Warsaw and After

And so finally I'm back. I got home on Monday and since then have been plunged into a very busy week at work. However, I'm hoping to go for a lengthy spin in the "plastic dart" this weekend, dusting it off after nearly a month of inactivity. The little bugger has a full tank of petrol so it's high time some of that was burnt off.




Warsaw Castle, destroyed in 1944 and rebuilt in the 1960s

Warsaw was a good ending to the Grand European Tour. In some ways the Polish capital has an ineradicable air of melancholy about it; the ghosts of the past are everywhere. Warsaw was somewhere between 80-90% destroyed in the last war, with the coup de grace being delivered in 1944. Then, Stalin held back the Red Army on the bank of the River Vistula whilst the Wehrmacht destroyed the rebel Polish National Army, ensuring that a post-war Poland had little by way of resisting Communist rule, in one of the most cynical and disgusting episodes in military history.

An area of the old town has been rebuilt but Warsaw in the main is dominated by Soviet style towerblocks, cultural centres and shopping malls. There are still surprises in finding old palaces and buildings in the middle of beautiful parks, however.

In COMECON terms Warsaw is closer to Tallinn than to Prague & Brno. Most of the old Eastern bloc cars have disappeared, to be replaced by Audis, Beamers and Chelsea Tractors. I did see a couple of Trabi 1.1s, both seemingly in pretty good nick, but by far the most ubiquitous old car is the FSO 126; based on the Fiat 126, this car is actually a good deal shorter than its Italian template, making it an absolute deathtrap in any accident involving it and a third party bigger than a flea. FSO made the car shorter, apparently, to preserve scarce supplies of steel for the bigger FSO 125, and the Polonez, which is still also popular.