Day 6 - Minsk

We're just back in the hotel, with cups of tea, having seen the catholic (red and white) cathedral, the orthodox cathedral of the Holy Spirit and the Belarussian Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (Белорусский Государственный Музей Истории Великой Отечественной Боины).  Great lunch at a place called Il Patio.  Best bit of day was cooling off in the fountain in the square by the war museum.  Belarussian seems similar to Russian, but not exactly the same - anyone know how the two compare? - and the differences keep catching me out.

What happened to Day 5?

No internet access.  But our last day in Warsaw was spent happily and involved the post office, the Palace of Culture and Science, lunch in the amazing LOT building, a spontaneous visit to the Applied Maths department of Warsaw University, the most amazing latte I've ever had - Tiger Latte at Coffee Heaven - perfection in the form of spiced, steamy milk, and finally embarking on a train straight out of Anna Karenina, with net curtains, red carpets and potted plants in the compartment - the Warsaw-Minsk Express.

Day 6 - Arrived in Minsk!

We're here!  In the Hotel Minsk, Minsk.  Now to get breakfast...

Day 4 - Shorely Shome Mishtake

The Hotel Bristol was reopened after refurbishment by Margaret Thatcher, and I assumed that this was a quite bad bust of her:

But no!  It's Paderewski, who owned the hotel in the 19th Century. 

Day 4 - Trip to Łowicz

Day trip to Łowicz, small town sw of Warsaw, in attempt to see the 'real' Poland. Not unlike Birkenhead on a quiet afternoon.  Nice museum with wondrous winter landscapes by Wojciech Kossack and colourful folk art.

Pieta

Day 3 - Reading

Finished Dead Souls and loved the conversation in Part 2 between Chichikov and the General.  'What's he writing a book about?'  'Generals.'  'Generals?  What kind of book about generals?  A general book about generals or a book with portraits of individual generals or a book about the generals of 1812?' 'The generals of 1812.'  In a book shop near the university, we bought Absurdistan and a book of conversations between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said - I'm now reading the latter.

Day 3 - Random Conversation

This takes place in a travel agency which has the word 'Bialarus' on the window in big white letters.  A woman is sitting at the far end of the darkened interior.
Nick: Do you speak English?
Woman: shakes head.
Kate (in Russian): Do you speak Russian?
Woman: nods head.  Rest of conversation in Russian.
Kate: Do you have any information about Belarus?
Woman: No.  We have no information about Belarus.  [Relenting slightly.] What is it you want to know?
Kate: Do you have a map of Minsk?
Woman: No.  [Pause] Try a map shop.
Kate: Where is such a shop?
Woman: shrugs.

Day 3 - Jewish Warsaw

Today we went to the Nozyk Synagogue (which actually survived the Second World War) and the Zydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute Museum).  The latter had a film showing images of suffering in the ghetto so sickening that it was almost unbearable to watch - in all my time of studying war representation, I haven't seen anything like it.  Not much to say except that, oddly, I found most poignant of all the information that the autumn of 1942 was particularly beautiful.

Day 2 - Hotel Bristol Meridien

People who have stayed here: the Queen, Prince Charles, Charles de Gaulle, Enrico Caruso, JFK, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Evgeny Kissin, Marlene Dietrich, Michel Platini, Jackie Onassis, Jose Carreras, Murray Perahia, Edouard Deladier, Nigel Kennedy, Bob Dylan, the Shah of Persia, Prince Philip, Jeremy Irons, the Kelly Family, Marie Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Paderewski, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Artur Rubenstein, Roman Polanski, George Bush Sr., Gabriela Sabatini, Marshal Foch, Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Mary Pickford, Margot Fonteyn, Willy Brandt, Naomi Campbell, Yehudi Menuhin, Garry Kasparov, Al Gore, ZZ Top, Tina Turner, Bob Geldof, Duran Duran, Oliver Stone, Jacques Chirac, Paul Auster, Gerard Depardieu, Kiri Te Kanawa, Bill Gates, Lionel Ritchie, Mark Knopfler, John Malkovich, Bruce Springsteen, Paulo Coelho, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Isabella Rosselini, Placido Domingo, REM, Woody Allen, Yoko Ono ... though, oddly, none of them seem to be around at the moment.

Day 2 - Palaces and Radium

Morning spent - once I had dragged myself away from the pancakes - in the Royal Palace.  Best thing: statue of Chronos with clock / globe on his back. 

We then made it to a 25-minute organ concert in the cathedral of St. Jana, including Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  Still feeling guilty about the pancakes, so had salady lunch in the Old Town Square - complimentary glasses of cherry vodka as digestifs.  Then on to the Marie Curie Museum.  What an incredible female role model and general superstar!  All those physics conferences in which she was the only woman.  When the First World War broke out, she organised mobile radiology stations at the front, thereby saving the limbs of thousands of soldiers - and she later wrote a book called La Radiologie et la guerre.

Day 2 - Pancakes and Gogol

Happy breakfast eating pancakes and reading Dead Souls.  Nice touch having Chopin playing in the lifts.

Day 1 - Wild Boar

Back in the land of marble floors, concierges and retro bars (thanks, expedia) after dining on wild boar and cranberries.  Drizzly stroll in the Stare Miasto.  Outside the Radziwiłł Palace, passed a group of people clustered round some candles, singing - a shrine to the late President Kaczyński.  Can't possibly keep up this rate of blogging - poss. due to having no email access.

Day 1 - Arrival in Warsaw

Don't quite know how have lived up to now without liveried doormen. First impressions of Warsaw: rainy. First Polish discovery: l with a line through it is pronounced 'oo'.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Warsaw Centralny

Day 1 - The Pause

I read in Tolstoy that it is the Russian habit to pause to reflect before setting off on a journey. This is that. This is our last morning in Berlin. On Gotzkowskystrasse, which we first saw in thick snow, people are sitting out at the pavement cafés. Good memories: dinner on the roof of the Reichstag, Glühwein in the Nikolaiviertel, hanging out in Mitte, the ever-fascinating Pamuk, the best tagine outside Morocco in the Kasbah, drinking mint tea on cushions in the Tadschicke Teestube, the Königin Luisa exhibition in Charlottenburg, Böcklin’s Toteninsel in the Alte Nazionalgalerie, the Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon, Wurst in the snow, watching the World Cup matches at Moonshine, trips to Wittenberg, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Lüneburg, Brandenburg, Worms, Speyer…

Later this morning, we set off for Warsaw, the first stop on our journey east. I have been dreaming so long of the land of wonders (Russia) that I can’t quite believe it’s about to happen.