Homeland bound - work in Warsaw
I've been lucky enough in the last couple of weeks to finally cross off a 'to do' item for my life, and that is to drink Polish vodka in an ice bar! Ok, maybe the really cool thing that I've finally done is the fact that I drank said Polish Vodka in the ice bar.. in Poland! Hurrah!!, for the first time in my life I went to see the land of my ancestors. Unfortunately there wasn't any miraculous genetic knowledge hidden in my DNA, so despite eating, drinking and working 'Polish'-style, I didn't understand any of the language ;).
There's actually two Interpublic offices in Warsaw which I was sent to check out. The first is pretty small and we were just prepping the site for the migration in the coming weeks, and the second is quite large but is a long way from being migration ready. Because we were only predominantly dealing with the small office, and because there were three of us sent there (and because my workmates were nice and covered for me), I got a chance to have a good look around the city.
Immediately landing on the flight in one of my workmates (who'd been to Warsaw years ago) said it's already really different from when he was there. There's English/Polish advertising all over the place for lots of different products, even golf, and he said it seems a lot more 'modern' than it used to be. I looked at all of the concrete buildings and thought it was all a little ugly, but as I looked around the city in the following days I began to understand why things are the way they are, and that some bits are really quite nice.
Thursday night we landed and got to the Hotel Bristol (pretty nice place - good gym, small pool), before I headed out for a quick look around while the others were resting. I found the Tomb of the Unknown soldier right near the hotel and worked out roughly where things were. Later we all walked down the 'Royal Walk' (we didn't know what it was at that time) to the University district for some dinner. A lot of trendy little cafes and things are located there along pedestrian malls and shopping boulevards. It only took a few minutes for my workmates to begin to comment on the local populace in the area, and although I thought I may be biased, I soon found out I'm not. For all the girls, please avoid the next few lines as you probably won't like them, but I'm a boy so I feel it's my obligation to report on all aspects of my travels - women included ;).
So here it is - Polish women are hot! I'd heard it before from a few people and now I can definitely confirm it. While there may not be as many head turners walking around as say Sweden, some of the women are just total tall, slim, blonde and blue-eyed traffic-stoppers. So for the lads, Sweden may win on sheer numbers, but Poland spanks it all on quality. Of course, the ability of a person to actually meet/greet/wine/dine one of those women is probably a lot smaller :)
Ok, enough of the crap stuff. Onto dinner! The food was good and cheap, but one thing on the menu just HAD to be ordered - Piroggi. YUM! They were a little different to the ones my Grandma used to make, but just as yummy. I also had an entree of Lambs Brains! They kind of looked like a small potato hash brown on pumpernickle bread, but inside the brain is really quite white and squishy. While it was interesting to eat, and not at all unpleasant, I probably wouldn't go back for it. I also wouldn't eat it again just to be sure there's no chance that eating brains would turn me into a zombie who'd go around talking bites out of real lambs, turning them into zombie lambs, who in turn would go out hunting more lambs etc etc. Eventually the zombie lambs would probably have to turn on humans for food, and I wouldn't want that on my conscience! (That one was for Ski, Matti and prolly Zannah).
Friday was spent at work until quite late - boring. We got a lot of work done though and the local IT guy was pretty nice. For lunch we had Mexican (in Poland - go figure) before heading out to dinner that night in a restaurant situated in the main Market Square of the Old Town part of Warsaw. We took a small tour of the old town and it's pretty awesome with the recreated houses. In the middle of the square is a statue of a mermaid which is the symbol of the city. Apparently two mermaids were in the ocean in the past and each left to live in a river, one went to Denmark (if you've seen the mermaid statue there) while the other came to live in the river (I've forgotten the name) which runs through Warsaw. Also during dinner to some poi/fire twirlers put a show on and they were really good. Following last nights effort my dinner was a massive hunk of deer steak - one DAMN strong game-y flavoured meat. It was quite an effort to eat the whole thing. My mate got Boar stew too, so I nabbed some of that just to miss out any exotic meats.
