Will Around the World

I arrived in Warsaw at 9:45 AM, local time. It was going to be a long day. The first thing I did was to try my credit card in an ATM. The PIN was rejected. I didn't panic, though, because I still had the emergency cash fund. I exchanged a little bit of that to buy a bus ticket to the train station. I needed to ride a train to Vilnius for the same night. At the train station, however, I was told that the train had sold out. Fortunately, there were still buses to Vilnius. Whew.

Not wanting to push my luck, I immediately set off for the bus depot. Along the way I passed by a phone so I decided to call my credit card company to find out what was wrong with my PIN. The problem was I didn't know how to make a collect call from the pay phones, and no one could tell me how, either. Now there were two items I brought with me, just in case, that truly saved my trip. The first was $200 in cash. The second was my cell phone. Lucky for me, I didn't skimp when I was shopping for one last year and got the Nokia 3200, which works almost anywhere in the world.

I turned my cell phone on, saw the reception bars light up (phew again), and called Visa. They told me that I had never set up a PIN (because I never needed to make a cash advance, until now). I couldn't create a PIN unless I was in America, they said, but I could still get money by going to a bank and showing my passport. (Also, I would be charged $10 for each cash advance, so I'd better make them sparingly.) After the call, I thought about the situation and decided I could manage best by using my credit card for regular purchases whenever I could and to exchange cash as sparingly as possible.

While waiting to go to the bus terminal, I talked to another traveler. This guy was pretty young, from Gdansk, and was flying to London to meet with a friend. When I told him I was from San Francisco, he said that his favorite band was from there, Primus. He said, "You are so lucky!" I didn't even know Primus was still together.

I got to the bus station and bought a ticket for Vilnius. The bus left at 7:30, so I still had an entire day to explore the city. I bought a student-priced bus ticket from a kiosk at the bus depot and got on the 508 to Old Town. It so happened that the student ID I used to buy that ticket was expired, and sure enough, a transit agent nabbed me on that bus. (At least the crowd around me pleaded on my behalf.) That lapse in judgment cost me $20 and a good hour, all to save a measly 40 cents.

Old Town

Old Town is fairly small and has only two squares, each with outdoor cafes and Baroque architecture. Those and the crooked alleys reminded me of Rome. (What I was looking at was a reconstruction; the original had been bombed to the ground in World War II.) I saw three girls sitting on the steps of a monument in the main plaza. Judging from their Old Navy flipflops, I guessed they were American. Actually they were Canadian. I introduced myself and asked them what they were doing in Warsaw: two of them were Polish and they were visiting one girl's grandparents. (Spain and Greece were on their itinerary, too.) I told them I was visiting the Baltics. One girl shouted, "Cool! Are you going to Croatia?" "I think you mean the Balkans," I replied. These were the first of many young travelers I would meet on my trip who were spending a long time in Europe this summer.

I continued to explore Old Town. Actually, there wasn't much to see: a cathedral, ruins of the city wall. I left and strolled down the main street, past Warsaw University. There were hundreds of young people walking on the streets, much more than would be walking around New York or San Francisco on any given day. I arrived at a large park called Lazienkowski. I thought it was busy for a Wednesday afternoon. I spent a good hour there, then returned to the main streets. In the evening I bought a kebab from a street stand. Middle Eastern food seems to be really popular here as you see kebab stands almost everywhere you look. The pita kebab I had was loaded with lamb meat, pickled vegetables and a spicy sauce. It was quite tasty.

Street life

Warsaw reminds me of major Western European cities. Architecture in the city center is evocative of the 18th and 19th centuries. Fashion is similar to what you would find in Rome. Girls are slim and wear clothes that are flattering, even provocative. I saw one tanorexic woman in her early twenties romping around in a belly shirt, miniskirt and stilettos, holding her grandfather's arm! Men wear knock-off versions of Abercrombie and Ecko. People don't smoke as much as I would have expected for a European capital. Polish women have classic Slavic features: chiseled face, small mouth, cleft chin. The standard of living seems fairly high, and I was impressed by the city's cleanliness and the quality of roads and other infrastructure.

Although Warsaw has two million people, it is by no means cosmopolitan. I heard only a few English speakers and saw no minorities except for a few Asians and one black man. (This man was outside a cathedral in Old Town, wearing a friar's outfit and posing for pictures with tourists.)

In the park

Catholicism is a huge part of the Poles' lives. There were many kiosks scattered throughout Warsaw advertising books written about Pope John Paul II. On the streets there were many statues honoring cardinals and bishops I had never heard of. But at the same time, I found Warsaw to have an ambiguous moral standard. For instance, under parked cars' windshield wipers you are bound to find a half dozen ads for phone sex and sex clubs. I guess America's brand of religion/morality is unique. (Although Warsaw did ban a march by the gay population planned for the weekend of June 10.)

I made it back to the bus station by 7:30 and got on the coach for Vilnius. I had already spent $80 of my reserve funds. Clearly I couldn't go on like this.

# posted by billklee @ 23:30