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We made it to the capital of Poland! Yay! Plus, it only took 3hours on a train to get here, during which we had a whole compartment to ourselves (due to closing the curtains across the doors and pretending we were alseep across all of the seats.. hehe!) I got plenty of time to try out - and sing and dance to - my new mp3 player, although I've now found out that 1GB isn't good enough for a long journey when you skip songs as frequently as I do. We also got the opportunity to take some hilarious - but very private - photos of us making good use of the Berlin-Warsaw express.
After arriving and following our directions through the maze of underpasses and grotty little stalls that is Warszawa Centralina station, we got on to a tram and found our way to our back-street hostel with shocking efficiency. (Meaning, we only had to back on ourselves once!)
It's a lovely little place, run by staff with perfect English and containing travellers with equally abundant English vocabularies. It has a bath (a triumph!) and a lovely kitchen that offers free soup (one bowl of which contains so many ingredients that I would consider it alone a 'balanced diet') every evening and free breakfast every morning. Our two bed, private dorm is actually a 5 bed dorm and it's been all ours for the two days we booked so that's been a pleasant change.
Last night after we arrived at about 1ish we dumpedour bags and headed straight out. We're a short tram ride away from.. well.. everything so we headed into the city centre and bimbled around the old town for the evening. We saw - again - pretty much every church and fascinating facade available in the whole city and then ventured into the back alleys in search of and interesting meal. What we found was a Thai restaurant with Indian decor and serving french food (well, they had frogs legs on the menu). I had the frogs legs and Adam had Vermacelli (?), both were average and expensive.. we're not so good at this budget holiday-ing thing.
On the way home we found the main square, in which that was some kind of display of bears, standing in huge circles or flanking the throroughfair. Each bear was designed to represent a nation. Sadly, all the British bear had to offer was a Union Jack across it's chest.. No tea, scones or morris minors in sight.
After we got home we spent a quiet evening reading in the common room. Well, we were quiet, everyone else was watching the France - Italy game (I couldn't care less about Euro 2008, which makes it a little harder to stand the screaming, the flags and the drunken idiots celebrating loudly outside the window in the early hours with horns (as was the case in Poznan)). Thankfully our hostel here is in a quiet cul-de-sac, so no louts here!
We went to bed at about 10ish and I had the best nights sleep yet. I don't know if it was the quiet, the larger - therefore cooler - room or the fact that I was sleeping next to Adam again after 4 days of bunk beds but I opened by eyes to morning sunshine and felt much better for it. We got up quiet late - for us - today (about 9ish) and had our cereal and toast before shooting into the bathroom before anyone else took it. The shower is one you have to hold which makes fora very wet floor when youadd in the flimsy shower curtain was it was warm and powerful (unlike the shower on the boat in Gdansk) so we were happy.
I spent a few minutes reading through the guide book and we spoke to the receptionist about interesting places to visit. He got out a map for us and circled three things; the giant shopping mall, a pretty park and the old town. So, we'd managed to pretty much cover everything but the shopping in one evening, as with everywhere else we've been so far! The pedometer I have inside my mobile has been estimating that we are walking about 8 miles per day (but it is inside my bag and not on my hip so the reality is probably quite a bit further) so I suppose its not that shocking to imagine us covering the main centre of a city in one evening.
So we spent most of today exploring the shops and seeing a few buildings that we'd missed last night. Adam made like a vampire and hid from the 'scorching' sun all day (it was 30 degrees, max) whilst I enjoyed the warmth in my new brown skirt he bought me :)
For lunch we decided to go for a budget-meal and so ended up in a fast-food italian counter. It was set out like subway with pizza slices, lasagne portions and salad etc layed out. Adam and I pointed to several things each, expecting to get a plate with a bit of pasta, bit of salad and things on it... we ended up with FIVE meals. I can't decide who was more stupid; us for letting her serve them up and heat them before we realised we were getting enough italian food to feed the 5000 or the attendant for thinking that two average-sized English people - who looked decidedly poor - would need that much food. Stupid language barrier.
After forcing an impressive portion of it down we sheepishly clumped away, to find something interesting. We went into the Museum Teknik and saw computers, telephones and other technology through the ages - including a pedal-powered helicopter!
We wandered the streets for a few more hours, naughtily treating ourselves to some icecream and finding a singing-dancing dinner theater that unluckily - luckily for our bank balances - didn't have any acts on this evening. After waiting at a crowded bus stop for the 100bus (a 'tourist sight-seeing route') which failed to turn up we bustled ourway back through the central station, onto a tram and back home. A few underpasses away from the hostel a man obviously heard that we were English and stopped us for directions; it turned out he was going to the same hostel as us and had been wandering the underpasses for ages, poor thing. He is Polish and gave us a few pronunciation tips and City advice good enough for us to cancel the bookings we had made for the last section of our trip in favour of a different route.
We decided to think like the poor students we are and stuck with plain old free soup this evening; it was anything but plain and certainly not old.. freshly made, nutritious dinner! (I'm such a snob, just 'cause it was free I feel like a tramp..)
We now plan to have another chilled out evening, reading our books. Ah, such a rock and roll lifestyle. Tomorrow we head to Krakow and Auschwitz. That's all for now, bye!
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