New Year's Eve fireworks in Warsaw

Greetings to everyone in the year 2014! The Warsawians said goodbye to the old year on very spectacular way, the habit here is, that even at the less downtown city-parts they organize homemade-fireworks. We spent the last hours of the old year at a house-party, and the neighbours nearby also weren't sitting doing nothing - we could decide, from which direction we prefer more the "booms" :)

And these people made air photos with a mini-helicopter from the surroundings of Vistula and downtown:



We wish a Very Happy, Successful New Year to everyone!

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz - the famous tongue-twister :)

The next movie-fragment became quiet famous because of a reason: if you make some Polish friends, you can be certain, that sooner or later they will attempt you to pronounce the name of the Polish character :) 

The part is from the film Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową (How I unleashed the Second World War?), which is a comedy made in '69. The base of the scene is, that a Polish soldier gets to the office of the Germans, who want to record his data... if they would be able even to divide the syllables of his name ;)

In this version, English subtitles are making understanding easier. Have fun! :)

  

Transport

After a small medical break and knee surgery of my partner I am back to hit the keyboard. The mentioned fact is important, because he is very limited now in moving, so the usual daily todos are completely up to me, and that makes the next topic relevant - what transport methods Warsaw has, and overall, what can you expect on the roads, if you visit the Poles? 

First of all, Poland couldn't be considered as a centralized country. Although Warsaw is the most populated city, it does not mean, that everything is concentrated to here. As the most important center points of the country there are more big cities on the list, they have population from half million to 750 thousands, like for example Cracow, Łódź, Gdańsk or Wrocław, which are at least as worth to consider to visit, as the capital city.

We, Hungarians - coming from a small country - first don't even understand, how is able to travel 500 km-s from one city to another, considered as an average distance here, which takes 5 hours by train or by car on the highways too. And this is so natural, like by us the 2-3 hours treshold, when we are travelling 250 km-s from one border of our country to Budapest.

The capital, Warsaw is somehow similar to the country itself by this case. Though the size of city is almost identical to Budapest - more, than 500 square metres - the arrangement is absolutely different. While our capital is totally centralized - if we have to do some things, we go to downtown - in Warsaw, downtown is not that high-priority, neither from living-perspective.

Traffic in Warsaw. source: Warsawblog.com

It has more reasons: first of all, the real estate-prices are pretty high in the city center (what means twice as much as the Budapest prices) in case of renting or buying too, so many people has only the opportunity to buy or rent an apartment in outer districts of the city.

On the other hand, it is natural here, that "anywhere you want to go in Warsaw, count on 1 hour". This refers mostly to the public transportation, but because of traffic jams, it also does not count sometimes, whether you want to arrange things faster by a car or not.  About the syncronisation of downtown traffic lights: someone hadn't got too much sense of coordination, because I rarely have seen here green wave and smooth going-on. And my partner was really happy, when at Bp. from Keleti Railway Station to Blaha Lujza square we got a nice continous green wave by car through the lights. (This is a quiet popular route at Bp.)

But I have met a few pretty useful and logical solutions here according to transport!

For example, license plate numbers has a meaning here, because the first characters are referring to the origin place of the car, so a faster, sportier Warsaw driver will know, how to handle a situation, when in front of him a slower driver from Lublin is sitting by the steering wheel, who likely got used to a different speed.
Also I have to tell you, that Warsaw drivers are very polite by pedestrian crossings - they stop almost all the time if they see that someone wants to pass!

According to public transportation, the local company is called ZTM (Zarząd Transportu Miejskiego - Urban Transport Management) and they also set some rules, which are worth to consider.

One of these is, that if there are more stops at a corner or a square, the bus and tram stops are everywhere numbered, and signs of the the stopping lines are also visible from further distance too. The only thing what I am missing is, that on the GMaps the stops are not signed properly - there are situations, when I arrive to the stop 51, and I would have to change to 04, but first I have no idea, where it should be, so it needs some research. But still, the orientation is much easier on that way.

