www.henningn.dk

.

On this trip I will visit some cultural cities in centraleurope. The trip takes me to Sczcecin, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague and Dresden

But as usual the trip starts in my hometown of Vejle and a train to Copenhagen.

In Copehagen I board the Pol-Ferries's vessel of Pomerania for Świnoujście. I like sailing on ships like this. Plenty of bars and restaurants. In the "duty-free" you can buy this weeks offer - 12 bottles of vodka. There's a movie in the cafeteria, but Robin Williams and Robert deNiro speaks polish, so thats kind of useless. Instead I play the slot-machines on board before going to bed.
 

Friday, march 25'th

I have been sleeping in a chair for the purpose, in a quiet part of the ship. Pretty comfortable, but not the best kind of sleep you can get.

The ferry arrives at Świnoujście at 7.30 am. From there I take a minibus to Szczecin. I arrive in Szczecin at 10 am.

I check-in at the nice Hotel Rycerski. A big room and all necessities are available.

Actually there is no special need for me to visit Szczecin. But it would make a hush to go straight for Warsaw, so I have decided to spend a day here.

So I better check out the 1½ sight Szczecin has to offer. First the half one. Thats the Cathedral of Szczecin. There's a lot of people at the church. It's Good Friday today, so a lot of people are passing by in this very religious country.
 

Then on to the main attraction in Szczecin. The Dukes castle. It's located on a little hill. The castle is from the times when Pommern was a soveraign duchy. It was so for more than 500 years until Bogoslaw XIV died childless during the 30-years war in 1637. Then it was split into two. One part for Sweden and one part for Brandenburg. The castle is from the mid 14'th century but had a major rebuild in 1577. It was badly damaged during WW2, but later rebuild. And since there is no longer a duke to stay at the place, it's used for museums, galleries, an opera-auditorium and other cultural things.

The rest of the day I spend walking around this city. A lot of development is going on in Poland these years - but here and there, there are still work to be done.

Leavin Szczecin at 10 am on the train to Warsaw.

Trains are cheap in Poland, so to make it more comfy I travel 1. class. It's a 5½ hour ride through the rather dull polish landscape before arriving at Warsaw central station.

On to my hotel Dom Literatury. The hotel has sent me some good advice by e-mail. You can take the bus, but if you do remember to stamp your ticket - or "else you will pay the penalty". And dont take a pirate-taxi "because then you will pay twice". I take an authorised taxi, and pay 14 zloty for the trip to the hotel - and that's dirt-cheap.

Dom Literatury is a great place. It's got character. Of course some would argue that walking the stairs to the 3'rd floor with all your luggage is a little tough. An old lady escorts me to the room from the reception and make sure I feel comfortable.

The hotel is right on the corner of the old part of Warsaw, known as Stare Miasto. There's a great view to the old kings castle from my room.

Now I head for the city - and especially Stare Miasto. It's a buys day before Easter-day. There's a special thing going on at some of the churches. People bring small baskets of food to get it blessed at the church. I don't know the reason for this phenomenon.

Dinner at a local restaurant. And my first - and last - go for the Flaki, a strange local soup, not very tasty.

Then I head for the Cameliter-church close to my hotel. A service is going on, and there is a full house for the show. All the people go up and down, then on their knees before rising again etc. etc. About 10-15 priests are involved. There's even one designated for just holding the hole book for the major priest at the show. I stay there for ½ hour. I will never learn to understand this.

 

While having breakfast outside my room, the old lady from the reception suddenly appears up the stairs. She says something that I don't understand, and then starts to jump up and down in front of the clock hanging on the wall. Then I findt out - from today it's "summer-time", and she cant reach the clock to change it. So I step up, and take the clock down, and we're on right time again.

So it's 10 am before I head out into the city. It's a quiet morning. Eastermorning. People stay indoors with their families this morning. There's plenty of room in Stare Miasto, with it's beautiful houses, squares and churches. Especially the Rynek-Square is nice. There are 2 horsedrawn carriages for the tourist, doing nothing at all this morning. Most restaurants and cafe's are closed. That also goes for the museums. Stare Miasto was almost totally destroyd during WW2, but rebuilt in the old style between 1949 and 1963.

From old city to new city - just on the other site of a small moat. Nowa Miesto was built in the 14. century, not long after Stare Miasto. They used to be two small independent cities. Now they are just a small part of Warsaw, but certainly the nicest part.

You don't have to walk very far from here to find old eastern-europan architecture, that isn't nice at all. This was made to replace what was destroyd during WW2 - and it's very ugly. And plenty of old communist monuments is still around town.

My second wal of the day is in the afternoon down the Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Here are more churches and different kinds of monuments. On down Nowy Swiat, a nice shopping-street. No shopping today though - all shops are closed, except for a few cafe's.

Dinner at a restaurant in Stare Miasto. A soup, the a steak and some fries.
 

Something is terribly wrong today. All kids are armed. Thank god - it's only water-pisols. On the day after easter-day it's a local custom for the kids to spray water on those people they know.

I know noone here, so I can walk dry on the 4 km. long "Royal Way" to Lazienki Park. Lazienki Park is nice. Plenty of locals use their day off down here. But the park is huge, so there's plenty of room for everyone. The park used to be a summerresidens for King Stanislaw August Popniatowski. Now a days it's used for everyone to stroll, feed the ducks, gees and even some peacocks. The only drawback is that there's another 4 km. walk back from the park.

 

Later another walk looking for the jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Around 100.000 people were killed here. Not much left of the ghetto now. Only a memoryplate from the 1943-rise, some stones in granite raised for the same reason and then a sqaure called "Umschlagsplatz", where jews were gathered before sent to the concentration-camps.The area is surrounded by ugly grey concrete buildings. Not many visitors - just a group of israeli schoolchildren, learning their history on the spot.

To Krakow