Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Here I am in Granada (Spain not Camp)by Randi / June 7, 2017
The view of Africa from the ferry
When Husband and I were planning our trip through Andalusia, we were as gung-ho on going to little-known Ceuta as we were on going to our main attractions Seville and Granada, even though there’s nothing to do there, it’s not necessarily beautiful, and it’s not known for any particularly good food or landmarks. Why would we be so determined to visit this lil baby hamlet (#yayhamlet) for barely 24 hours when we had such a tight schedule? Because Ceuta is a Spanish town, but it’s in Africa. So weird right! Located across the Strait of Gibraltar at the northernmost point of Africa, Ceuta is a Spanish autonomous city, which for us means one thing – another addition on the Travelers’ Century Club list. Yes we are nerds but we want to hit that 100 mark!
COMANDANCIA I wish that was my title
Is Senderos like Westeros?
Who would have guessed that Africaspain would have a SEPTA outpost!
But even aside from our silly tallies, it’s so cool to visit a Spanish town that is not part of the Spanish mainland, and instead is mere miles from Tangier and the rest of Morocco. We wanted to witness this geographic anomaly, even though (but also because!) its very existence is the most exciting thing it has going for it. Back in boring, straightforward Europe (jk), we got back on the bus from Granada to Antequera and then got a train (nice Renfe trains!) to the port city Algeciras, where the ferry to Ceuta leaves from. It was lot of modes of transportation early in the morning. They say to get to the ferry terminal an hour before takeoff, and even though we were well on time I got nervous because it took FOREVER to pick up our prepaid ferry tickets at the Balearia kiosk. There were three women standing behind the glass but only one was working and I kept giving them looks that said “Why aren’t you working why are you just standing there what is wrong with you ahhh” but it did NOTHING to speed them along. It took literally 20 minutes for the one working woman to assist the group ahead of us, and then when it was our turn we got our tickets in two seconds flat so you know, timing, man. We booked in advance which wasn’t necessary on our non-full boat but it can’t hurt. We left about 15 minutes late because Spanish time, but it was okay because there were three doggies onboard! And one looked like a baby Tobillo soooo cute. On the ferry, there was a big open area between the seats (facing the other way) and the bar/bathroom area, so I did yoga and stretching there and no one really came near me except to go to the bathroom so only a few people noticed me but then these two mean women laughed at me so I put a curse on their heads. A few hours later, we were in Africa but still Spain! When you get off the ferry, Ceuta looks sketchy, but that’s true of all ports, I think. Walking towards the city centre through roundabouts is a little scary, but the cars generally stop at the zebra crossings. One of the first things I noticed as we walked along the marina to our hotel was a travel agency called Septatravel so I got an immediate positive feeling about this wacky lil guy. Five or so minutes into the walk there is a SuperSol market and a Lidl! Lidl’s line is insanely long because it is like Costco so go get water and snacks at the SuperSol instead. Oh and SuperSol had vegan yogurt and giant apples, my favorite kind of apples!
there ain’t a friggin cloud in the sky
The marina and all the old town buildings that we passed en route to our hotel were really beautiful. It felt so nice to be by water, which I sometimes forget I miss. The charming town centre was full of white buildings with clear Moorish and Spanish influences, and a few statues and tiny parks. The first thing we did was go down to the beach. It was a little cold, definitely more than we expected considering we were in Africa and we had assumed it would be hot, so we only dipped our toes in the ocean and had a nice stroll along the sand.
I don’t really understand sunbathing when there’s no chance of going in the water but hey power to these weirdos.
We stayed at Hotel Ceuta Puerta de Africa, and it was the first standard and modern kind of our trip, so not as charming or pretty or special like in Seville or Granada but it was clean and familiar. Also it had the first good wifi of the whole trip. And it had a bidet! Every bathroom should have one. After we dropped our stuff, we needed to find lunch! We had been traveling to get to Ceuta from 6am to 2pm, so we were hungry and all weird from travel snacking and off meal times. But we had a super hard time finding a place for lunch. We literally went into every. single. restaurant or cafe in the entire town center and checked every menu and found NOTHING even remotely veganizable. It was unbelievably frustrating. They eat a shittonne of fried fish and cheese there. Finally, when I was about to cry (I should have just realized I could have bought groceries from the SuperSol), we asked the guy at one random cafe if he could make me a salad with only vegetables. The guy was so friendly and accommodating and said yes of course and I can also grill vegetables for you! Even though I normally hate that, I hadn’t had a standard grilled veg plate yet on this trip (hooray!) so I said that would actually be good. The veg plate was, but the salad came with a big plop of tuna on top ughhhh people fish is not a vegetable! We took the plopball off and the surrounding bits but it still had the fishy sense all over. Not a great start to eating in Ceuta but at least I had veggies. And bread. So much bread in Spain. I mean Africa. I mean Spain!
