Taken above the chainlink fence at the entrance to Castle Square
After flying all morning... i finally made it to Warsaw. Since I'll be "slumming it" on this part of my trip, I decided to take the cheapest means of transport from Frederick Chopin Int'l Airport to downtown Warsaw... the local bus. The lady at the information kiosk informed me that I wanted to take "bus number one-seven-five"... so off I went... in search of "bus number one-seven-five". After finding the bus... I realized the kind lady at the information counter had forgotten to mention that "bus number one-seven-five" has a very limited capacity to make change for anything larger than a 5 zloty coin (btw... i found this out while trying to pay with a 20 zloty note). Since I don't speak polish (and the only english I heard from the bus driver's mouth was "oh my god"), I found myself in a quandry of sort.
Castle Square... with cafes and part of the Royal Castle in view
Perhaps sympathsizing with my dilemma (or perhaps frustrated that I was holding up the GD line), the lady behind me paid my 1.5 zloty bus fee for me along with her own. I thanked her profusely for her generousity... however, i don't think she understood a word of english... instead, she merely brushed me off with a wave of her hand and mumbled something in polish (i'm sure it was complimentary). At this point I took my seat on "bus number one-seven-five", and was on my way to Warsaw (i hoped). I finally found my way to the Tamka Hostel and quickly had a room key in hand. After dumping my stuff off in my room... I started wandering around Warsaw. As with most old European towns, you can really walk just about everywhere you want to go. I spent the afternoon meandering through the Stare Miasto (the Old Town) and visited the Warsaw Castle (admission is apparently free to the castle on Mondays... good thing I went on a Monday!). Having had my fill of cultural shit for the day... i made my way to the Warsaw Centralna Train Station to purchase my onward train tickets to Krakow and Prague. Overall... it was a pretty productive day... tomorrow I'm hoping to visit some more sites here in Warsaw and possibly hit a few museums as well. Stay tuned... but now it's time for beer and chow.