Fortunately for me there was so little work to do on Saturday, I nicked out and went on a tour. I'm really glad I did as even though it was on a bus, we weren't driven around much. Instead we just got dropped at the big areas and we walked from there, getting explanations etc along the way. The first major stop was the Jewish Memorial marking the site where the Jewish Uprising started during the first world war. The Jewish Ghetto made up quite a large part of Warsaw in those days (the Jews accounted for almost one third of the total city population) and unfortunately, all the World War Two stuff kind of made things go bad. Rather than get transported off to work/die, the community in Warsaw staged an uprising which was pretty brutally squashed. I think it only lasted a matter of days, and basically everyone was pretty much wiped out with only a few escaping through the sewers (there's a memorial sewer covering too where they entered them). The train car memorial is for those sent to work/death camps on the trains.
After that we cruised the streets a little to check out some famous buildings like the Centre for Culture (also known as the massive ugly building, or 'Stalin's Gift' as it's linked to the Russian government building it as a monument to the Polish people or something), the central Law Courts, the Prime Ministers House as well as taking in examples of different architecture. The next stop was the main park area of the town. Inside the park are two important things - the memorial to Chopin, and the Summer Palace on the Water. The Chopin monument is really quite cool (I like the sculpture - check out the similarities between the tree and Chopin's hand) but the best thing is that they do free concerts there each Sunday at 12noon and 4pm if you want to check it out. The Palace on the Water is pretty impressive too but unfortunately we didn't get a chance to really look at it as we got absolutely soaked when a heavy cloud came out of nowhere and bucketed down for 20 minutes and we retreated back to the bus. The park itself is really nice and has some excellent trees and plants etc to relax under (or shelter from the rain). Oh, and my photos are super wonky for some reason!?!?!
After the park we were taken back to the Old Town where our guide walked us around showing us the Market Square and a lot of the other features such as the Cathedral and the Palace. The guide spoke a lot about the architecture and the fact that the entire area was basically completely destroyed by Hitler in retaliation to the Polish Uprising of World War Two (he deported everyone in the city, then left his army there for three months just blowing up everything as he wanted the city completely wiped off the map). The big deal with it all though is that the entire area is now classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Listed Area because it was rebuilt exactly as it has looked before the war. To do this they used highly detailed paintings created by the Italian artist Canaletto (need to check the spelling). The reason it's better than other recreations (and got the UNESCO thumbs up) is that completely matched the original buildings, externally and internally (most are only external recreations). There's photos on boards showing the Old Town as it stood after the second World War, and it's amazing to see that it's just totally flattened! While Old Town was basically completely obliterated, over 70% of the rest of the whole city was similarly destroyed during the war.
After checking out Old Town, we were treated to a Chopin organ recital in the main cathedral which was very cool (the organ makes the music really quite eerie at times). Following that, we walked through Old Town to New Town which has some of the cities original walls and tower defences recreated. A museum dedicated to Madame Curie (the scientist who won a Nobel prize for 'discovering' radiation). The final part of the tour involved going back to the Law Court building to look in depth at the memorial to the Polish uprising of the Second World War.
This thing is really impressive and shows the soldiers bursting from the ground to attack (as they literally came out of the sewers) as they fought back the Germans and kicked them out of the city for a short time. The story goes that the Russian army had marched all the way to the other side of the river (next to the city) and were supposed to come and aid the Polish, but they never did. Although the Polish held the Germans out of the city for a while (twenty something days I think), eventually the Germans just used artillery etc to blast the crap out of the city until the Polish were obliterated. Again, only a few got away in sewers etc (as the second sculpture group shows). This was the incident which pissed Hitler off so badly that he shipped everyone out and ordered the city to wiped off the map.
After the tour was over I hung around New Town and found a big festival being set up on the banks of the river before heading back to Old Town to see a museum showing the city history. Aside from the fact that Poland basically didn't exist as a country for about 120 years in the 1800's and early 1900's, the devastation caused by the war and the fact that the country rebuilt everything says something about the people in it in my opinion (go the ancestral pride!). It also put into perspective all of those ugly concrete buildings I saw when I landed as the population began returning to the city so quickly after the war ended that they had to madly throw up houses/apartments etc just to make sure people had somewhere to live (and not die in the bitter winters). I really enjoyed the musem and had to hurry through some parts as it was tough to fit it all in in just two hours.