We stayed at Hotel Ceuta Puerta de Africa, and it was the first standard and modern kind of our trip, so not as charming or pretty or special like in Seville or Granada but it was clean and familiar. Also it had the first good wifi of the whole trip. And it had a bidet! Every bathroom should have one. After we dropped our stuff, we needed to find lunch! We had been traveling to get to Ceuta from 6am to 2pm, so we were hungry and all weird from travel snacking and off meal times. But we had a super hard time finding a place for lunch. We literally went into every. single. restaurant or cafe in the entire town center and checked every menu and found NOTHING even remotely veganizable. It was unbelievably frustrating. They eat a shittonne of fried fish and cheese there. Finally, when I was about to cry (I should have just realized I could have bought groceries from the SuperSol), we asked the guy at one random cafe if he could make me a salad with only vegetables. The guy was so friendly and accommodating and said yes of course and I can also grill vegetables for you! Even though I normally hate that, I hadn’t had a standard grilled veg plate yet on this trip (hooray!) so I said that would actually be good. The veg plate was, but the salad came with a big plop of tuna on top ughhhh people fish is not a vegetable! We took the plopball off and the surrounding bits but it still had the fishy sense all over. Not a great start to eating in Ceuta but at least I had veggies. And bread. So much bread in Spain. I mean Africa. I mean Spain!
HER CA LEES HER CA LEES!
After lunch, we continued seeing the main part of town. It seems like a really small place, but 80,000 people live there! I would have guessed 19 tops. We saw the beach and got our feet all sandy, we saw the main shopping drag of unidentifiable locals shops and a gigantic Zara (don’t shop there! ever!), and we saw a fun mix of statues on the main promenade by the water. My favorite thing of the whole town is this gigantic statue of Hercules and the twin pillars from his 10th labor. Why Hercules? Because apparently the Rock of Gibraltar (next post!) is one pillar and the mountains of Ceuta formed the other pillar and Hercules formed them when he smashed through the (much bigger at the time) Atlas mountains with this superstrength and created the Strait of Gibraltar. Cool story, all I know is after I saw this statue I started singing “Who put the glad in gladiator? HER-CU-LEES!” and I haven’t stopped yet.
I also liked this statue called Paz y Libertad, in which a lady is setting a bird free after removing its chains. So deep, man.
After walking pretty far up the main drag, we visited literally the one thing ‘to do’ in the Ceuta travel guides – visiting the medieval city walls. These royal walls used to be fortresses complete with a moat, and now are overrun with birds and their poop. They are cool to see and walk around, and that’s really all there is to it, and that’s the thing to do. It has become a hangout for Ceuta yoots, and the only other people we saw traversing the walls were a baby in a stroller, a group of male yoots smoking and doing bad things I can only assume, and a girl yoot and boy yoot making out. I usually judge yoots very harshly but I almost felt bad for them because there is nothing to do in their town.
After walking pretty far up the main drag, we visited literally the one thing ‘to do’ in the Ceuta travel guides – visiting the medieval city walls. These royal walls used to be fortresses complete with a moat, and now are overrun with birds and their poop. They are cool to see and walk around, and that’s really all there is to it, and that’s the thing to do. It has become a hangout for Ceuta yoots, and the only other people we saw traversing the walls were a baby in a stroller, a group of male yoots smoking and doing bad things I can only assume, and a girl yoot and boy yoot making out. I usually judge yoots very harshly but I almost felt bad for them because there is nothing to do in their town.
The medieval city walls. Cool. Coolcoolcoolcool.
After we literally saw the entire town, we make a dinner reservation at what is supposed to be the best restaurant in the area, Oasis. Our hotel called and made us a booking for when they open – 9pm. The restaurant opens at 9pm! We definitely were not in London anymore (most things are closed by then!). Oasis is at the very top of the hills of Ceuta’s head bit by Mirador San Antonio. You need to take a taxi because, well, it’s far, but also it’s all winding roads where opposing traffic just comes barreling around the curves.
Mirador San Antonio has a perfect lookout spot we went to before dinner. At this spot, which sticks out over the water, you can see Africa curving around and a lil spot of Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar, as long as it’s not too foggy. It was kind of foggy. The temperature dropped considerably once the sun set, and we were at the highest, windiest point of town, so be prepared. I only brought warm weather clothes. Anyway, it was worth it because we saw a beautiful sunset between Europe and Africa and that is super cool.
Mirador San Antonio has a perfect lookout spot we went to before dinner. At this spot, which sticks out over the water, you can see Africa curving around and a lil spot of Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar, as long as it’s not too foggy. It was kind of foggy. The temperature dropped considerably once the sun set, and we were at the highest, windiest point of town, so be prepared. I only brought warm weather clothes. Anyway, it was worth it because we saw a beautiful sunset between Europe and Africa and that is super cool.
Sun is setting right down the middle!
