After our last, due to the world championship (yeeeaaaahhhh), short night we hit the train to Warsaw in Poland.

Looking the final match Argentina-Germany with some very waterproof fans in Goslar.

I was pretty surprised, that I liked Warsaw that much. It’s comparable cheap, people are friendly, a company offers free guided tours, which are great and it is extremely green. You get the impression Warsaw consists of 30% Park area, 10% communistic buildings, and the rest equally distributed between traffic jam and construction sides. Sure it’s not that bad, when you move out if the city centre.

We met little mermaid’s cousin in the city centre of Warsaw.

When strolling around in Warsaw you find a lot hidden street art, …

… historical architecture …

…communistic and modern architecture…

…prising of the communism…

…traditional polish shopping places…

…and numerous polish inhabitants (waiting for the ancient trolley busses).

Lessons learned about Poland.
1. The way how polish people eat breakfast. Polish people usually eat rolls from very white wheat flour for breakfast, which they pre-prepare in the kitchen for the whole family. The striking thing, every roll looks the same. They don’t eat one with cheese and one with jam. All rolls are e.g. prepared whit butter, cheese, cucumbers and slices of sausage. If you forget to bring sufficient sausage for all rolls you really risk big confusion of all family members during breakfast.

They don’t drink it for breakfast but it can even be found in the hostel’s freezer – polish vodka.

2. Polish people are very helpful and friendly, if they understand you, but if you approach them in English and the don’t understand you they are likely just turning around and going away.

The charming polish men, always providing a helping hand for a lady.

3. If you are a single man or simply don’t like cooking you are going to have your meal in one of the countless milk bars. However, you have to know the polish names of the traditional polish dishes, be able to pronounce them e.g. GoÅ‚Ä…bki (Guhouambki) – stuffed cabbage, and be able to cope with the communistic mood of the old ladies selling the food. But it’s definitely worth tasting.

Renting bikes in Warsawa is in principal a pretty easy thing to do. Like in other cities you find this kind of city bikes located on countless terminals. You can either create an account online or at the machine on one of the terminals. I tried first online. The problem was that I could not lock into my account with the code I got via email. Unfortunately a brilliant software developer programmed a feature that puts +48 before every telefon number that one types while registering. Mine starts with +49 so the new code never arrived on my phone. So I registered with my credit card at the machine at the terminal. This worked fine, in the beginning. And it is pretty cheap:
0-20 min 0 zł
1 h 1 zł

However, at the registration you are charged 10 zÅ‚, which we considered enough for all days, but they did not tell you, that you must have at least 10 zÅ‚ in your account to rent a bike. So one hour later we were in front of the machine and were asked to give our credit card number a second time. Arrrg what the hack was that and is somebody emptying our bank accounts while we are strolling though Warsaw. Tom called and we got the explanation. Then after our Tour of the remains of Jewish Warsaw (I did not now that the Jewish population in Warsaw decreased from above 30 to 0.3 % between 1939 and 2014), we tried to rent bikes again. The machine just told me the bike is not available over and over again. So Tom called them again. A 15 min Chat later, they had figured out, that they locked the account due to missing data. I should have logged in online and fill out my address and email. Not that easy, if you don’t know you have to and are running around in Warsaw. However, we managed and afterwards had only to deal with the numerous broken bikes that we rented while finding our way.

After trying to rent one of the city bikes, Steffi got king of frustrated.

Bicycle lanes are a rare phenomenon in the inner city of warsawa, but since polish people are a very relaxed species also biking in heavy traffic turned out to be rather safe.

By the way, our second stop in Riga was nice as well, but we spent most time relaxing in a Cafe or Park, due to the exhausting sightseeing trip in Warsaw.

Happy traveler

Riga at almost night

People of all age are the relaxing atmosphere in the fair market in the alternative district on the other side of the river.

Where you can buy everything from fresh vegetables, household equipment to delicious sea buckthorn ice cream.

In the old part of the city centre colourful buildings are framing the busy life in the weekends.