And after this, there is the numbering method of buses and tramways. Surprisingly it also has some logic! In a nutshell:

- Tramlines are numbered from 1 to 79.
- 100-399 are standard buses, from these the seasonal ones are: 300-399.
- 400-599 are the fast lines, and there are also some seasonal ones: 400-499.
- 700-899 are going out of Warsaw, from these the seasonal lines are signed between 800-899.
- Z sign means lines, what are replacing tramways because of some service interruptions like breakdown, failure or planned works.
- E marks express lines, which are meaning smooth connection between a remote district and the city center.
- and N is for night buses.

Most of buses are equipped with modern indicator displays and loudspeakers (maybe it is not a big deal, you say, but believe me, travelling through such distances by bus sometimes for hours, deeply engaged by a book or your phone it can be very useful ;) And old Ikarus buses were used for the last time in traffic at the previous weekend (thanks for info, Neuro!). Also interesting, that vehicles are not stopping before, but after  the bus stop indicator plate, so usually we have to run after the bus if we are not aware of that :).

In Warsaw there is one metro line, but the second is in progress, maybe next year it will be announced. It is in service from 5AM to 1AM, on the weekends it is till 3AM! It has electronic entry system, but if you buy SMS ticket in the system of mPay (I usually do that), you can use the lift too at most of the stops.

SMS ticket is a great invention, you don't have to run to shops or vendors, if you need suddenly a ticket, and you can even buy time tickets (20-40-60 minutes). But through mPay system you can also buy parking tickets.
The 20 minutes ticket costs 3,4 PLN (0,8 EUR) 60 minutes is 6,4 (approx. 1,5 EUR), single ticket is 4,4 (1 EUR) and if you are living here, the personal monthly ticket is really reasonable 100 PLN (24 EUR). As a tourist, you can use 1 and 3 days travel cards, these cost 15 and 30 PLN (and we are envious because of that, compared to HU). But these are not for 24 or 72 hours, they are only good till the expire day midnight. The controllers aren't very friendly and they are really strict, so it's not worth to cheat, but these infos above are worth to keep in mind - it also happened to me that I believed that the next day I still had a valid ticket because of the 72 hours - it wasn't anymore, but I noticed it in time.

Also worth to mention the SKM trains (Urban Fast Railways), which are signed with S (you can also go to Chopin Airport with these).
Some train stations are however tricky, like Centrum Railway Station (Dworzec Centralny), because you not only have to pay attention to the platform number of your arriving train (it also can change meanwhile on the display) but also sections are there, which means that parts of one peron are also numbered separately and the vehicle will stop only at one particular section of the platform. We had been doing some jogging excercises sometimes because of that :) Also don't be surprised, that between the train and the platform there always will be a small hole, because most of the rails were designed slightly wider than the trains are nowadays.

The fastest way to get to Warsaw is of course by plane - for example, from Budapest it takes 1 hour, but unfortunately this route is served only by Wizz Air and LOT now, Ryanair cancelled the flights on Warsaw-Budapest from the 5th November.

If you decide to visit Poland, I would highly recommend a splendid route planner app and website, which is called Jakdojade, and gives a big help for those who are not familiar with the bigger cities or know completely nothing about places here.
If you decide to use public transportation, it is a need-to-have app!
Also if you plan to come by car, Targeo.pl can help you to track the actual traffic status on the roads, but my darling warned, that this site was working much better and actualized sooner in the past, than now.

Anyway, those, who visit that country, don't have much chance to get lost, I think, if they are using the opportunities above - if I managed myself well, it means something, because I was never good at navigation :) Enjoy your time here and I wish the fewest possible traffic jams for drivers!

11th November - The Independence Day

Although we weren't here at Poland on the particular day, we couldn't miss to mention the Polish Independence Day, what takes place in the calendar at 11th November. Of course it is an official public holiday and a day-off, and all around cities people are gathering for celebrations (and sometimes demonstrations too). 

Origin of the day is 11th November 1918, that day after 123 years the 3-parts-divided Poland regained its independence, before that it was in Austrian, Russian and German hands. The Polish Military Organization’s secret departments' including demobilized soldiers and legionnaires disarmed the Germans in Warsaw and more other Polish towns. The Government appointed Józef Pilsudski as chief commander over the Polish forces and 3 days later the complete control was in his hands - he formed the new centralized government which published its most important key measures on 21th Nov, for example they called new parlamentary elections, made up agricultural reforms and introduced more favorable conditions for workers.

The day was announced as national holiday in 1937, but from 1939 till '89 it was removed as an official celebration day, and it was restored after communism.

