Next stop: Warsaw. Thankfully, the weather broke on the first day so the temperatures returned to a bearable level. I was practically dancing in the streets when it started raining. I had a (slightly soggy) chocolate icecream in celebration.
Warsaw is quite a good city for sheer randomness. The University Library, for example, has a garden on the roof. It has some great views, the usual greenery, and some rather out of place, cyberpunk-looking air vent fans.
The huge Palace of Culture holds it's own in a skyline of occasional skyskrapers. Inside, there was an interesting and informative exhibition on Chinese Inventions. For the record, it appears they invented absolutely everything. My favourite bit was the spouting water bowl, a bronze bowl containing water and when you rub the handles, the resonance causes little water spounts to shoot up.
Warsaw has a fair number of parks. My favourite was the huge Lazienkowski Park, containing the Palace on the Water. It also has a peacocks, red squirrels and a variety of less readily identifiable wildlife along with a multitude of statues and monuments. This includes a statue of Chopin (looking quite emo, it has to be said) in the rose garden. They have free piano recitals there from time to time, with the piano positioned so Chopin can look down in despair on the pianist. This seems a little harsh as the ones I saw were quite good. Having arrived in the middle of some kind of musical festival, there were quite a lot of free concerts going on. I also got to see Verdi's Triviata in the courtyard of the castle.
Unfortunately, the legendary Russian Market was closed down a few weeks before I arrived. I had a look at the stadium where it used to be, but it looks pretty folorn now. I think it's going to be bulldozed soon. While I was over on the Praga side of the river, I wandered down towards the zoo. I didn't go in but you can see the bears from the park outside.
Other highlights include pootling round the Old Town (not that old, but faithfully rebuilt after the war) and finding pierogi ruski (the dough dumplings filled with cheese) that I could cook myself. Woo!
And thus ends my little expedition across Eastern Europe. Next stop: the other side of the world...
