What I saw in Warsaw
It was January 1999 and I had to spend a week of 'fun' in Warsaw, work related. I had gone there on a number of occasions, but this was the first time I was going to stay there longer than two nights. Not that it bothered me, not at all. I, generally, like business trips and this was no exception. It gave me a bit of time to relax, on the company's expense account. What more would you want?
It was a very cold January and I was glad I had brought mittens and a cap to keep me a little bit warmer, during the time I could walkabout the city streets. One of the things I encountered was a changing of the guards at the war memorial in the center of Warsaw.
Besides the quite impressive 'Palace of Science and Culture', Warsaw is also well known for its parks. The city has two very large and impressive parks. Unfortunately, in winter, they're rather 'cold', but still very nice for the palaces that can be found in them.
As in many Eastern European cities, when rightly lit, the already impressive buildings that are littered around the city, become even more impressive at night. And specially the old town of Warsaw, which was totally bombed during world war 2, but also completely rebuilt afterwards is very nice to walk through, either during the day or during the night.
Some of the pictures are of the Palace of Science and Culture at night. Being the tallest building in Warsaw and, formerly, used by state bodies, it was famous for its suicides. During the day, in the building, employees would start drinking (vodka of course) and would, when disillusioned just a little bit more than regular, throw themselves of the top of the building at the end of the day.
The building, a gift from Stalin, in recognition of the hardships the Poles had to endure during the 'Great Patriotic War', is a 'relative' of the seven sisters in Moscow.
For some strange reason, one of the things that's easily begotten in Warsaw's old town is art. Yes art. Scattered all over the place are artists, or self proclaimed artists, selling everything from paintings to sculptures to drawings to… I always wonder what they do with the stuff when it rains. They simply can not keep everything dry, can they.