Day 1 - CHRISTMAS!

I arrived in the morning at Warsaw and the difference was immediate, as I arrived in the morning I expected everything to be closed. So I was a lot more relaxed. For the entire day I walked around admiring the buildings. To be honest overall it was a nice and relaxing experience, just what I needed after my intense times in the exams. I mostly admired the various buildings, there were also some expressions of art that I saw, I found a graffiti at the old war equating Hitler to Putin. At night the palace of culture and science came to light in a green. As well as the Christmas market. I gotta say the Christmas market felt amazing, the food was really good even if I felt that I got scammed by the pricing. One of the stores states their prices as per 100g instead, so the actual thing was 5 times the price.

Day 2 - Parks

I wasn’t exactly surprised when nothing was opened since you know it is Christmas, so I end up wandering at the nearby Royal Baths Park. The entire park is filled with previous buildings and beautiful statues, even a Chinese garden I walked around quite a lot, even lay down at a bench and rested a little. This was an interesting experience to see nature in the snow. The secondary objective for the day is to go and get some boots, so I thought I could brave things out. Since the plan was to fly back from Finland. However this is clearly not possible when I keep slipping on the icy ground. So I end up buying my snow boots from Poland. I do feel well dressed now, with a Spanish coat and scarf, Polish boots, an American phone and British pants.

Day 3 - Polish Uprising Museum

For this museum I visited the Polish Uprising Museum, this was where I actually learned of how most of Warsaw was razed by Hitler as reprisal and much of what I saw was faithfully recreated. Yet it doesn’t feel out of place, the great effort that went into it cannot be underestimated.

Polish Army Museum

Now for this museum I went because I was curious about the Winged Hussars, but beyond my expectations were all the weapons that are used. I received some understanding of the Polish army from its inception to the modern day. Overall while I did not learn a lot, I thought it was visually impressive.

POLIN

While we did briefly cover the Jews, in my homeland we are mainly focused on the Japanese because you know, they did kinda torture us for 4 years and so. I was surprised to learn how far things went and their origin as merchants, I liked the recreation of the respective historical periods. Even got a ticket for a train in the early 20th century. The most impactful part has to be that of the second world war, as the town was recreated with projectors and each exhibit is in a corresponding building. There were recordings of interviews and the terrifying moments. Unfortunately the museum closed around this time and I wasn’t able to fully appreciate it and cover the final segment of the Jews after the second world war. I hope to come back in the future.