Day 19: Expectation exceeded in Warsaw, Poland

(Him: Charlie)

After 4 days in Gdansk, a laid-back coastal town of Poland, we are on the move again. We are heading south to Wroclaw on the southwest. Over the last 4 days, we were essentially catching our breaths and recovering from the exhausting traveling in the first two weeks of the trip. At the peak of the frenzy, we traversed through 6 cities in 48 hrs. St. Petersburg – Helsinki – Tallinn – Riga – Vilnius, and then Warsaw. At that point, we were so thirst of some relaxation at the coast that we zipped through Warsaw in less than 24 hrs.

Poland is a country with profound history, which for the most part, is quite depressing. It is a country literally emerged from debris and ashes. A lot of cities were almost completely destroyed during WW II. Take Warsaw as an example, the city was over 80% flattened by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, so almost everything in its old town was reconstructed.

Before we got to Warsaw, we didn’t think highly about it. People keep saying Warsaw is not as pretty as Krakow and that it is not worth visiting. However, I don’t think that’s true. Jo and I actually enjoyed Warsaw. I am particularly amazed by the reconstruction of its old town. All the buildings so really nicely rebuilt and the sculptures and ornaments were so meticulously and carefully crafted that they can easily rival Riga and Tallinn. In fact, the reconstruction was so impressive that UNESCO designed the old town as a historical site!! Ironically, the reconstruction was credited to the communist regime. If a democratic government was in charge after the war, the rebuilt efforts may not have been so dedicated.

************************************************************************************** In Warsaw, the Uprising Museum is not to be missed. The museum was founded to commemorate the patriotic Polish fighters during WWII against Germany (they had a brief uprising against German occupation, but it ended tragically of course). For visitors like us, it was a history review of how brutal the ruthless the war was. The museum details the sequence of tragic events that Poland suffered, including the double occupation from German and Russia. On the other hand, the museum also showed us how dirty and despicable that the Soviet government was at the time. Yes, the Soviet Government! I used to think Germany was the culprit of Poland’s devastation, but as it turned out, Soviet Russia played a major role too! Here’s the part of history that I didn’t know before:

After Germany invaded Austria, before it started invading Poland, the Soviet and German governments held a secret meeting and reached a pact over the occupation of Poland. Shortly after Germany started attacking Poland from the west, the Soviet followed on the east side and bombed Warsaw. Subsequent to that, Poland was divided in two halves. Later on in the war, Russia joined the rest of the world to fight the Nazis. Towards the tail end of the war, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stallin had a meeting to discuss the world order in the post-war era (without participation from other European countries of course!). Due to an advantageous position that the Russian had, it eventually overtook most of Eastern Europe under its wing, which later became the Eastern Bloc. Poor Poland, when they welcomed Red Army in January 1945 for the liberation, little did they know that the “liberation” eventually lasted well over four decades!!