Poland tour diary
Apr. 14th, 2007 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbYes, I'm weeks late writing this up. But I have the pictures now.
Monday 12 March, 2130 hours.
Hotel Mercure, Warsaw.
We left Dublin airport on a 0700 flight for Warsaw this morning, a sum total of 30 students and 2 lecturers. We landed in Poland shortly before noon local time after an uneventful flight, and there the fun began.
One of our number was held up in immigration/passport control, because - according to the officers there - as her passport labelled her a British subject rather than the more modern British citizen, she needed a visa. Later queries of the embassy revealed this to have been something of a lie, but at the time, the process of acquiring this unnecessary visa took over two hours, while the rest of us cooled our heels on the Arrivals area floor. Around about 1400, issues sorted, 30 starving students took the bus to lunch.
The landscape of Warsaw is radically different to that of any other city I've ever passed through. It was all but razed in the closing months of WWII, our guide told us, and it shows. Everywhere are wide avenues flanked by the square-block tall apartment buildings so favoured by the Soviet architects of the time, with here and there a newer construction or pre-war remnant showing through. There are trees and grassy verges and a subliminal sense of oppression. These buildings are not designed to uplift one's spirits.
At lunch I argued politics with a classmate, a self-described libertarian and the son of one of Ireland's ambassadors. He's a bit of a prat, really, but at least one with a sense of humour and a willingness to think. Lunch was paid for courtesy of the grant provided by the Trinity Alumi Fund: very tasty.
After lunch, we went to a synagogue - actually, the last synagogue still standing in Warsaw after WWII. I took many pictures. Next stop was a museum of the Ghetto. Then we went to see the memorials to the dead. The one at Umschlagplatz was particularly moving, the more so since we went past the Ghetto hospital - later a holding prisoner during the liquidation - and the local SS headquarters - opposite the hospital, both original buildings still standing - en route.
At Umschlagplatz, there are 300 first names carved into the wall of a small marble enclosure. 300 first names to represent over 300,000 dead from the Warsaw Ghetto alone.
You can't be blasé about those sorts of numbers. Not and still be entirely human.
Exhausted - we did quite a bit of walking, and most of us had been up since around 0330 in order to get to the airport by 0500 - we repaired to the hotel. To be informed we were going back out to see the Stare Miasto, the post-war rebuilding of the Old Town.
It was dark by then. The Stare Miasto looks pretty in the dark, all reconstruction old buildings and restored remnants and pretty lights. It might have been more pleasant if I had been awake enough to appreciate it: as it was, I went back to the hotel, had dinner - pierogi, gorgeous things but heart-attack-onna-stick if ever anything was, and profitto rolls - and went to my room - which I share with another student, a third-year mature student - where I am now. And now I will sleep, since we have things to do tomorrow.
More forthcoming later.
Monday 12 March, 2130 hours.
Hotel Mercure, Warsaw.
We left Dublin airport on a 0700 flight for Warsaw this morning, a sum total of 30 students and 2 lecturers. We landed in Poland shortly before noon local time after an uneventful flight, and there the fun began.
One of our number was held up in immigration/passport control, because - according to the officers there - as her passport labelled her a British subject rather than the more modern British citizen, she needed a visa. Later queries of the embassy revealed this to have been something of a lie, but at the time, the process of acquiring this unnecessary visa took over two hours, while the rest of us cooled our heels on the Arrivals area floor. Around about 1400, issues sorted, 30 starving students took the bus to lunch.
The landscape of Warsaw is radically different to that of any other city I've ever passed through. It was all but razed in the closing months of WWII, our guide told us, and it shows. Everywhere are wide avenues flanked by the square-block tall apartment buildings so favoured by the Soviet architects of the time, with here and there a newer construction or pre-war remnant showing through. There are trees and grassy verges and a subliminal sense of oppression. These buildings are not designed to uplift one's spirits.
At lunch I argued politics with a classmate, a self-described libertarian and the son of one of Ireland's ambassadors. He's a bit of a prat, really, but at least one with a sense of humour and a willingness to think. Lunch was paid for courtesy of the grant provided by the Trinity Alumi Fund: very tasty.
After lunch, we went to a synagogue - actually, the last synagogue still standing in Warsaw after WWII. I took many pictures. Next stop was a museum of the Ghetto. Then we went to see the memorials to the dead. The one at Umschlagplatz was particularly moving, the more so since we went past the Ghetto hospital - later a holding prisoner during the liquidation - and the local SS headquarters - opposite the hospital, both original buildings still standing - en route.
At Umschlagplatz, there are 300 first names carved into the wall of a small marble enclosure. 300 first names to represent over 300,000 dead from the Warsaw Ghetto alone.
You can't be blasé about those sorts of numbers. Not and still be entirely human.
Exhausted - we did quite a bit of walking, and most of us had been up since around 0330 in order to get to the airport by 0500 - we repaired to the hotel. To be informed we were going back out to see the Stare Miasto, the post-war rebuilding of the Old Town.
It was dark by then. The Stare Miasto looks pretty in the dark, all reconstruction old buildings and restored remnants and pretty lights. It might have been more pleasant if I had been awake enough to appreciate it: as it was, I went back to the hotel, had dinner - pierogi, gorgeous things but heart-attack-onna-stick if ever anything was, and profitto rolls - and went to my room - which I share with another student, a third-year mature student - where I am now. And now I will sleep, since we have things to do tomorrow.
More forthcoming later.