Once it was finally close to 9pm, we walked over to Oasis Restaurant, and saw many ladies throwing buckets of soapy water on the windows and front patio. Um. Wat. I tried to open the front door (despite the soapy puddles) but it was locked. The ladies kept cleaning and scrubbing and throwing buckets of water just everywhere, so we walked a little up the road and decided to wait a few minutes. On our little wanderings, we saw these little fellas crossing the street:
So that was interesting! A little bit later, we went back to peek at the restaurant, and the ladies were still going strong with their water games. We’re at this incredibly remote spot, far from the center of town and far from any other living creature (except those crossing the street), and we were like what is happening! Finally a few minutes later a man came out the front door and said it would just be a few minutes more. And then he mopped the patio, while we just stood there in the cold. I wanted to be like, duuuude let us in and mop LATER. I was so angry and cold. So cold. Finally after at least 15 minutes we went inside, and it was gorgeous inside. It looked like Morocco. The man, although obviously very stupid, was nice and I stopped being so angry. I was concerned that it was supposed to be the best restaurant in the whole city, but we were the only guests! Also he was listening to a football match on the radio pretty loud which really did not jibe with the decor. So odd. We thought maybe the emptiness was because it was a Wednesday, or because Easter processions were going on (yup here too). Well, turns out we are just REALLY underestimating how late the Spanish do in fact eat. At 10pm (bedtime!), while we were eating our starters, a big family arrived. Then at 10:15pm, four teenage girls came. So random. Then at 10:30pm a group of old people friends. We were flabbergasted – when they say people eat dinner late in Spain (and pseudo-Spain), they really mean it! It’s semi-late in Madrid and Barcelona and Seville was tourist-friendly, so I guess we just never experienced dinner time for real in a town not catering to tourists. Places were people actually live like Ceuta do midnight dinner.
Then, at almost 11pm, a big family came in WITH AN INFANT. I was done trying to understand. I was literally falling asleep in my food and a baby was just getting started.
Then, at almost 11pm, a big family came in WITH AN INFANT. I was done trying to understand. I was literally falling asleep in my food and a baby was just getting started.
yes you’re right this is indeed a carrot salad I just didn’t expect it to be so carrot
The food ended up being just as good as I hoped. The mopper man seemed to be doing everything; he was the only staff I saw (though the kitchen was through the many big rooms in various connected buildings. It was a gorgeous space). He understood the veganness really easily and promised I would eat well. I started with a decent carrot salad, literally discs of cold cooked carrot with herbs that was really good but a little too much carrot. We also got great giant slabs of flat bread which is our favorite.
I MADE COUSCOUS
For my main, I had a delicious couscous. I know it sounds boring but it was one of the very best couscouses (couses cous?) I’ve ever had, up there with the ones I had on our honeymoon in Morocco which makes sense since this is effectively in Morocco. First of all, it came with chickpeas! Hooray for restaurants that give vegans beans! We want beans! Then, the broth that the cous was in was soo good, and it came with a good mix of weird veggies. It was wonderful! There was so much couscous though, I couldn’t even finish it. I liked this very much. MUCHO GUSTO.
TRAY OF SUGAR
After dinner, the mopper man brought fresh mint tea which is literally our favorite thing. This tea was in that great Moroccan tradition of being way too sweet and poured from a great height. He also brought us a huge, HUGE, dessert tray. There were peanutty jawns, sugar syrup baklava type jawns, flaky cookies that left tons of powdered sugar in their wake, all kinds of sugary syrupy twisty little bites that were so good and sooo sugary. I wish that he had told us that we would be charged for each little piece we ate, but they were super cheap and it’s better than being charged for the whole gigantic tray. I just wouldn’t have bit every single one and put half back. Just kidding I didn’t do that I am not a monster. It was a great meal overall. The only annoying thing (besides the opening wtf) was that I asked for a half liter of water (no tap water really in all of Spain. Or Africa) and he said they only had full liters left (menu said both so it was a supply problem) but on the bill he charged us for the full, which I thought was wrong since we wanted to get just a half (I had bag water as always).
The guy called a taxi for us (you can’t hail one at the deserted top of a mountain) at 11pm, and it took a full 30 minutes for it to come. Ughhhh it was sooo cold outside too and I was dizzy from all the sugar in the tea and the desserts and that darn baby was still going strong inside. It finally came, and after all that it couldn’t drop us at our hotel but a few blocks away, because this was happening:
The guy called a taxi for us (you can’t hail one at the deserted top of a mountain) at 11pm, and it took a full 30 minutes for it to come. Ughhhh it was sooo cold outside too and I was dizzy from all the sugar in the tea and the desserts and that darn baby was still going strong inside. It finally came, and after all that it couldn’t drop us at our hotel but a few blocks away, because this was happening:
YUP, another Easter parade! Even in Africa! And after 11pm! Oh boy this was getting kind of annoying. I mean I’m not a fan of parades to begin with so a slow, somber one about Jesus and clan got old kinda fast. But still it’s pretty cool, and kind of hilarious. Thank goodness we couldn’t really hear the drums from our room.
So that covers all, seriously all, of our time in Ceuta. There’s not much to do as a tourist, so it’s kind of meh and I can’t recommend that people actually vacation there. But if you happen to be in the area, it’s cool to see a geographic oddity and the Strait of Gibraltar, and you get to say you went to Spain but Africa. Also you get to sing “I am Africa” the whole time. Oh and of course the songs from “Hercules”! So it is great for the music in your head if nothing else.
