27 May 2019, Monday
Another travelling day!
A funny thing happened today. We had to wake up early to catch the bus at 9 a.m. so I put my alarm for 6.30 a.m. but I was waking up off and on anyway I dunno why. So when my alarm rang I was already half awake and I shut it off pretty fast. But the American boy woke up in a fright wondering what the sound was. But since I had already shut it off I just kept really quiet and pretended as if nothing happened. It took him a while to go back to sleep and only then did I wake up. He must’ve really gotten a shock!
Yes I know, poor thing but what can I do? This is what happens when you stay at dorms and different people have to wake up at different times. Anyway, we packed our stuff (I now have a third bag full of souvenirs - roll eyes), checked out of the hostel and went to the bus station to take the bus to Warsaw, Poland. It was a journey of about 9 hours!
We arrived at about 6 p.m. and found our way to our apartment. Then we walked around and I tried the local draught beer (zywiec) and ‘pierogi’ which is like a dumpling with filling both savoury and sweet (I tried the cheese and potato filling as the meat filling had beef). This is supposed to be one of Poland’s traditional food.
Poland’s history is quite sad. During WW II, Poland was attacked relentlessly by Nazi Germany as well as by the Soviet Union. Poland had the largest Jewish population in the world at over 3 million, 90% of whom were murdered by the Nazis. There were 6 Nazi concentration camps located in Poland; Auschwitz being the most well known (which I intend to visit soon). After the war, Poland was put under Soviet’s sphere of influence and was sort of a communist state, although its population was largely Roman Catholic. In 1978, the then archbishop of Krakow was elected as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, taking the name John Paul II. Communism was finally rid from Poland in 1989 when elections were held, and is now a democratic parliamentary republic.
I would describe it as a developing country, it is much cleaner and more organised than its more developed counterparts such as France or Germany. Comparable to Malaysia, except that the people here are very homogenous - there are hardly any people of colour here and as a result, I get quite a lot of stares. Not the complimentary kind. But don’t get me wrong. The people here are very nice, polite and friendly.
The weather was lovely, nice and sunny although it rained in the evening after our dinner. We bought some groceries for breakfast tomorrow. I bought herring in oil, another traditional dish here in Poland, but I bought the one with chillies. But of course! The original version looks a bit scary - like raw herring with salt and oil. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. By the way, the Europeans’ idea of spicy is really not spicy at all for me. Then we did some research on the other countries we are to visit, shower and sleep.
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