Weekend in Warsaw

So finally I had my bike serviced,  The gears kept slipping, which is a pain in the arse when you're in low gear toiling up a hill and suddenly you're back in top.  And the brakes weren't working either, so the toes of my trainers were going through it a bit too.  I can't complain really, I've had the bike over 10 years now and it's done a lot of miles (many of them off-road in sandy dusty forest conditions) so it was definitely due some TLC, with spring coming on.

Anyway, one new chain, new brake blocks and cables and a good greasing later it's as good as new (apart from chipped pain here and there of course), so time to take it out again.  The weather was fine, the kids wanted to get out too so off we all went Saturday afternoon.



About 5 km south of my place is the Kabaty Forest.  The last station on the Warsaw Metro line is a couple of hundred metres away, so from the city centre you can be in deep woods within about 20 minutes.  There is a big network of foot- and cycle paths criss-crossing the forest, and there are plenty of seats and shelters to rest in when you get tired.  There are also two or three memorials to the Polish Home Army soldiers who used it as a hiding place from the Gestapo during the war years.  In those day, it would have been outside the city limits and much more dense and overgrown than it is now, and the Resistance movement used it extensively, and died in numbers too.  This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when the Home Army launched an offensive against the occupying Nazis shortly after the D-Day landings and the French resistance uprising in Paris.  When the expected (and promised) Allied help failed to materialise, a pitched battle raged through what is now the Old Town, with hand-to-hand fighting from street to street, and eventually building to building.  The people, armed with old rifles, knives and petrol bombs, had no chance against seasoned Nazi stormtroopers and their tanks and stick grenades and artillery. At the end of it, much of Warsaw was reduced to rubble, and most of the population killed or captured.  Kids of 10 and 12 years old fought and died alongside their parents and older siblings, all to no avail.  Uncle Joe Stalin refused Churchill's pleas for help and Roosevelt went along with him for the quiet life, so the Germans were left with a free hand.  The Russian Army, half way through the ninety day battle, arrived on the Vistula river's eastern bank at Praga, within a couple of hundred yards of the city, and stopped to watch, forbidden by Stalin to intervene.  A couple of young Resistance fighters swam across the swift flowing river to beg for help.  They were shot for their trouble by the Russians - just another in a long list of atrocities.  At the end of it, the remnants of the population were shipped off to concentration camps, and Hitler angrily ordered the city razed to the ground.....which it was.

Nowadays, the re-built Old Town is one of the more pleasant tourist places here, with a big cobbled market square surrounded by excellent bars and restaurants, and a fine place to spend a summer evening - something I've done many times.  There are also, just a few minutes walk from the Square, some poignant statues commemorating the Uprising, and a display of troop dispositions and maps and photos from the time that tell this tragic story in a variety of languages including English.  A mile or two away, close to the riverbank and the rebuilt Pepsi Arena (home ground of Legia Warsaw football club) is a similar statue to that at the Old Town.  It marks the place where the survivors emerged from the sewers they had in desperation used to escape the holocaust in the Old Town - an unknown number of people, men women and children, died in there too, drowned.......



But back to Kabaty Forest.  We've been there many times before with the kids, and in all weathers, and whether hot and sunny, wet and windy, or cold and snowy, as long as you're properly dressed it's a nice escape from the city.  We've walked around it, and cycled too.  We even buried a dead budgie there once (it seemed more respectable than just dumping it in the bin).  .I've got lost a couple of times, on solo bike rides, and ended up well outside Warsaw, once without a clue where I was (it turned out to be the edge of the affluent Konstancin suburb where government ministers and tv stars live).  So it's big old park, and like nothing I can think of back home in Britain.

Kubzi and I headed off on our bikes, with Ania's sister on our next door neighbour's (borrowed) bike, while we packed the picnic and Ally's bike in the boot of the car, and the girls drove off to meet us in the heart of the forest.  The sun was out, the temperature in the high teens and it was great to get out again in shorts and a tee-shirt.  There were many other cyclists out as well, and the network of cycle paths in our Ursynow suburb were as crowded as the roads.  Many of the other people were riding the "Boris Bikes" that are available in Warsaw now: they're identical to those in London and Paris and New York and elsewhere, and as popular.

It always makes me smile, looking at my fellow bikers.  Now, I tend to amble along at my own pace, enjoying the exercise and the views (and usually the music on my mobile, although I left that at home this weekend).  But there seem to be increasing numbers of people, men and women, who are taking this stuff really seriously, with all the fluorescent lycra shirts, butt hugging padded shorts, streamlined helmets and wraparound shades that are de rigeur on the Tour de France.  I'm usually in cut down jeans and a baggy old tee-shirt.  I don't need wraparound shades because my glasses have tinted lenses.  I do wear a helmet though, mainly to encourage Kuba and Ally to do likewise for safety reasons, even though I look a bit of a tit.  But these enthusiasts - well, to them the cycle paths are their own private race tracks, and they're tearing along full pelt, and God help you if don't get of their way: the volley of verbal abuse that comes your way would probably blister the ears (if I could only understand a word of it).  So it seems that a Polish characteristic is to go like a maniac, whether in a car or on a bike.  When I first started driving here, I was advised to consider every other road user a homicidal madman out to get me, and act accordingly - and by and large that has held true.  I've yet to meet a Polish driver who doesn't consider himself (or herself for that matter....) to be the world's best and safest.  Even when patently they're not.