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Beijing, China: Adventures in Health and Electronics
We’ve been together on this journey for a while, right? So it’s okay to get a little personal. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World: China. No we are going to talk about health issues we faced in Beijing, and then be rewarded with a look at our hilarious attempt to fix the little baby laptop in a huuuge Chinese computer parts superstore center where no one spoke English. It’s like an interlude. La la la la…
Just to clear up any potential confusion, no, that lead picture has nothing to do with anything. We just saw it on the street.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
this is what I look like outside in China hahahahahahahahah #bankrobber
We made our way on our first afternoon to Torana Clean Air, a smaller store than we expected with a small range of face masks and room air purifiers. They did have the masks we wanted in the sizes we needed, just not a big range of colors, so we were stuck with this weird octagon color pattern. Whatever, I don’t care what I look like if it’s keeping my lungs safer. The mask is called the Vogmask, and it helps protect from airborne particulate matter and “non-oil airborne particles” like dust, pollen, and, best of all, SECONDHAND SMOKE! I’m gonna wear this baby on the trains so hard! I know that obviously this sort of mask isn’t perfect, but it is good at filtering big and tiny particles, according to studies, and decent at the dangerous sort-of-small particles, so as long as it’s better than nothing and better than a doctor’s mask, I’m happy. I would like to get one of those total face covers with the mouth hole that you blow out of but like I’m already stared at enough here I don’t think I would be able to handle more.
They were a bit expensive at about $30 USD, but that’s super worth it for something that is helping you not get asthma and lung cancer and all kinds of shit. I do feel like I can’t catch my breath sometimes here, so I will have to see a doctor when we get back about whether China-induced asthma is a thing, but overall it’s okay. Hooray for us looking like fools but acting like smarties! I like being healthy!
So, about that…
After we left Mongolia (hip hip hoorayyy!), I had some abdominal discomfort, like, in and around the kidneys. I was peeing a helluva lot more than usual, which by now you know is a lot anyway, and it wasn’t because of drinking much more fluid, so I was concerned. We decided to go to an international health clinic we had on our emergency list (we have a list of all the hospitals and clinics where we are going where mostly expats go, so they speak English), called Parkway Health. They made a same-day appointment for me and were so nice and professional and I love them.
It was a hilarious experience, if you forget the part about me not feeling great. With my symptoms, they pretty much just needed to do a urine test. So one of the many nice nurses led me to the bathroom upstairs, but it was locked. She got another nurse, and they both tried lots of random keys to unlock it, but nothing worked. I was just standing around for like 20 minutes. Finally one of them said, “Can you just hold it?” I did my best to communicate, “Um, I don’t just need to pee, you need to test my urine, like that’s the whole point of why I’m here??” Finally they got it open and took my sample off to the lab. Meanwhile, I met the doctor. She was a lady doctor so in your face, riddles. Her English was slightly less wonderful than all the main nurses’, but still good and I felt comfortable with her. She asked if we had been traveling hard for a while, and I explained that yes, we don’t sleep we just take trains to random places for like months now. I said I had just gotten to China from Mongolia AND SHE SHUDDERED. She gets it. I said how we were pretty much in a car for 7 days there where I had to hold my pee all day and I was also dehydrated. She was like no no no this is all bad! Are you sleeping? No I’m not sleeping as much as I should be or usually need to. She was SO CONCERNED. She kept putting her hand on my shoulder like for moral support, that’s how upset she was with like, these very minor complaints. It was like if I became a doctor. I would SO be the doctor telling everyone to sleep more and drink more water and getting so upset if they weren’t doing enough of either. She was like, listen, you need to sleep more, you need to drink more water, you need to eat berries, especially red ones (amazing medicine). Then she hit a language snag and said, “You need…it’s in Chinese pingwan (or pingyan I don’t know)…just….lying down on the bed is good.” I THINK SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL ME TO TAKE NAPS. I love this doctor! The results came back and showed signs of infection, and given the symptoms was 99% a UTI. Which, given how many jokes I made about getting UTIs in my recent posts, shows that the universe looooves messing with me.
if anyone knows why I’m sharing this picture we should be best friends
We went over the things that can cause a UTI and kind of just laughed:
Dehydration – CHECK
Holding urine – CHECK
Long car rides/travel – CHECK
Squatting instead of sitting when urinating – CHECK CHECK (all that business about how it’s better anatomically to squat is just for #2; for #1 for women it leads to incomplete emptying which leads to infection in the urinary tract which issss UTI)
Poor hygiene – CHECK did you READ the Mongolian outback post?
THANK YOU PARKVIEW I WUV YOU |
They brought me a paper cup of water in a plastic holder lolol |
I mean, every single thing! Man alive! She put me on a cycle of antibiotics (and I’m all better, p.s., this blog is on a 2-week tape delay). I went to the waiting room and told Z the good news (not sarcasm; it’s a simple easily treatable thing, that’s good news). Then I said, “The doctor said I need to sleep more, drink more water, and eat berries.” Z responded, “Oh SURE she did. Did she also order you to pet more small dogs??” I almost passed out laughing so hard and had a very hard time convincing him that doing more of my favorite things was indeed doctor’s orders.
I’m relieved that we went to a real doctor who believes in medicine and fixed me up. And mostly, I’m super grateful for our UK health insurance, which covers us worldwide and immediately gave the clear when the receptionists contacted them so we didn’t even have to pay out of pocket first. We area so lucky to have such good insurance that covers us everywhere we go – well, except in the USA. It covers us in freaking China and will continue to cover us in Kazakhstan and everywhere else, but it can’t cover the USA because their healthcare system is too much of a mess. Every other country is fine though! Jesus America.
