Warsaw

Here we are in not-so-sunny Warsaw.

I arrived last night, at around 10:00.

I had met Mike Smith, the course administrator for the MA in Property Appraisal and Management (PAM) course and his wife Jackie outside the University at half midday and went down to Luton Airport with them. We had a surprisingly good trip down the M1. The travel gods must have been smiling upon us.

We got to Luton, I went to check in. They went airside - and I haven’t seen them since!!! It’s not that big, airside at Luton, although there were quite a few people there. I did see the Nottingham Trent academic from time to time, in the distance. I had also seen him ahead of me in the security queue, plus I saw him board and alight from the plane. I know he’s about because he rang me this morning. I assume mike and Jackie also made it to town.

Bernard the Business Hippo and SLeepy hippo are with me, to look after me and to keep an eye on my leaflets and things. We decided at the airport to have a light meal to keep us going. Calamari rings, chips and a glass of wine. Very nice, too.

There were tiny children on the flight :-S And I have read my guide book and my magazines. Don’t know what I’m going to do on the flight home on Sunday :-S

I got to Warsaw airport and was greeted by a man bearing a taxi accreditation badge. Did I want a taxi somewhere. The thought crossed my mind that the mini cab system (and he had to be a mini cab driver - regular ones don’t go touting for business, they sit in their taxi ranks and wait) tends to be quite a bit ore expensive than the regular one. I was, however, quite shocked by how much more expensive it was. Three times, rather than the double I was expecting! I have got a receipt in the hope I can claim it back!

It’s quite a nice hotel. The room is quite large, has a nice bathroom, a good shower, a telly and lots of drawers and cupboards. There’s bottled water but no tea making facilities. I had remembered that European hotels often don’t provide these things so had brought the travel kettle and some tea bags with me. I need to acquire some milk. And a cup! There are glasses aplenty, but no cups.

There was something of a catastrophe on Wednesday evening, not long before it was time to talk to Tony. I nudged against the dresser on my way past - and the top piece can’t have been on properly because it toppled off. And lots of my best china toppled off with it. It was like watching dominoes falling :-( Three of my bread and butter plates smashed. So did my glass plate. And my cake plate is all chipped ;-( I shall have to get new ones. Mercifully, the meat platter did not break (that would be *very* expensive to replace) and the casserole dishes and mixing bowl didn’t fall off the top. They would be all but impossible to replace - they’re among the items that are only made for a short time. He ho. The Builder re-assembled it and hoovered up the shards. And I did have a couple of bread and butter plates in a cupboard because there hadn’t been enough room for them on display. Their time has now come!

The good news is that The Vixen has passed her first MOT.

Right. Time to don a rain coat and go out exploring. I hope to have exciting (but not too exiting!) travel tales for later

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I’m back from my day out exploring.

I left here at about quarter to eleven, to meet Mike and Steve (the chap from Nottingham Trent) at 12:00 so we could suss out where we are actually working this weekend and generally to catch up. Off I went, through drizzle and gloom. Was making quite steady progress when I came upon an impediment to progress. The road went under a tunnel, but pedestrians couldn’t go with it.

I climbed up some stairs to the plaza above. Pretty plaza. Must come back and inspect it at some point. Now. Where to go now. I think I’ll follow along that way, which is more or less where the road was heading when it disappeared under into the tunnel.

On I wandered. No idea at all where I was. Completely misplaced. Couldn’t see any trace of the main road. None of the roads appeared on my map. My map, in fact, wasn’t really very helpful (it was a print out of a google map page) because it didn’t have any of the little roads named. Eventually, just as I was about to ask someone where I was on the map (will they dislike it more if I ask them in English or in German - probably German; they don’t seem to like the Germans very much) when I recognised one of the street names. I was WAY off course!!!

Back down that way. OK. That’s the way I need to go. Now - how do I cross the road? Aha. Under that metro tunnel. Down I went. But which exit to go back up? Tried one. Pottered around. Nope. Went back down and tried another. I **think** so. Went cautiously along for a bit, discovered that I wasn’t actually on he right road, but that I was on a road that would do. Gave up on google maps and fished out my proper map of Warsaw, which does have the little streets named and which I hadn’t been using because I didn’t think it mattered if the google maps got wet. But my Insight map is laminated and didn’t come to any harm.

I made it to the appointed meeting place Just On Time.

We went off to find our teaching room. Found the building ok. Would be quite hard to miss it. It’s new and shiny and quite tall. Finding where the room was was slightly more difficult. Eventually we located it. There is a slight worry that it has no PC and, although it has a very large screen, the only connector we could find was a serial cable. My Mac doesn’t have a serial port. I left Mike and Steve trying to work out how to make Steve’s laptop (which does have a serial port) talk to the screen and went to find the hotel Bristol.

Mike says he found it a bit disconcerting when I simply vanisehd at Luton airport yeserday. He had been waiting for me to emerge from the check in queue, and I wasn’t there at all (I had been hived off to an empty check in desk so was much quicker than he had expected). He went airside, and couldn’t find me in the crowds. He waited at the Warsaw airport and didn’t see me. He decided that I hadn’t come after all! Steve (who had run across him at the Warsaw airport) said that he was sure he had glimpsed me at one point airside in Luton. And that I was a woman of the world (really?!?!?) who seemed to know what she was about and that I would certainly have got to my hotel all right. And anyway - we all had each other’s mobile phone numbers.

I’ve been out on a coach tour of Warsaw this afternoon. I was picked up at the hotel Bristol, then we picked up people from other hotels. We’ve been to the Lazienkowski Park, where we had a walk around in the rain, and admired a memorial to Frederic Chopin, and a lovely building that now houses a jewellery gallery, and the King’s palace, which is built on an artificial island in an artificial lake. We drove along the Royal Route and went to see the Memorial to the Jewish Ghetto, and ended up having another walk in the Old Town. The Nazis completely routed Warsaw in the course of the war. After the Warsaw Uprising, Hitlers order was to raze the city. They very nearly succeeded. The old part of the city has been carefully reconstructed from photographs and paintings. It was a remarkably imaginative approach, given that the reconstruction was done under a communist regime. I think. Of course, they did succeed in destroying (The Nazis) the Jewish ghetto. It hasn’t been reconstructed.

It was a very interesting afternoon - though if I had realised quite what the weather was going to be like, I would have brought a hat, scarf and some gloves. It wasn’t particularly warm! I had known, of course, that Poland had been invaded by the Nazis. I hadn’t realised that it had virtually simultaneously been invaded by the Russians. And I hadn’t known until I started researching before coming here, quite what a turbulent history poor little Poland has had.

The tour ended in the old Market Square by the mermaid, who has been protecting the city in one incarnation or another since the 14th century, with the invitation to rejoin the bus for a lift back to our hotels. However, I am ot actually staying at the hotel Bristol; that was just wehre I was being picked up. I decided that going back there would be a foolish thing to do. I would just have to walk almost back to where I was to get to the bridge to cross the river. I walked back from there. Took about twenty minutes. Shouldn’t be too long to get to the Rondo building tomorrow morning - always supposing I don’t get lost again!!

I’m knackered now. And I have to go out again. I’m meeting Mike, his wife Jackie, Steve and another Mike back near the mermaid at 21:00 for dinner. I think I might take a taxi (not a mini cab!). Not only is it once again raining, but I don’t much fancy that walk all on my own in the dark.

I’ve managed a cup of tea of sorts. I bought some UHT milk and made a brew of something resembling tea in one of my water glasses. Didn’t taste much like tea should, but it was warm and wet and very welcome