How I Survived in Warsaw Only Knowing Four Words in Polish, Part 1

Poland is an interesting country to say the least.  The last one hundred years haven't been kind to Warsaw especially - it has been blown to bits by Nazis AND Russians in so thorough a fashion that 85% of the city was obliterated during the course of WWII.  Under Soviet rule post-WWII Poland was rebuilt (where possible with the same bricks) and so we have Warsaw today. 

The first thing you need to understand about Warsaw is that simply put it is a frozen hellscape.  Really, that's the only way I can put it.  It is just so cold, that I was wearing three layers and I was still freezing.  The second thing you need to understand about Warsaw is that it is not a beautiful city in any respect as it was rebuilt by Soviets, but it is a practical one.  The third and final thing is that Polish is not an easy language; it is basically Russian but with an alphabet closer to English.

After a two hour flight that had been delayed for an hour we arrived at Chopin Airport and took a taxi - a lot of time is going to be spent in taxis incidentally - to El Hostel.  We had gotten an
apartment for the four of us - myself, Angie, Sam, and Avi - and so got to avoid the usual problems of having a hostel, like crowded bathrooms, sticky hands, and zero privacy.  We asked the receptionist about where to get good Polish food, and she pointed us in the direction of what she called the best pierogi place in Warsaw.  So, with nothing better to do, we set out into the cold.

I don't know if you can tell, but there is a KFC and a Starbucks in this picture

It should be noted that it took us two hours to get to this place because we are basically cold blooded and so extreme cold makes us go extremely slowly.  However, we did eventually make it, after passing several churches and war monuments that don't really make one thing "beauty".

Angie and the Presidential Palace

Finally we arrived however, and were treated to the best pierogis in Warsaw.  The really cool thing about Poland is that while it's in the European Union it doesn't meet the economic criteria to use the Euro, and so it still uses its national currency of the złoty (pronounced ZWO-tee, also known as PLN) which is worth about $0.30 USD.  So, when I say that it cost almost 200 PLN for dinner, it was really about 15.50 USD. 

For $15.50 a person, we ate like kings.  We started with soup and drinks, which for me entailed Warming Elixir - which must come in handy in the frozen hellscape - and chicken soup.  After that I got meat pierogis, and while I may not know what kind of meat I will say that they were amazing.  The other three got desert, but I was so stuffed that I just got a coffee.  That is three courses of amazing food for fifteen bucks.

After that we went out to this bar the name of which I don't remember, and we ran into the inherent problem of our being there - we knew virtually zero Polish.  The only words I know are "Hi," "Bye," "Yes," "No," and "Thanks," and that's only because "Hi" and "Bye" are both the same word, cześć (pronounced checht).  Other than that I knew, in order, "Tak," "Nie," and "Dziękuję"(pronounced je-KOO-yeh).  Needless to say, we were by and large useless linguistically.