Last Saturday Johan and I spent a very nice afternoon at friend’s allotment. Help was needed with fruit. I hoped there would be sour cherries.. and they were! We were told to pick as much as we want. So, with me being greedy, we got about 8 kilo. It’s good we had a tubtrug with us (i thought i was being overoptimistic, but apparently not!). Also we got red currants. Otherwise known as Johan’s berries. (they are called Johannisbeeren in german). So following Sunday I spent on washing fruit (2 hours), searching my neighbourhood shops for sugar (found only 1 kilo of sugar i liked), removing currants from stems (3 hours), stoning cherries (6 hours). umph…
But all the hard work was worthwhile. I have 7 jars of currant jelly, 2 liters of cherry syroup, 8 jars of cherry preserve and also big jars with cherry liqueur and currant liqueur in the making. Yummy!
After our previous visit in Warsaw, while checking something on googlemaps, Johan exclaimed “how come we didn’t go to see the planes!” (you can see them in google earth). Indeed, there are planes in an open air exhibition in the Polish Army Museum. So this time of course we went to see the planes.
We also visited the place I haven’t been to for 20 years – Wilanów. It’s a french style palais and garden complex. It was a summer residence of the polish king Jan III Sobieski and his wife, Marysieńka. It’s being very nicely renovated (with EU money). There is a lot of wildlife in the gardens. We were very lucky and we spotted a Kingfisher. Although it was in a great hurry so what we really saw was a blue smudge speeding through the air. So, no picture of it, but there are pictures of palais (which kindly didn’t move).
There is a relatively new museum in Warsaw – Polin, Museum of the History of Polish Jews. I think it’s one of the best museums I have ever been to. On their website they say “you’ll need at least 2 hours for the exhibition”. Our friends, who were there, told us that it’s rather 5 hours. They were right. Actually, 5 hours is not enough. I would recommend to go twice. There is so much information, all very interesting, presented in all kind of forms, a lot of it interactive (for example – you can ‘mint’ a virtual coin with your name). They say it’s a museum without actual exhibits. Well, they managed without them exceptionally well. There is even is a virtual online exhibition. Architecture of the building is amazing too.
And we walked around a lot too. We went to Łazienki Park. Translation of its name is a constant source of amusement for Johan, as it means “King’s Bathrooms”. Well, I suppose it might be a bit funny. Although you just get used to names. (English example: Liverpool. Pool of livers??). There was a very good exhibition of dutch posters on the fence of the park.
Streight from the train we went to Momencik at Poznańska street. Burritos! In Warsaw you can order vegan pizza from Vegan Pizza! Which we did. And it’s really good too. Of course we went to have Schabowy (Polish version of Schnitzel) in Lokal. And the closest place, with amazing food: Vege Miasto. Somehow I always chose Cudak (a potatoe dish with tempeh). There’s also a new place: Fit and Green. I don’t like their name much, but I like their food!
We had a good time in Warsaw visiting family, friends, walking around and eating delicious food. There was a NATO summit when we were there, but it wasn’t so bad. Parking restrictions and empty streets (almost all streets in our area were closed) reminded me how Warsaw felt on Sundays when I was a kid. But it was sometimes hard to figure out which direction the buses were going, because of all the changes in public transport. Also – we felt very safe with all the security around, for example this guy:
Also, the weather was good, rather cool then hot. More about sightseeing soon 🙂
