Poland

Well i finally decided to go to Warsaw, Poland. I skipped Vilnius, Lithuania cause i heard nothing but bad things about it. nobody had anything good to say about it and that it was very very boring and no one was out on the street afer 10pm. I am very eager to get to Krakow, Poland which i only hear fantastic things about, so i skipped lithuania and went straight to poland. I took a bus from Riga to Warsaw which took 12 hours.......not fun. It left at 6pm and arrived at 6am in Warsaw. luckily the bus wasn't very full so i was able to lay down across the 2 seats. We had to pass through lithuania and let me tell you, everyone was right, oh my god there wasn't a soul out on the street and all the lights were off in all the houses, actually it was very spooky, i'm glad i didn't go there. Well i tried to sleep but didn't, i was very uncomfortable. when i arrived in Warsaw it started to rain and it was 6am. i had to catch a bus to my hostal and i knew i had to catch bus #127 to... are you ready......Swietokryska, yeah have fun pronouncing that, so i couldn't ask anybody where it was cause i couldn't pronounce it, but then i would show them what i had written down and they couldn't read my writing, so i'm like whatever, i got on the bus only to slowly realize that the bus was taking me out of the city, so i thought maybe i am going the wrong way, so i got off and got on the bus going the other way. It took me a while to find everything cause the street names and everything were very difficult to read. the cross street i was looking for was Marszalkowska, and to me all the street names looked the same and i couldn't tell the difference and not sleeping for 24 hours after a 12 hour bus ride and carrying around a huge backpack i was not in the mood. I was looking for the Oki Doki Hostel, that's right, Oki Doki. well i finally found the Oki Doki hostel walked up the 3 flights of stairs only to find that no one was at reception, there was no one to talk to or anything and i saw a sign that said check-in 3pm, i was like what! oh no i need to go to bed now and this is defintely not oki doki with me. i couldn't believe no one was at reception. so i sat in a corner with my stuff and ended up falling aleep on some chair. i woke up and found myself drooling on my sweater with my glasses falling off my face, i quickly composed myself and went up to reception and was like "hi, i have a room reserved" i'm sure i looked horrible cause he looked at me a bit strange then asked me for my passport. he said that my bed is ready and i could go to bed now, i thanked him. I took a shower and went to bed. It was pouring rain outside so it was a good day to spend in bed. when i got up i freshened up and decided to find a supermarket to buy some food, well you think that sounds easy but no no no no,i walked all over that sweitorskasjkj whatever street and all around my hostal, and could not find a damn place to buy food. well i found a little delicatessen, but i can't speak polish, they can't speak any language i speak and sign language wasn't working, so i kept walking. it was pouring rain outside, like pooooouring rain and it was freezing and windy, my poor little purple giraffe umbrella was giving it everything it had to shelter me, but the wind kept flipping it upwards, oh it was horrible. i finally bought some fruit off some street vendors and found a little local market by my hostal where i bought some bread and cheese and what i hope was turkey. i didn't have enough Zlotys (polish money) so i had to go take out money. Well when i was at the atm machine my umbrella flew away, like flew into the air, i was like noooooooooooooooooo please noooooooooooo my UMBRELLAAAAAAAAAAAAA and my card was in the machine and i had a second to figure out what to do so i tried to cancel the transaction i was making but couldn't make out which button i had to press cause it was all in polish, so i pressed the red one and it gave me my card back and then i ran after my umbrella, i chased it down screaming, MY UMBRELLLAAAAAAAAA HELP ME, and it was pouring down rain, well i finally caught up to it and went back to atm machine to take out money, i just wanted to cry, but didn't. I got back to the hostal, ate and then i decided to go visit the old jewish ghetto. Now my impression of warsaw at this point was very sad. It is a city that was nearly destroyed during WW2, The nazi's wanted to burn it to the ground and quite frankly succeded, Warsaw looks very post WW2 you can see that everything was built within the last 55 years or so. I didn't feel very safe either. Well i went looking for what were the remains of the wall that was built around the jewish ghetto. It was difficult to find, and isn't well marked. There isn't much wall left and it's tucked away in an apartment structure, very hard to find. There was only one guy around and it was very quiet. It was so so so sad, i didn't feel comfortable there so i left, it was so hard to stand where thousands and thousands of people died of starvation and exaustion. There was one more place where there are remains of the ghetto, and i wasn't sure if i wanted to see it, but i thought, i won't be coming back to warsaw anytime soon, so i'll go. This time there weren't just remains of a wall, they were the remains of the aparments where the jews lived. They were left just the way they were. The building was half gone but you could still see chairs, tables, personal items hanging from the windows that were shattered and broken. I couldn't even take a picture, i felt it was disrespectful and just wanted to leave. I felt ill. I could feel thousands of screaming voices everywhere, it's somewhere i prefer never to visit again. After visiting these 2 places i went for a long walk and decided to see a movie. i went to see batman begins. Then when the movie was over i was walking back to the hostal and heard some jazz music, so i walkled in this cool jazz bar and ordered a glass of wine. after the band finished i sat outside and watched everybody talk to their friends as i finished my wine. i then went back to the hostal and talked to the irish couple that was sharing a room with me. Then i decided to go out a bit and found a club where i danced for like an hour. Then i went to a little bar where they were playing flamenco rumba music and salsa, so you know who got her groove on that night, i was a little dancing machine. i got back to the hostal around 4:30am I woke up,well let's say, i finally left my room at 3pm the next day, ate lunch and went for a walk. I got lost, which was great cause i stumbled upon the old part of warsaw...BEAUTIFUL. WOW, warsaw is BEAUTIFUL, the old part is absolutely breathtaking. i sat in the plaza with an old man who gave me bread to feed the pigeons. It was alot of fun. He was talking to me in polish forever. Then he asked me what languages i spoke, and i told him english and spanish so he spoke to me in italian which was probably a good medium for both of us. The pigeons were getting really close to me and starting walking on my feet,i was like oh my god how cute, and they kept looking at me saying "hey lady throw some more bread" So anyway after the pigeon feeding session I walked around until i found this internet cafe and started to write this. You know i have to condense so much, cause i already spend and hour and a half writing all of this, and sometimes it's hard to find a computer and the time to write this so, there is so much more that happens and so much more detail and feeling but i guess i'll just have to share it personally with everybody cause i couldn't possibly write everything. well i want to go have a coffee or something, i've got more pigeons to feed!