Okay that’s enough about my insides! Here’s the treat I promised you (plus one more hilarious treat at the bottom) about our adventures in Beijing’s super intense electronics scene. One whole section of the city seems to be electronic parts superstores, selling all types of gadgets but most of all doing repairs and crazy customization of gadgets. Little baby laptop’s fan stopped working, so we took it to this section of the city and just dove in headfirst. We entered one of the giant buildings, and were greeted with four floors of indistinguishable counters with Chinese guys gadgeting huge messes of gadgets. We went over to one counter that we chose randomly and showed the guy the computer and mimed a fan turning with our hands and then did a NO gesture. He got it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part. We tried the next counter, and a guy was just not into trying to figure anything we were miming out (not as many English speakers as you might expect in such a city!). Onward! The guy at the next counter was in, and he rebooted the computer a few times and determined that the fan wasn’t actually broken, but that something was stopping it, so he needed to just go in there and clean the parts instead of replacing them. How we communicated this is a feat of human interaction and behavior because it did not happen with actual language.
So we watched as he took apart the entire little netbook, because since it’s so small everything is under the keyboard, and he really had to take every last piece out. Like, we went down to the motherboard. Little baby was in 30 pieces! And to check if what he did worked, he had to put it all together again, all the tiny little barely visible screws that each have a very specific part they go with so you have to keep all these tiny screws straight and it’s a mess! Of course, the first go-round didn’t jive well with the computer, because it refused to work! So back apart it all went, a little more fixing, and then back together. Oh it was EXCRUCIATING to watch. How can people watch actual surgeries?! Finally he did a few more rounds of fiddling and it was back! It took over an hour of stress and just sitting in the super hot warehouse with people staring at us like whaaat are these tourists doing here. We also increased the computer’s RAM (I think that means it has horns now!) and we got a Chinese power cord so we don’t have to keep plugging it in with an adaptor, and it all came to I think 230 RMB, which is less than $35. Not bad! It was kind of fun to have the kind of electronics experience usually reserved to locals who have a clue what they are doing with electronics. It was definitely out of the ordinary and cool to see.
ahhh GUTS
Okay, one more random thing, I guess relating to health? At the checkout at most grocery stores we went to, they have tons and tons of condoms where in the USA there would be, like, gum and candy bars. It’s a little disconcerting but hey, China is serious about birth control which is good! But one brand jumped out at us and we were CRACKING up.
UH HUH, that’s a condom brand called JISSBON. So shocking and hilarious! But it gets better, if you can believe it. Our Chinese friend said that jissbon is ACTUALLY WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE CALL JAMES BOND. So this condom line is named after James Bond! And it JUST HAPPENS TO SOUND HYSTERICALLY PERFECT FOR A CONDOM. Omg I can’t even believe. The writing underneath says something like “you can’t even see it”, something very 007 spy-like. Ahh it’s so funny!
Okay that’s all the random thoughts I have for today. And don’t worry Mom I’m all better and it was like nothing!
Warsaw, Poland: Beautiful and Welcoming City with a Tragic Past
Warsaw is one of the most surprising cities I’ve ever visited. Usually, I am a tough critic when traveling (especially if I don’t have a bathroom or a nice bed). But I became a fan of Warsaw almost instantly and jumped right into exploration and appreciation of this important city. It’s a city of contrasts: it feels hospitable and welcoming yet still retains an air of eastern European coolness. The desire to progress and rise above its history is palpable, amid seemingly innumerable monuments to the past. You feel almost overwhelmed by all the history surrounding you, yet every building is almost brand-new. There’s a lot to understand when visiting Warsaw, and it’s a rewarding undertaking. Even though I had zero expectations (or maybe because of that), Warsaw quickly became one of my favorite places.
Cloudy and cool – appropriate weather for the walking tour of mournful history
We arrived on the overnight train from Kyiv very early in the morning, so our room at Dream Hostel Warsaw wasn’t going to be ready for hours. Oh and because of its location in the city center (200 meters from the Royal Castle), our car wasn’t able to get on its actual street so we had to walk a little to it in our exhausted stupor. With these two tiny obstacles beginning our trip, you can guess how pissed off I was, so that tells you a little bit about how great this city is that I was able to overcome my pissiness to such an extent. The Dream Hostel, aside from letting their other customers check out so late (i.e. not at 7am when I wanted them out), was a great place to stay. It was clean and simple and modern, with a really comfortable bed, at least in our private en suite (we are adults we do not fork with hostel dorms anymore). The location was perfect too, right in the Old Town, so I recommend it if you’re going and looking for a budget-friendly place that isn’t a straight up hole filled with loud drunk yoots. (There are yoots though; it is a hostel.)
Right outside the hostel was an outdoor exhibit on Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish-Lithuanian military leader who became a hero both in Poland and in the USA. He fought in the American Revolution as a colonel of the Continental Army. He also was an architect and he designed and oversaw the construction of military fortifications such as those at West Point. When he returned to Poland after straight killing it in America, he was made the very model of a modern Major General in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, then was Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, leading the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising. Don’t make me type that name again. The K-dawg Uprising was against Russia, as most uprisings should be, but he was captured. Luckily, he was pardoned after a few years and thought, get me the hell out of here, I’ma go see my homies in America. And so he moved not only to the USA but to Philadelphia! Pop POP!