That night we headed out for dinner again in the Old Town (ending up at the same restaurant as the previous night because there was a table free) with the IT guy (Michel) and his girlfriend. On the way we went up a big lookout tower where you can get a great view of Old Town and the surrounding areas. Partway through dinner we started hearing big fireworks explosions, it turned out that day was some special festival and they had a big show. After all that we did that cool thing I talked about earlier - went to an ice bar! I tasted a Vodka with grass (yeah, grass) in it which was really nice, and had a new drink recommended to me - vodka and apple juice. It's surprisingly good but I'm not sure whether you need that certain type off grass-vodka we were drinking for it to work (someone lemme know if you try it with Abolsut etc).
On Sunday I checked out some parks, went up to the 30th floor panorama viewing platform of 'Stalin's Gift', ate Macca's in the park (just so I'd eaten Maccas in Poland, but also on account the previous night's vodka ;P) and went into the Royal Palace (free entry, score!) to see the rooms and the arms/armour exhibit which was pretty cool. After all that I still wanted to get out and about so I strapped on the my sneakers and went for a big run. On the way back through Old Town I saw a group of young guys breakdancing under the main pillar in the Palace Square - they were really really good!
Just when we thought things couldn't get any better, my workmate (who'd spent the day in bed because of the vodka) and I headed back to the University district for dinner, and stumbled across a Fashion Show!! (what a score). Some big fashion thing was going on with VIP's (I got a pic of some guy who looked important), stacks of models everywhere etc.. it was all very cool. My mate and I stayed and watched for a while and I got some pics, so girls (to balance out my crap comments earlier), check my photos page for all of the shots. Unfortunately they aren't great pics though as the stage wasn't that well lit and using a flash was just useless with all the bright spot lighting in certain areas. Oh, dinner was ok too ;) (did I mention Polish women are hot??)
So that was about it. Monday was spent at work, the Tuesday I was on a plane back to Paris for a few days off. I'm sure I've written about my laptop having issues before, but on the way to Paris it finally died properly with the harddrive I've suspected for ages failing. I managed to get some replacement parts pretty easily and luckily only a small portion of the original drive was damaged, so I could retrieve all my data (phew!). I found out late in the week that my weekend work (I was due to return to London on Friday) got cancelled, so I staying in Paris all weekend.. yay!
There's actually two Interpublic offices in Warsaw which I was sent to check out. The first is pretty small and we were just prepping the site for the migration in the coming weeks, and the second is quite large but is a long way from being migration ready. Because we were only predominantly dealing with the small office, and because there were three of us sent there (and because my workmates were nice and covered for me), I got a chance to have a good look around the city.
Immediately landing on the flight in one of my workmates (who'd been to Warsaw years ago) said it's already really different from when he was there. There's English/Polish advertising all over the place for lots of different products, even golf, and he said it seems a lot more 'modern' than it used to be. I looked at all of the concrete buildings and thought it was all a little ugly, but as I looked around the city in the following days I began to understand why things are the way they are, and that some bits are really quite nice.
Thursday night we landed and got to the Hotel Bristol (pretty nice place - good gym, small pool), before I headed out for a quick look around while the others were resting. I found the Tomb of the Unknown soldier right near the hotel and worked out roughly where things were. Later we all walked down the 'Royal Walk' (we didn't know what it was at that time) to the University district for some dinner. A lot of trendy little cafes and things are located there along pedestrian malls and shopping boulevards. It only took a few minutes for my workmates to begin to comment on the local populace in the area, and although I thought I may be biased, I soon found out I'm not. For all the girls, please avoid the next few lines as you probably won't like them, but I'm a boy so I feel it's my obligation to report on all aspects of my travels - women included ;).