On this day of course we could see Polish flags at many places, not only on buildings, but on public transportation vehicles too. At Warsaw the celebration is at several places, including the Pilsudski's square, where at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier they do an official change of guards accompanied by the government officials. On every day basis the change of guards is just a routine that is a normal picture of Warsaw (the guards change every hour or so).

According to what I read, unfortunately the day is also a good occasion for various political groups to divide that nation even more during marches and events that usually take place during that day. This year, the radical right-side took pretty much attention by burning the flowered rainbow what stands at Plac Zbawiciela (the Saviour Square) that is taken by them as a symbol of lesgay movements. Breaking street-parked cars' glasses, throwing petards and pieces of pavement while fighting with the police. Also this year they attacked the Russian embassy and people with different views. The reaction to such behavior we witnessed yesterday at Nowy Swiat Street, where there was an event demonstrating against radicals. Meanwhile during the last few days there was a United Nation's climate conference taking place at Warsaw. Around 10 000 visitors arrived from 200 countries, so obviously these people had to be scared sometimes, seeing what was happening.

But anyway, our Hungarian friends were reporting appreciations about the commemoration at the Unknown Soldier's tomb and the gatherings, what they saw at Warsaw downtown. Good for them that they were somewhere else than the radical folks during the day.

"Colors of Poland" - A nice video

A few months ago I found this video, it is presenting very well (in my opinion) in 11 minutes, what important numbers the country has, the way of thinking, the attitude, habits and it is introducing Polish cuisine as well. 

English speaking, South Park-styled animation, but because it's very well-illustrated, it is easily understandable for anyone, who may not speak in English. Some Poles were complaining to the narrator's  English accent, and the fact, that this is trying to be a marketing-video... I think, the point is first, that it is easy to understand, and the second thing, that everyone needs a small marketing, especially those, who are talented, but are not having enough self-confidence ;)

 

Small overview - the Polish attitude

Who are they, how they behave, in what they are similar or different, what temperament they have? Today let's have a small insight into the nation's soul! Of course, my experiences are limited and subjective, sometimes they even reflecting other Poles' opinions, but let me summarize, what I was able to observe so far! They are: 

- Friendly: at least with us, Hungarians, very much (but they are also helpful with tourists, especially if they are speaking English - you have 50% chance for that). Not only our history is tightly connected at some points (common rulers, cooperation during wars - despite commands even!), but also a friendship so strong formed between our two nations, that we are able to feel it without saying anything at most of cases, even when accidentally strangers meet each other from the two countries.

- Proud: they are sometimes complaining because of circumstances, but their national identity is in the right place. The Poles are proud to belong here and they can be, because several times in the history others attempted to make them disappear from world's map, many misery they endured - but they survived. As an example: after the Second World War they completely rebuilt and repopulated their capital city, Warsaw, whose 90% of buildings had been literally in ruins. But, because of the pride, especially the elder generations are not able to forget these mortifications and harm, even after many years.

- Constructive and hard-working: if you visit any place at Warsaw, sooner or later you will meet a construction. Sometimes you have this feeling, that they are tempted to renewing or repair all the things from time to time.  The districts, what are considered by us in Hungary place of gray block-houses, here look more spacious, colorful, and full of repainted blocks - buildings are similar, but they look much better because of refurbishings.. And, you are not able to find any garbage on the streets! I dare to tell this because I visited already at least 6 cities here.

- They are very good at drinking: well, they are almost a northern nation, so they can really drink reasonable amount of alcohol, especially beer and vodka. In producing these, they are also outstanding - vodka is not originally a Russian invention, but here is its homeland. I personally tell you, that you shouldn’t miss an opportunity to drink a good vodka if you visit that country, especially mentioning Żubrowka (which could be also drink together with apple juice, then it is called apple pie!) And there are some places, where they sell only vodka and herring for starting the party-evening! About beer I cannot tell you much, because basicly I don't like beer, but my darling always says, that Poland have a good beer, but in Hungary you have to drink rather wine, because good beer is as rare as a white raven there :)

And not to forget to mention the minimum 80% strong Moonshines, which are homemade  short drinks - no certain receipe, it could be done from anything, and I experienced already, that it could be a really vicious stuff! 

