Despite its stabs at modernisation, Warsaw still retains much of its old-world charm. The city and its citizens have held on to the nostalgia of pre-WW2 days.
By Neeta Lal As I stand here in central Warsaw, observing and absorbing the city’s rhythms, the unmistakable glow of the Polish capital is hard to miss. Luxury hotels sparkling with the spoils of privatised industry dot the cityscape as do spiffy malls, fine dine eateries, atmospheric cafés and electronic billboards flashing Western products.
Across my hotel — the glamorous 414-roomed InterContinental Warszawa — famed for hosting Salman Khan during the shooting of Kick, there’s plenty more architectural glamour — the 231 metre-high Palace of Science and Culture, the vertigo-inducing Warsaw Trade Tower and shiny corporate buildings, among other.
With such lavish imagery on offer, it’s tough to believe that Warsaw was pulverised and reduced to rubble by the Nazis during World War II. Adolf Hitler’s blitzkrieg, that triggered World War II on September 1, 1939, led to mass bombing and burning across the city killing thousands of Poles.
Yet so remarkable has been Warsaw’s turnaround — wrought over the years by its diligent craftsmen and architects — that it leaves one gobsmacked. Virtually everything one sees here — palaces, cathedrals, landmarks — is a recreation. Workmen toiled through nights to reconstruct the city brick-by-brick using oil paintings, postcards, news photos, old family albums and other memorabilia unearthed from the ghost town’s debris. The recast of Warsaw’s Old Town, based on Bellotto’s paintings from the 18th century, for instance, has earned it a place on the Unesco list as an ‘incredible example of complete reconstruction’.
“There are about 3,000 castles across Poland,” the guide Wojciech Mlotkowski informed me. “Most were built for kings or aristocrats in the 17th and 18th centuries. But they were completely wrecked during the war. So the government restored them and they now serve as heritage structures or museums.”
The Old Town, full of cobbled streets, leads to tiny squares buzzing with people and cafés. The soulful tunes emanating from street performers’ instruments around corners is a treat for ears deafened by Delhi’s blaring horns and traffic. The Market Square flaunts the bronze statue of the ‘Mermaid of Warsaw’, the city’s symbol whose ‘sibling’ resides in Copenhagen. Legend has it that a fisherman found the mermaid and saved her, and she stayed on to protect the city.
The Castle Square, also part of Old Town, lies at the end of the Royal Route, another reconstructed area. It is arranged like a semicircle with Sigismund’s Column in the middle.
The square also houses Royal Castle, once a hub of imperial activities, now a vibrant marketplace. You can sit here for hours, watch people and quaff a froth-topped cappuccino.
Chock-full of Hang-outs
Despite visible signs of cosmopolitanism, Warsaw still remains a work in progress. Yet the surround sound of whirring cement mixers, and cranes, is also a reinforcement of the Phoenix City’s attempts to unshackle itself from a stifling communist past and come into its own. After years behind the Iron Curtain, the new Warsaw, or ‘Vershawa’ as the locals fondly call it, appears ready to take its rightful place as one of Europe’s cutting-edge capitals, its new hub of creativity.
Warsaw’s vibrant neighbourhoods — like Praga, on river Vistula’s right bank and Mokotów occupying the left bank — bustle with quirky cafés and galleries registering high footfalls from the city’s ever growing demographic of young artists and designers. Erstwhile stodgy factories and warehouses have been repurposed to host chic galleries, art centres and hangouts. The energy extends to Warsaw’s spirited club and music scene and an annual calendar chock-full of street fests, funky art openings, and plenty of Chopincentred music festivals.
With the changing cultural landscape has come a food revolution. Polish cuisine is expressing itself through a new vocabulary now.
Gone is the former uninventive cuisine of communist times. The staid kielbasa-dumpling-sauerkraut triumvirate is fast paving way for a smorgasbord of exciting dining options.
Pizza parlours, standalone restaurants serving everything from French, Italian, Korean to Japanese, Chinese, even Beirut cuisine, are vying for punters’ palates.
Quintessential Polish cuisine is still widely available of course. Though for visitors it remains an acquired taste consisting essentially of soups (tomato, chicken broth with noodles or ‘rosol’ and sour rye soup, or zurek, with sausage. Dumplings come in varieties with fillings of cheese, potato, cabbage, meat and even plums. Then there’s ‘Bigos’ — a hearty stew concocted from sour cabbage and sausage.
Diversified Palates
However, local chefs speak excitedly about a more diversified food basket. And newer ingredients being flown in from western Europe.
Norwegian salmon, Italian truffles, American wild rice, foie gras are embellishing dishes that glisten with creativity. Trendy touches such as oversized dinner plates, rims dusted with exotic salts/minced herbs and smoked offerings of eel, wild boar, pike-perch are hardly uncommon.
Despite such plenitude though, Warsaw remains one of the cheapest capital cities in the European Union (EU). While Poland is now a part of EU, its government has put off adopting the volatile currency until at least 2019. So while visitors may resent the non-acceptability of euros/dollars at most transaction points (only Zloty is accepted), there’s succour to be derived from the fact that the stratospheric prices of London, Berlin, Paris and Rome are missing here.
As a result, eating is a bargain in Warsaw. Even in fine dine restaurants, rarely are main dishes — crafted from expensive produce —priced above $12. “We are not tied to the euro, so prices in the bars, restaurants and hotels are quite accessible,” explained a local restaurateur. Wines, on the other hand are steeply priced as import taxes are deliberately kept high to bolster the fledgling domestic industry. Vodka, the preferred aperitif, on the other hand is inexpensive. As is beer — typically Brok, Dojlidy and Lech.
Medley of Emotions
Intriguingly, despite its stabs at modernisation, Warsaw still retains much of its old-world charm. And green cover. (Both are usually a victim of the onslaught of ‘westernisation’ in global cities.) Almost a quarter of the city flaunts fields, parks, gardens or green squares replete with historic works of architecture, palaces, castles, and royal residences. £azienki Park, which houses the picturesque Palace on the Water, hosts atmospheric Chopin music concerts during summers attracting music connoisseurs from across the world.
The remarkably well-reserved Kampinos National Park is home to abundant fauna (bison, lynx, moose) and is criss-crossed with hundreds of kilometres of trails for hiking and cycling. River Vistula, which divides Warsaw into two, remains the city’s leitmotif, also bestowing pecuniary benefits on it through a thriving cruise industry.
Warsaw also allows easy access to Polish countryside punctuated by beautiful waterways, clean rivers, lakes and well-maintained canals. We get to the picturesque Masurian Lake District via a seamless highway, our coach windows en route constantly filled with a montage of emerald fields, grazing cows and verdant pastures.
Known as the ‘land of a thousand lakes’, Masurian is the epicentre for outdoorsy activities — sailing, kayaking, trekking and paragliding. The region offers hundreds of kilometres of signposted trails through sun-dappled forests and lakes filled with swans and lilies. Over 200 lakes in Masurian are interconnected with rivers and canals offering great possibilities for kayaking especially on Krutynia river.
After a short demo by our guide, we sidled into our kayaks to negotiate our way through the serene Krutynia river. The sounds and smells of the rainforest came alive as we glided through a complex biotope comprising hundreds of years’ old weeping willows, pines and birches. White and pink waterlilies floating on the river added to the journey’s allure.
Yellow nuphars, visible all along the route, generated collective amusement as the flowers kept popping back up on the river’s surface despite repeated pummelling from our oars and kayaks. An apt metaphor for a city that refuses to capitulate to external challenges.
(The writer is a New Delhi based senior journalist and photographer)