So here it is - Polish women are hot! I'd heard it before from a few people and now I can definitely confirm it. While there may not be as many head turners walking around as say Sweden, some of the women are just total tall, slim, blonde and blue-eyed traffic-stoppers. So for the lads, Sweden may win on sheer numbers, but Poland spanks it all on quality. Of course, the ability of a person to actually meet/greet/wine/dine one of those women is probably a lot smaller :)
Ok, enough of the crap stuff. Onto dinner! The food was good and cheap, but one thing on the menu just HAD to be ordered - Piroggi. YUM! They were a little different to the ones my Grandma used to make, but just as yummy. I also had an entree of Lambs Brains! They kind of looked like a small potato hash brown on pumpernickle bread, but inside the brain is really quite white and squishy. While it was interesting to eat, and not at all unpleasant, I probably wouldn't go back for it. I also wouldn't eat it again just to be sure there's no chance that eating brains would turn me into a zombie who'd go around talking bites out of real lambs, turning them into zombie lambs, who in turn would go out hunting more lambs etc etc. Eventually the zombie lambs would probably have to turn on humans for food, and I wouldn't want that on my conscience! (That one was for Ski, Matti and prolly Zannah).
Friday was spent at work until quite late - boring. We got a lot of work done though and the local IT guy was pretty nice. For lunch we had Mexican (in Poland - go figure) before heading out to dinner that night in a restaurant situated in the main Market Square of the Old Town part of Warsaw. We took a small tour of the old town and it's pretty awesome with the recreated houses. In the middle of the square is a statue of a mermaid which is the symbol of the city. Apparently two mermaids were in the ocean in the past and each left to live in a river, one went to Denmark (if you've seen the mermaid statue there) while the other came to live in the river (I've forgotten the name) which runs through Warsaw. Also during dinner to some poi/fire twirlers put a show on and they were really good. Following last nights effort my dinner was a massive hunk of deer steak - one DAMN strong game-y flavoured meat. It was quite an effort to eat the whole thing. My mate got Boar stew too, so I nabbed some of that just to miss out any exotic meats.
Fortunately for me there was so little work to do on Saturday, I nicked out and went on a tour. I'm really glad I did as even though it was on a bus, we weren't driven around much. Instead we just got dropped at the big areas and we walked from there, getting explanations etc along the way. The first major stop was the Jewish Memorial marking the site where the Jewish Uprising started during the first world war. The Jewish Ghetto made up quite a large part of Warsaw in those days (the Jews accounted for almost one third of the total city population) and unfortunately, all the World War Two stuff kind of made things go bad. Rather than get transported off to work/die, the community in Warsaw staged an uprising which was pretty brutally squashed. I think it only lasted a matter of days, and basically everyone was pretty much wiped out with only a few escaping through the sewers (there's a memorial sewer covering too where they entered them). The train car memorial is for those sent to work/death camps on the trains.
After that we cruised the streets a little to check out some famous buildings like the Centre for Culture (also known as the massive ugly building, or 'Stalin's Gift' as it's linked to the Russian government building it as a monument to the Polish people or something), the central Law Courts, the Prime Ministers House as well as taking in examples of different architecture. The next stop was the main park area of the town. Inside the park are two important things - the memorial to Chopin, and the Summer Palace on the Water. The Chopin monument is really quite cool (I like the sculpture - check out the similarities between the tree and Chopin's hand) but the best thing is that they do free concerts there each Sunday at 12noon and 4pm if you want to check it out. The Palace on the Water is pretty impressive too but unfortunately we didn't get a chance to really look at it as we got absolutely soaked when a heavy cloud came out of nowhere and bucketed down for 20 minutes and we retreated back to the bus. The park itself is really nice and has some excellent trees and plants etc to relax under (or shelter from the rain). Oh, and my photos are super wonky for some reason!?!?!
After the park we were taken back to the Old Town where our guide walked us around showing us the Market Square and a lot of the other features such as the Cathedral and the Palace. The guide spoke a lot about the architecture and the fact that the entire area was basically completely destroyed by Hitler in retaliation to the Polish Uprising of World War Two (he deported everyone in the city, then left his army there for three months just blowing up everything as he wanted the city completely wiped off the map). The big deal with it all though is that the entire area is now classed as a UNESCO World Heritage Listed Area because it was rebuilt exactly as it has looked before the war. To do this they used highly detailed paintings created by the Italian artist Canaletto (need to check the spelling). The reason it's better than other recreations (and got the UNESCO thumbs up) is that completely matched the original buildings, externally and internally (most are only external recreations). There's photos on boards showing the Old Town as it stood after the second World War, and it's amazing to see that it's just totally flattened! While Old Town was basically completely obliterated, over 70% of the rest of the whole city was similarly destroyed during the war.