- Ingenious, they are good at tricks and tips, according to business and other similar transactions - destitution of the '80s, when there was hardly able to get anything here in the shops, raised them up to be creative. According to a Polish saying: "A Pole always knows, how to trick another Pole."

- Passionate and loud: if we meet them, let's investigate their communication! Their intonation, despite, that we are talking about a slavic language, seems to be a little like Spanish, in the words the accent is at the one before the last vowel. This gives a mediterranian charm to the spoken language. I've listened already to a few slavic nations to speak, but they seemed to be monotonous compared to the Poles. Moreover, more of my friends were reporting, that Poles, who moved to English-speaking countries, are speaking more loudly meanwhile work also in Polish, than in English - okay, that maybe could have more reasons, but it is an interesting fact. 

Btw, they are very grateful if you start to learn their language, and so you try to communicate with them! I never managed any conversations like this without a smile - but neither did they! ;)

And talking furthermore about the passion, I was pretty surprised, when Łukasz was telling me meanwhile walking at streets of Budapest by night - as a comparison - that if they are drinking, they are behaving more aggressive compared to others, tiffs without a reason are more oftenly happening in such situations.

- Traditionalists and catholics: okay, as everywhere, here it is also applies rather to the elder generation, but significance of the popes is also there - for example, in almost every cities or towns there is a "John Paul Street". Whom are actively religious, at Easter are going to the church to hallow a basket of food, and of course they are attending masses, especially at celebration days, but also without any occasion too. By the members of the new generation, these things are not that strictly set in stone anymore. 

- And a short look at the physical features:

I would tempt the men, that here many of beautiful-faced girls are living. And for the girls I would pass the information, that the Polish guys, whom I already know, are usually good-looking, polite, it is also not rare that they say hello with kissing the hand, and they are not typically "baby boys of mom" types, which is a really good news for those, who are fed up with the effeminated soft-guys according to nowaday's tendency.

By the skin color, you already can see, that you are at more northern-direction, most of the people are red-faced (and at least this is not me anymore, who is considered as the whitest compared to everyone, but still, there were a lot of times, when they told me that I look like a Pole :))

And not an accident, that lactose-intolerance is only 15% here, because they have awesome milk-products, in huge amount you can find many types of cottage cheese and similar stuff, what is made of milk - they had some time to get used to it :)

So, summarizing my experience, this nation looks like to have an intelligent, creative, charming culture, you could feel the impact of Eastern and Western affection - the socialist past left behind some trace, but their diligence is lifting them up according to economy, they are making a really good progress, and didn't allowed themselves much time to cry because of the history - they are real survivors!

1st November by the Poles

Itt happened first 1 year ago, that I had an opportunity to observe here All Saints day, and that time I've already wondered about some local habits. This year 1st November was also spent here, so with mom and sister of my partner we visited 4 cementaries to show respect for deceased relatives. 

A famous Polish philosopher, Kopaliński's
tomb, who lived exactly 100 years

It is also common by us, that we go out to these places at this time of the year, but let's have a look, what is a tiny bit unusual here?

Polish people are respecting traditions very much, they are a deeply emotional nation, besides that most of them are religious catholic.

At this day they are closing the region of the cementeries, parking by car there is hardly possible, and they are launching separate buses and tram lines travelling between cementaries, starting with the sign "C" (cmentarz). Close to entrance gates of cementaries you can see crowds visiting as well as people selling flowers, wreaths and candles, they are selling some typical snacks, like a slightly sweet bunch of round-shaped hanging pretzel, or traditional varsavian soft candy, which is called Pańska Skórka.

They achieved by me a lot of respect with the following heart-warming gestures, after buying a few candles:

- Sister of Łukasz gave a candle into my hand, when we attended the tombs of Warsaw defenders from year 1939, and she said, that I should choose randomly one grave and put it there. (My choice was an anonymous tomb, among others with names written on plaques)
- It’s a Day not only dedicated to visiting tombs of your relatives, but also those people, who are important to you, even if you didn’t have a chance to know them personally. With their mother we were looking for the grave of Irena Kwiatkowska, who is a famous actress, and in the end we didn't find it, so we had to give up, but we stopped by tombs of poets (Staff and Tuwim) to show respect and light candles.
- I also noticed, that they didn't only cared about their own relatives - if unattended graves were nearby, they also cleaned them up and light up a candle there.

