Living City Museum

Warsaw (pop 7.1m) is the capital and largest city in Poland and a living historical musuem! It was established in 1313 by a Slavic King, disappeared off the European Map (along with Poland - Prussia, Serbia & Hungary shared control) from 1795 to 1918, was levelled by bombing in WWII, rebuilt by 1984 and now shaking off the last vestiges of communist influence it left behind in 1989 (second photo from top). Warsaw is big and flat. Its roads are huge, it still has the huge Soviet style concrete apartments (in the distance) but the most impressive feature is the completely re-built old city (top photo). During WWII the city was 85% destroyed and 50% of its 1.2m population killed. Prior to WWII, there were 400,000 jews living in the city - after WWII only 100 remained, the rest killed in the camps. There is very little left of the Jewish Ghetto but there are many monuments scattered through Warsaw's suburbs that tell the story: the Jewish cemetery where 250,000 killed in the war are buried, only one piece of the original 3.5m high ghetto wall (bottom photo), the station where Jews were deported to Auschwitz (5-6,000 per day), the heroes of the 1944 uprising and only two original ghetto apartment buildings are left - complete with bullet holes. Other interesting sites visted include: Chopin's tomb (heart only!!!, body is in Paris) inside Holy Cross Church, Presidential Palace, University, St John (first church in Poland 13th Century) and the birthplace / musuem of Marie Curie (who invented Radiography, discovered Radium, Polonium & the only person to win two Nobel prizes!). Distance travelled so far: 10,868km.