ANOTHER DAY IN WARSAW

.WARSAW Friday 31st April

Today was a short sleave shirt day well and truly. Temperatures were well over
20 C and the fleece jacket I set out with was soon stuffed into my back pack.
Of course the advantage is the very mild twilight, which once again people took
advantage of. They were out in the park again and dinning out.

Still plenty of school groups and even yellow jacket wearing pre-schoolers.
There was a group of late middle age cyclists also in the goups special t
shirts.

I wandered around the city again, today moving into side and back streets. The
streets were a mixture of tiny shops, and appartment buildings. Some of them
were many floors high.

At mid day I waited in the castle square to watch the military parade that
looked like beginning. Finially it did. The band played a few short fanfares,
the company of soldiers did a few rifle manouvers and then the did a short
march and then marched off to be dismissed. In between a few announcements were
made on the PA system.

Not really the 30 minute wait I suppose but I do find it interesting to stand
around and watch people. It helps me begin to get the feel of the local
culture.

I am particularly impressed by the school groups. By NZ standards they seem
hopelessly under staffed. Howeve, the students were extremely well behaved. I
watched one group set off from their assembly point to catch the light rail. No
one counted them off or even check that everyone was in tow. I think that group
was Italian.

Once again I went into a great variety of Catholic churches, usually ornately
fitted out in baroque style. I think that some were seriously over done, but
that is how things are done.

Wandering around the New Town which joins onto the Old Town. The New Town is not
exactly "new" as it was developed over 100 years agao and then rebuilt after
being destroyed in World War 2. I found a plaque in the pavement marking out the
postion of the wall from the Warsaw Ghetto. Above it on the wall of the building
was a descriptive plaque explaining the Ghetto significance,
Around 350,000 Jews were squeezed into the Ghetto and most either died from
sickness or in one or other of the concentration camps. Before WW2 around one
third of Warsaw's population were Jewish, but now there are very few and only
one synagogue.

I made my first supermarket visit of the trip – well to a mini market to be
correct. I bought a couple of oranges, four bananas and bottle water -voda.
This is the land of sparkling bottled water. That makes me very happy.

There were several brides and grooms wandering around having formal photos taken
around the place. That's fun to watch as well and I look at the photograqpher's
style and think back to my time as a part time wedding photographer.

Lunch was a banana and sparkling water, but for dinner I dined out. I went
aqround the corner to a Polish resturant which offered Russian dumplings with a
cup of 'grandma's broth" I think grandma was a fan of Maggi or Oxo rather than
good old stock. They also served apple pie in XXL size. I could not finish it.
The apple filling was at least an inch thick – very nice, just too much.