We managed to arrive at the Forest without accident, anyway, then went off-road for the last couple of kilometers to our meeting place.  The paths there were if anything more crowded than the cycle paths in town, and had the added problem of pedestrians ambling along slowly, with pushchairs, prams and the like, but that was good - everyone out having a great time in the early spring weather.  There were a lot of Alpine Walkers out too - what's all that about then?  I'm told that it's very good exercise, good for your hips and knees and heart, but for the life of me I can't see how the addition of a couple ski poles is going to make any real difference over the stroll to the shops to buy a six-pack of Lech or something.  But it's increasingly popular here, and people of all ages, including considerably older than me, seem to be loving every minute of it.  I prefer my bike, quite frankly.



There is a great bonfire tradition in Poland.  Now back home, a bonfire means two things.  First, Guy Fawkes Night, November 5th, celebrating a misguided and incompetent Catholic plot to blow up Parliament in London and everyone in it.   Big fires the length and breadth of Britain and several million quids worth of fireworks go up in smoke - a very British celebration of failure.  Second, an effective means of getting rid of rubbish - garden cuttings, for instance, or an old car that is no longer working and not worth doing up.

In Poland, it means something else entirely - a party.  In the spring and, in particular, summer months having a bonfire party is a way of life.  You build the bonfire from wood cuttings, logs, charcoal, and whatever else you can safely burn, and once it's going nicely you stick your kielbaski (that's local sausages) onto the sharpened ends of the longest, straightest sticks you can find and cook them over the burning fire.  While you're doing that, typically, you're enjoying a can or two of Lech or Tyskie or any of the other excellent local brews.  When the sausages are cooked, you eat them in hunks of fresh bread or rolls, with ketchup and/or mustard, pickles and fresh salad.  Delicious.

The Masterchef, hard at work

And it was worth it!

Oh, yes - well worth it!

The satsumas were pretty good too.


In Kabaty Forest there is a big clearing with a number of seats and benches, ready made for these affairs. Small sandy patches are scattered around, forty or more, that form a base for the bonfires and are far enough away from the encircling trees to be safe from all but the biggest unattended blazes.  There are also plenty of waste bins as well, to keep the place clean and tidy - and people use them too, unlike in many British picnic grounds I've been to.  Being in a forest, there is no shortage of wood for the fires, and indeed the local park rangers seem to ensure there is a good supply of all shapes and sizes.  For the Forest is also a small national park, managed by the city government, and contains other attractions beyond foot- and cycle-paths.  Adjacent to the picnic area is a sports park that contains indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a volleyball court and swimming pool.  There are also restaurants and bars (if you don't fancy cooking for yourself) and adequate car parking facilities.   On Saturday one field was taken up by a couple of inflatables, a bouncy castle and a six lane slide, for the kids to play on (at least those too young to play football or frisbee).  It really is a good place to spend a warm sunny afternoon.

We had no beer, unfortunately, but plenty of rolls and kielbaski and salads and fresh fruit, so settled down happily on the picnic rug we had taken with us and tucked in.  Ally and Ania cooked the sausages to perfection over the bonfire, and they had a lovely smoky woody flavour, rather than the charcoaled burnt offerings that often comes from more common coal barbecues - so much nicer I think.

Ally too had her first real bike ride.  Until the week before last she was still using the stabilizer wheels, despite our attempts to get them off on holiday at the seaside last summer.  But we tried again and after a two hour terror driven tantrum, she got going eventually and did a number of laps of the fountain behind our local church.  I missed it unfortunately, as I was at home nursing a bad back, and Ania had to put up with all the tears and yelling.  The next day she demonstrated to me by riding around the garage for a while, until people started getting home from work and driving in and disrupting her.

On Saturday we took the bike, and I promised to go with her for a ride in the woods, just the two of us.  Being a stubborn little moo sometimes, I fully expected that when it came to it she would change her mind and refuse - but no: fortified by a couple of kielbaski and some crisps, off we went.  We cycled probably half a kilometer along the main path, back towards home, then turned back onto a parallel one and returned to the bonfire site.  She fell off once, when she clipped a tree root trying to avoid an elderly Alpine walker, but surprised me by getting up and re-starting straightaway.  Then she decided she wanted another go, so off we went again - same route and distance but this time she wanted to cut across a half-ploughed field, just because she had seen someone else do it.  No problem.  By the time we got back, on the two rides, she'd probably clocked up over 2 km.....not bad at all for a first attempt.  When we left, an hour so later, to go home she insisted on cycling part of the way with us, so she did another good k and half through the woods and back to the Metro station, where we loaded her back in the car to go the last 5km home.  I'm so pleased - we can go off for rides together now, all of us.  Great stuff.


So if Saturday was an excellent day (and it was), Sunday was less so, but a nice relaxing day for all that.  We took in Mass at 11 - Kuba has his First Communion in May, so there is preparation to do for that.  Then lunch and an afternoon watching football on tv, and then a couple of movies for the kids.  And an early night - school Monday is an early start for Kuba.

It was a good weekend, and I look forward to repeating it soon.  Living in Warsaw - wouldn't change it.