Proof of this dude’s opposite trajectory to mine
The Dream Hostel staff directed our attention to what is my #1 activity tip for Warsaw – the free city walking tour, from freewalkingtour.com. Free walking tours are my favorite thing to find in any city, as they are always incredibly informative and entertaining. But Warsaw’s (actually called the Free WALKATIVE Tour because they’re adorable I guess) were my favorite ever. That’s right, we took two – the general history/Old Town one (very good) and one specifically about the war and the ghetto and everything, which was extra long (2 1/2 hours I think). This latter one was spectacular, I think because our incredible guide packed so much important history into our tour and treated all of its history, good and tragic, with reverence and consideration, so it felt properly serious. And soul-crushing. Most of Warsaw’s prominent history is grim, so you have to be really ready to dive in.
We met at Zygmunt’s Column in the Old Town, one of the most famous landmarks of Warsaw that I didn’t happen to take a picture of for some reason, I think because I was cold. It’s named after King Sigismund III Vasa, the 16th century king who moved Poland’s capital from Krakow to Warsaw. I like to say his name with an aye-aye-aye in the middle.
This lady above was our guide in the Old Town for the first tour, and then for the World War history tour (the big long most important one) we had a young man take over. Both were very good (but the boy was my favorite) and both told us that they were newly engaged (not to each other), because every single guide in every single free walking tour we’ve ever taken, across the globe, has told us that they were newly engaged (I think as a ploy to get more tips, but like, no harm no foul, get that paper.)
This lady above was our guide in the Old Town for the first tour, and then for the World War history tour (the big long most important one) we had a young man take over. Both were very good (but the boy was my favorite) and both told us that they were newly engaged (not to each other), because every single guide in every single free walking tour we’ve ever taken, across the globe, has told us that they were newly engaged (I think as a ploy to get more tips, but like, no harm no foul, get that paper.)
My favorite tour guide ever! He said Warsaw so cute
But let’s start with the not-so-terrible history in the Historic Center of Warsaw. Like the above pictures, where you can see famous sayings and famous people (or characters (yes that’s Donkey from Shrek)) in various languages – including Esperanto, the language made up in the 19th century to be an international language (instead of forcing everyone to learn English). It’s not super weird to speak Esperanto here because its creator, the Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist Zamenhof (hey that’s like me I want to invent a language but not touch people’s eyes) was from Warsaw.
We also saw Marie Curie’s house. I guess I always assumed she and everyone else with second-syllable-accented names was French, but she was Polish, born in Warsaw (as Maria), and that above is the house she grew up in. Our guide taught us so much that I didn’t know about Marie’s incredible life. I knew she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win two, and the only person to win in two different fields of science (she real smart). I did not know that she was part of an actual Curie Family Legacy – there are 5 Nobel Prizes now in her family. Her descendants are under hella pressure. The first element she discovered was named polonium after her home country. I mean it’s so obvious but I never realized it; I think I assumed it was after her favorite Hamlet character. (Uh, I think I remember Hamlet accurately.) And everyone knows she died from radiation exposure during her research in radioactivity but I didn’t know she got extra radiation from developing mobile x-ray units for field hospitals during World War I. Her extraordinary achievements could have been thwarted by the simple fact that she could not enroll in any institute of higher learning in Poland because she was a woman. She and her sister studied in Paris, after years of planning and earning enough money to do so. While Marie saved money and worked, she continued to teach herself. She also fell in love with a man who couldn’t marry her because she was poor, and although she was heartbroken, it was sort of for the best because if she did, she may have never gone to Paris or achieved what she has. Plus people said that the man who rejected her always regretted it, so she got hers.
I also loved this story of Maly Przeglad, the newspaper written and edited by children, for children. Janusz Korczak made such a publication possible, when for 13 years in the early 20th century he ran and distributed the paper, making 50,000 copies of it every week. Meaning Little Review, Maly Przeglad was a supplement to the Nasz Przeglad, the largest Polish-language Jewish daily newspaper. Janusz said he developed this newspaper because, “There are children who have many great ideas, remarks, and observations, but don’t write, because they lack courage or just don’t feel like it. Our newspaper will encourage them to write. Encourage and embolden them.” I love this man.
Above is a picture of the clocktower at the Royal Castle, in Castle Square (apt) at the entrance to the Old Town. It was formerly the official residence of Polish monarchs, from the 16th century, as well as the seat of the King and Parliament. It was also the site of the writing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the second-oldest codified national constitution in the world after the USA’s (although I bet more respected). However, you may recall when I said in the beginning that everything in Warsaw is new. That includes this castle and everything else in the Old Town, which was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. Here is a picture of the same site during the devastation, and one from beforehand, which was used later in the rebuilding process.
In 1939, following the invasion of Poland, Nazis burned and looted the Castle. But it would be almost completely destroyed a few years later, along with the rest of Warsaw, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the subsequent Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After WWII, more than 80% of the city would be demolished and almost all of Warsaw’s 300,000 Jewish residents (making it the largest Jewish city in Europe) would be dead.
