they were the cheapest, and had a two hour crossing. Dad had bought first class travel, so I stretched myself out on the sofa and slept.
This did nothing for my tiredness, so when dad drove out and stopped at a service station to let me take over for the home stretch, I was not convinced. However, I drove back and we managed to be welcomed home with a great big traffic jam in the Blackwall tunnel. Ah, how that brings back memories...
Eventually, we arrived home just as mother was leaving for work. It was really good to see her and she seemed happy to see us. The cats were particularly happy to see us, as mum hadn't been feeding them much at all and they'd lost weight. Then we went to sleep.