After checking out Old Town, we were treated to a Chopin organ recital in the main cathedral which was very cool (the organ makes the music really quite eerie at times). Following that, we walked through Old Town to New Town which has some of the cities original walls and tower defences recreated. A museum dedicated to Madame Curie (the scientist who won a Nobel prize for 'discovering' radiation). The final part of the tour involved going back to the Law Court building to look in depth at the memorial to the Polish uprising of the Second World War.
This thing is really impressive and shows the soldiers bursting from the ground to attack (as they literally came out of the sewers) as they fought back the Germans and kicked them out of the city for a short time. The story goes that the Russian army had marched all the way to the other side of the river (next to the city) and were supposed to come and aid the Polish, but they never did. Although the Polish held the Germans out of the city for a while (twenty something days I think), eventually the Germans just used artillery etc to blast the crap out of the city until the Polish were obliterated. Again, only a few got away in sewers etc (as the second sculpture group shows). This was the incident which pissed Hitler off so badly that he shipped everyone out and ordered the city to wiped off the map.
After the tour was over I hung around New Town and found a big festival being set up on the banks of the river before heading back to Old Town to see a museum showing the city history. Aside from the fact that Poland basically didn't exist as a country for about 120 years in the 1800's and early 1900's, the devastation caused by the war and the fact that the country rebuilt everything says something about the people in it in my opinion (go the ancestral pride!). It also put into perspective all of those ugly concrete buildings I saw when I landed as the population began returning to the city so quickly after the war ended that they had to madly throw up houses/apartments etc just to make sure people had somewhere to live (and not die in the bitter winters). I really enjoyed the musem and had to hurry through some parts as it was tough to fit it all in in just two hours.
That night we headed out for dinner again in the Old Town (ending up at the same restaurant as the previous night because there was a table free) with the IT guy (Michel) and his girlfriend. On the way we went up a big lookout tower where you can get a great view of Old Town and the surrounding areas. Partway through dinner we started hearing big fireworks explosions, it turned out that day was some special festival and they had a big show. After all that we did that cool thing I talked about earlier - went to an ice bar! I tasted a Vodka with grass (yeah, grass) in it which was really nice, and had a new drink recommended to me - vodka and apple juice. It's surprisingly good but I'm not sure whether you need that certain type off grass-vodka we were drinking for it to work (someone lemme know if you try it with Abolsut etc).
On Sunday I checked out some parks, went up to the 30th floor panorama viewing platform of 'Stalin's Gift', ate Macca's in the park (just so I'd eaten Maccas in Poland, but also on account the previous night's vodka ;P) and went into the Royal Palace (free entry, score!) to see the rooms and the arms/armour exhibit which was pretty cool. After all that I still wanted to get out and about so I strapped on the my sneakers and went for a big run. On the way back through Old Town I saw a group of young guys breakdancing under the main pillar in the Palace Square - they were really really good!
Just when we thought things couldn't get any better, my workmate (who'd spent the day in bed because of the vodka) and I headed back to the University district for dinner, and stumbled across a Fashion Show!! (what a score). Some big fashion thing was going on with VIP's (I got a pic of some guy who looked important), stacks of models everywhere etc.. it was all very cool. My mate and I stayed and watched for a while and I got some pics, so girls (to balance out my crap comments earlier), check my photos page for all of the shots. Unfortunately they aren't great pics though as the stage wasn't that well lit and using a flash was just useless with all the bright spot lighting in certain areas. Oh, dinner was ok too ;) (did I mention Polish women are hot??)
So that was about it. Monday was spent at work, the Tuesday I was on a plane back to Paris for a few days off. I'm sure I've written about my laptop having issues before, but on the way to Paris it finally died properly with the harddrive I've suspected for ages failing. I managed to get some replacement parts pretty easily and luckily only a small portion of the original drive was damaged, so I could retrieve all my data (phew!). I found out late in the week that my weekend work (I was due to return to London on Friday) got cancelled, so I staying in Paris all weekend.. yay!
posted by Anthony Hawke at 4:46 pm
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