Metal map of Warsaw
So I guess we’ve reached that point where we have to talk about it all. As I said, Warsaw was the biggest Jewish city in Europe pre-war, with around 300,000 Jews. Before WWII, Jews were thriving in Warsaw, with the majority living in the city center and commercial districts. Many left Warsaw during the depression, which was worse in Poland than the rest of Europe, but even so the population remained high. When the Siege of Warsaw occurred in 1939, German planes bombed Warsaw, killing tens of thousands of people and destroying 10% of the city. After this, the number of Jews in Warsaw actually increased, because there were so many refugees fleeing from the Polish-German front. Soon after the Siege ended, Hitler established the General Government in Poland and the Jewish Council in Warsaw, which would let the Nazis start carrying out their atrocities against the Polish people. First was Jewish forced labor, to clean up after the bombings. Then all the bank accounts of Polish Jews were blocked, followed by the required display of Jewish star on all Jewish shops. Then came the required armbands, and then the ban from public transit, and then the prohibition on communal prayer.
A section of the Mur Getta, or Ghetto Wall
In the fall of 1940, the Nazis, now running Poland, established the Warsaw Ghetto, which would become the largest Ghetto in Europe. They ordered construction of the Ghetto walls around the predominantly Jewish area. Non-Jews (referred to as ‘ethnic Poles’, but like Jews still can be that, asswipes) were removed from this area while Jews from the suburbs were brought into it. The walls, closing the inhabitants off from the outside world, were 3 meters high, with barbed wire on top, and anyone trying to escape was shot. More than 400,000 (some reports say 450,000) Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, which was only a little over one square mile. People were packed into rooms, with little if any food, prohibited from freely traveling in their own city. There were typhus epidemics in the dirty, close quarters. There was starvation – the rations started at 180 calories per person per day and decreased with time. The vast majority of food in the Ghetto was smuggled in.
Marking the boundaries of the Ghetto area today
From the Ghetto, Jews were deported to concentration camps for either forced labor or extermination. More than 250,000 Jews were sent from the Ghetto to Treblinka in the summer of 1942 for extermination. Most of the remaining Jews in the Ghetto died from shootings, gassing, illness, and starvation. By the end of 1942, the Jews in the Ghetto realized that the deportations meant death, and that the transport for ‘resettlement’ was really leading Jews to mass killings. They decided to resist by smuggling in weapons. In January 1943, the Nazis entered the Ghetto to round up more Jews for transport, but they met resistance from some armed Jews. Still, 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 were removed (of the planned 8,000). But now the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was starting, the largest revolt by Jews in WWII. Adults and children were ready to fight, although with their limited supplies and arms against the German forces, they knew at this point it was more a fight for honor rather than survival.
This is called the Kotwica, the emblem of the Polish Underground State and the Home Army (which we talk about below). It was the symbol for Polish struggle to regain independence. The symbol comes from the initials P and W, from the phrase “Pomscimy Wawer” – We Shall Avenge Wawer. Wawer was a massacre in 1939, one of the first large-scale massacres of Polish civilians by German troops.
The resistance organizations, the ZZW and ZOB, gained control of the Ghetto and executed Nazi collaborators and traitors, like the Jewish Police officers. The head of the Jewish Ghetto Police committed suicide. By Passover, the police and SS forces entered the Ghetto to complete deportations, but the Jewish fighters held them back. The SS officers started burning down houses block by block to force a surrender, but the fighting continued for almost a month.
While this fighting occurred inside the walls, outside the walls the Germans were attacked at various points by Polish resistance groups. However, the numbers of fighters in and outside the Ghetto kept falling, and eventually there was no organized defense left, just survivors who hid in the sewers and dugouts referred to as bunkers.
The Nazis searched out these hiding places and would smoke or flood the inhabitants out, or just use explosives on the area. One of these dugouts was the infamous Mila 18, with approximately 300 people inside, including smugglers and ZOB commanding officers. The smugglers surrendered to the Nazis, but the ZOB command refused to move. The Nazis threw tear gas down into the bunker, and a few people managed to escape uncaught, but the rest committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide instead of surrendering to the Nazis.
While this fighting occurred inside the walls, outside the walls the Germans were attacked at various points by Polish resistance groups. However, the numbers of fighters in and outside the Ghetto kept falling, and eventually there was no organized defense left, just survivors who hid in the sewers and dugouts referred to as bunkers.
The Nazis searched out these hiding places and would smoke or flood the inhabitants out, or just use explosives on the area. One of these dugouts was the infamous Mila 18, with approximately 300 people inside, including smugglers and ZOB commanding officers. The smugglers surrendered to the Nazis, but the ZOB command refused to move. The Nazis threw tear gas down into the bunker, and a few people managed to escape uncaught, but the rest committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide instead of surrendering to the Nazis.
The site of Mila 18. It felt too strange to take a picture, so instead of deciding whether it was appropriate or not I took a half-picture.
The Uprising ended on May 16, 1943, when the Nazis demolished the Great Synagogue of Warsaw in a symbolic fuck you to humanity, although I am surprised it wasn’t demolished at the start of things. 13,000 Jews died in the Uprising, and most of the remaining 50,000 (remember we started with 450,000) were captured and sent to camps, mainly Treblinka.
