Warsaw: A City Destroyed and Made New Again

I remember the capital of Poland from The Pianist, which is in my opinion one of the best WW2 films out there.

I've played piano pretty much my entire life, so seeing how Adrien Brody's character suffered not only at the hands of the WW2 injustice but also from being away from his instrument, I can quite truthfully say that I almost cried when Szpilman started playing Chopin's Mazurka in A minor.

Everyone, on three: sob.

The city is beautiful, its architecture old and weathered. Warsaw has survived numerous wars throughout its city, most famously World War 2, where some 85% of the city was destroyed. It has since been rebuilt (can you imagine rebuilding an entire city?), although the city bears memories of the war and especially the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with monuments dedicated to the Warsaw Jews.

The Warsaw Uprising monument on Krasinskich Square

Warsaw is a city shaped by its scars.

Despite its difficult past, it's clear that it has come a long way. Today, it is very much a liveable place, with all the creature comforts that one would expect of a global city. The summers are comfortably warm, with people out on the streets under blue skies walking in between crayon-coloured buildings. Without the many monuments to WW2 victims, you might not ever know that this place was once the scene of massacres.

My German fellow Couchsurfer Ozzie and I set out on a hunt for the perfect pierogi, a Polish dish of stuffed dumplings that are first boiled, then either baked or fried. A summer day in July is perfect for just such a hunt.

I love seeing interesting adverts, especially if they involve upcycled materials. So when Ozzie and I were walking around and came across this advert van, I just had to take a picture.

We wandered down some tree-lined streets leading up to beautiful gates. (It's almost like Warsaw had to double her efforts to look pretty after being destroyed in all those wars.)

It turns out that 'authentic' pierogi isn't really a thing - in Poland, they're as common and widespread as fish and chips. (Imagine the embarrassment when we were trying to ask around for 'real' pierogi. Typical tourists!) Ozzie and I finally headed to Zapiecek, a restaurant chain that is well-known for having kickass pierogi at really decent prices.

Zapicek is super cute - it has a really homely atmosphere, with servers dressed in Polish costume and every restaurant decorated the way you might expect a grandmother's house to be. It looks and feels almost like a fairytale grandmother's house, which makes it all the more fun to be in.

After having a very Polish meal, we had fun hunting down the most Polish name that there was. (The name is "Stanisław", in case you're wondering.) And it's so typically Polish that we even found streets named Stanisław.

If you're a chocolate connoisseur, listen up: there's a Polish brand of chocolate called E. Wedel, and it's got an entire chocolate factory in the centre of Warsaw. Yup, that's right - a whole chocolate factory! Where there are chocolate factories, there must be cafés, and it was here at the Warsaw E. Wedel factory that I had some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had.

As if having hot chocolate next to a chocolate factory isn't enough, it's even better that the heavenly smell of chocolate wafts through the air around the factory. It's like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory come to life!

That chocolate! That whipped cream! What more could you want on a summer afternoon?

The heart of Warsaw's Old Town is its marketplace, which is bustling with restaurants and cafes filled with people at dinnertime. Amazingly, this entire area was systematically destroyed by the German army in the second World War and then completely rebuilt in the style of its pre-war appearance after the end of the war! A near-total reconstruction of a medieval city - that's pretty incredible.

It's clear that Poland is full of people who are as stubborn as they get. Complete rebuildings of cities are all in a day's work for these guys. I guess that's what you get from being a part of a country that's forced to toughen up from endless war and suffering, and that's what makes the Polish some of the most admirably resilient people there are out there.

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A Singaporean in Warsaw

One of the last places you might expect to bump into Singaporeans would be Warsaw in Poland.

And yet, Warsaw is precisely where I met the amazing and incredible Toniwalia, who - despite having grown up in Singapore, being totally Singaporean through and through, and cooking maggi goreng of all things for me on my first day in Poland - is Poland's top Couchsurfing host.

Toni is absolutely the most amazing guy and the most incredible host - he left Singapore some 18 years ago, moved to Warsaw, and never looked back. And when I asked him why Poland of all places - most people would go to the UK or the US - he simply said that it was the first place he went to and that he'd fallen in love so much that he never left.

This is "do not freak, I am a Sikh" Toniwalia.

Toni has hosted over 800 people in his little apartment in downtown Warsaw in 5 years of being an incredibly involved Couchsurfer. There's never a week that goes by that he doesn't have someone staying with him.

Imagine the amount of trust you must have to let more than 800 people through your front door!

Apart from being an incredible host, Toni also cooks insanely good Asian food. He runs a place called Tandoor Palace that makes the best tandoori chicken. The signature dish is called Chicken Toni (named after himself, of course) and it was the best Indian food I've ever had.

After having spent a good year away from Singapore and food like this, having this little taste of home was the best thing that ever happened.

Perfectly crisp tandoori chicken with neon green mint sauce. Soooo good!

While in Warsaw, I met a German girl named Ozzie who was Couchsurfing with Toni too. My temporary room-mate and I hit it off from the very get-go, and as everyone knows, liking the people you meet is the foundation of any amazing trip!

Toni took us around some of the most famous places in Warsaw, including the Łazienki Królewskie park to see a statue dedicated to one of Poland's most famous sons, Frederic Chopin.

Ozzie and me in front of the Chopin monument in Łazienki park!

Walking around Łazienki on a warm summer's day is like some sort of a dream, with happy families out having picture-perfect picnics on the green, green grass. And the park is massive - like, really, really huge, occupying an incredible 76 hectares in the centre of Warsaw.

In fact, Łazienki park is so big that it even boasts a palace. A palace! It's called, imaginatively enough, the Palace on the Water (because it sits right on the water).

The Palace on the Water actually sits on an artificial island that was built in Łazienki Lake, so it divides the lake into two northern and southern parts.

In keeping with the style of what seems like every other piece of royal real estate out there, the palace has peacocks. Indian peacocks, right in the middle of Central Europe. Why? I don't know, but it seems like every piece of royal property has to have peacocks, so... Peacocks for Poland!

Let's not forget the peahens.

The peacocks and peahens in Łazienki are so tame that they are barely bothered by the humans all around them. Some are even so tame that they'll take food right out of your hands! Most people feed pigeons, and then there are those that feed peacocks... Ha ha!

While we were walking and talking, Toni, Ozzie and I started making some so-bad-they're-good jokes. Toni told Ozzie and me about the Polish dish pierogi, which are a sort of dumpling with all sorts of fillings on the inside. ("P-p-p-pierogi!")

He also told us that since we were staying at his place, we were free to make ourselves at home. 

How much at home, you may ask? "If you go out and bring someone home, all I ask is that you bring one girl home for me too," says Toni. "With Polish girls, you don't fuck them - they fuck you!" Well, Toni, we'll be sure to keep that in mind! Bahaha!

I could not have been any happier with the new friends that I'd made that day in Poland. Two Singaporeans and a German in Poland? Sometimes the most unlikely combinations are the foundation for the most memorable moments.

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