Showing respect on Polish way

And we weren't alone with showing respect to famous people, this seems like a usual habit here. Poets, actors, philosophers and athlete's graves were surrounded by lampions already before noon too. The most touching were for me the tombs of historical and war heroes as well as the Warsaw Uprising's victims. I've already seen a few films related to the topic, and well, the nation has to be really made of hard rock, who survives so terrible attacks, with that kind of pride...I cannot  describe, how much condolence and love enwarms me from inside also now, when I 'm thinking back to these grandparents, young and old people, who lightened up candles for others, whom are not even distantly related to them... It was fantastic to see this!

And in the evening, like everywhere, there was a beautiful dome of lights above cementeries, caused by wreaths and candles burning brigthly, so we went once again to Powązkowska Street (where the oldest and most famous cementary is located), and we noticed, that many foreigners were also interested to see this sight, over and over we have heard English or French speaking people. The picture cannot give back the magic, but gives you an idea, how to imagine a famous grave:

So, for me it was unbelievably touching to see such respect and humility, and it is a very strange feeling, that even if my roots are not related to here, but... I feel like they are my relatives somehow!

Story of this blog in a nutshell

Welcome on the air, Folks!

It happened in the middle of 2000... 3 interesting, funny guys were visiting us at Budapest - my expartner made a friendship with them first on the old interface of IRC text-chat. They arrived straight from Warsaw, on a train ride that took more than 10 hours. Between each other they were forming words on unbelievable way, their english was more or less understandable (meanwhile mine was terrible), but - despite the language differences - they were coming with so much friendliness and cordiality I have never met anywhere before. 

They were coming to a hungarian computer-related meeting, participation was also in our plans to visit, but they wanted to have some days of sightseeing too. The time spent together was very pleasant, it was clearly visible that they enjoyed Budapest and everything what we showed to them. After that they were inviting us back talking about their home country with so much love, that they even offered to pay for our plane tickets (which was in that time a very generous offer, because there weren't any cheap airlines at that moment between the two countries, and they also didn't owe that much money - in "just finished studies"-age)

We became fast friends during this week and we were saying goodbye to each other with big hugs. This was my first experience with Poles, before that I knew almost nothing about them.

Later, after their next visit in the following year, a 10-year pause followed. Sometimes we were messaging to each other. All of our lifes were changing significantly, the promised visit back to Poland didn't happen.
The others of the former group went different way, only me and Łukasz (one of our friends from Poland) were in touch with each other, and he decided in 2011 to visit Budapest again for 4 days, because of a meeting. This time he managed me making him a promise, that next year I will really visit Poland.

So, 11 years after our first meeting I picked 1 week for my trip, and he - planned carefully the schedule - took me to Warsaw, Gdańsk, Kraków and Łódz. I was wondering about the outstanding clean state and beauty of the cities, the famous monuments - it did not look like a country left behind by development, as they mentioned in 2000 - in the meantime things became quite well-developed here.

I had the strange feeling that this is the first place after Hungary, where I can feel myself at home. I never-ever planned to leave Budapest - after 8 years spent there I loved the city as much as when I moved there, with every benefits and disadvantages - or let's say, despite disadvantages... And I think I wasn't a big world-traveller, but meanwhile I have visited a few places, what were considered by others as "amazing places to live", but I didn't felt that I could agree with them.

At the end of the spent-together week we noticed, that we have too much in common with Łukasz, we were getting closer to each other, and I absolutely didn't expected that, but after he revisited me in 2 weeks, as he had promised, the result was inevitable: since October 2012 we are a couple, and later, considering every circumstances I decided to move to him to Warsaw in March. Proving, that this was a really good idea, since June we are also engaged.

So, after few months, almost as a family member of a Polish family, I'm investigating this lovely, cute, but not well-known culture and language, and I concluded, that it would be worth to share these experiences with you - you, who maybe don't know anything about Polish people, or you, who plan a trip here, and also because there are not that many sites dedicated specially tp this topic. And the culture of our "cousin-nation" is really worth to write about.

So, let's dive deeper, bear with me and I guarantee, that you will have at least as much nice experience and fun, as in case of such popular destinations, like "Paris" or "London"!