At this point in the tour, an (white female (always) (dammit)) American woman asked the tour guide “Why didn’t the Jews just fight back when this all started??” All the decent people gave her side eye and the guide explained that the events didn’t just jump from zero to murder in a day. The oppressors, like all oppressors, started small, with sacrifices you couldn’t really risk everything fighting against when it seemed like something you could live with. Then the oppressors would add something else to the mix, and the same question is asked of you: is this the breaking point, or will it be okay? Most people think things will be okay for them, that things couldn’t get too out of hand in modern society. But soon you’re faced with a pile of small atrocities stacked on top of each other and the stack leads to complete injustice and horror, and by that point it’s too late to do much. We visited Warsaw many months ago, and even then I was shocked that the lady didn’t realize that the same thing was happening in the USA. I wonder if she can see today how ignorant she sounded, or if she realizes that we’ve reached the point she was talking about, when people should be fighting back. Every day, the leaders of American chip away at the rights of citizens and innocent people, and they degrade our institutions so much that our checks and balances are now a joke, a joke that for the most part they are in control of. But aside from trying to fight back civilly (in the courts, with fundraising, with calling offices), no one is rioting in the streets or risking their lives to fight it. We excuse it day by day as something we can live with, something that we will change when decent people are back in power. But look at what the incremental nature of these injustices has led to. There are literally babies being snatched from their families and locked up in cages. And we are not rioting in the streets for them. Is this the point when we should be? If we don’t, will it be too late to fight against what happens next? I am scared of what will happen next as I’m sure all decent people who aren’t morally bankrupt are, but I’m also scared of what’s happening now and what’s already happened. We’re supposed to study history in order to learn from it and not repeat the mistakes of the past, but that’s hard to do when people who want to repeat history are in charge.
Warsaw’s Palace of Justice today (the courts)
Ok let’s get back to Warsaw’s history before we all get back to crying, donating, crying, screaming, and not knowing what else to do. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 happened over a year before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the general revolt in the ‘main’ part of the city. The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was part of a nationwide plan from the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army (the dominant Polish resistance movement), to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis. The fighting lasted more than two months, with no outside help, to be the largest military effort by any European resistance in WWII. The timing of the Uprising coincided with the retreat of German forces from Poland head of the Soviet advance, but when the Soviets approached the city, they halted temporarily and ignored Polish radio contact instead of charging into the city. Also, there was a Soviet base a few minutes away from the city, but they never provided air support. All of this led to allegations that Stalin halted his forces on purpose to let the resistance fail and be crushed.
Churchill pleaded with Stalin and FDR to help the Polish allies, but they refused. Without obtaining Soviet air clearance, Churchill sent more than 200 supply drops in the Warsaw Airlift. Finally America did a thing and sent one mass airdrop after getting Soviet air clearance. However, it was too little too late, and the Soviet halt gave the Germans the ability to regroup and defeat the resistance. So just another lesson from history that you cannot trust the Russians. In fact, Stalin found the Home Army’s resistance so ‘inconvenient’ to his plans that their name was censored in the post-war period and he twisted the facts through propaganda in the Soviet-controlled People’s Republic of Poland.
Monument to the fighters of the Warsaw Uprising
Approximately 16,000 Polish resistance fighters were killed in the Uprising, and between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died mainly from mass executions. In the city, about 25% of Warsaw was destroyed, but after the Poles surrendered, Germans razed the vast majority of the remainder of the city as a final lesson.
Monument to the Heroes of Warsaw, also known as the Warsaw Nike for obvious reasons
Pomnik Bohaterow Getta, the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Right outside the Jewish Museum.
Monument at the Ghetto walls
After the war, Polish citizens led a five-year reconstruction campaign to restore the Old Town of Warsaw, a restoration so meticulous that the entire new centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site. They used old paintings and photographs to ensure that the reconstruction got much of the city’s rich architectural heritage correct, and its thanks to that campaign that Warsaw looks as historic as it does.
Today, Warsaw’s historic center is gorgeous, filled with lovely colors and important buildings, belying a history that left it completely destroyed.
The Warsaw Mermaid is an important symbol of the city, featured on its coat of arms. There are several legends about the mermaid, and the official City legend says that she decided to stay in Warsaw after coming upon the riverbank near the Old Town. Fishermen noticed that there was something making waves, tangling their nets, and releasing their fish (yas queen). The fishermen were going to trap the mermaid, but then she started singing and they fell in love, as you do. But a rich merchant (always bad) trapped the mermaid and imprisoned her. She cried, and when the fishermen heard her cried they rescued her. In return, the mermaid has been armed with a sword and a shield so she is ready to help protect the city and its lovely residents. Other versions of this story say that the Warsaw Mermaid is the sister of the Copenhagen Mermaid (the Little Mermaid). Could be true considering the Copenhagen/Little one had all those sisters. This statute stands in the Old Town Square.
So yes, when you go to Warsaw you have to take this walking tour and learn about the history. You can’t just go and enjoy the insane vegan food (next post) and not pay your respects to its past. It’s so important to learn and remember what happened here, and with any luck learn from it.
