Day 38 Finding a piece of history

Something extraordinary struck us as we travelled about 800 kms across Northern Europe from Berlin to Warsaw. Since leaving the coast of Britain and travelling through Belgium, Denmark, Germany and now Poland we had barely seen a decent hill. The whole area is so incredibly flat. You can just imagine how quickly the panzer divisions of the Third Reich poured east and west across these plains.

Arriving in Warsaw we were greeted with another environmental feature; rain. We have had the most perfect weather and apart from a couple of showers in Peru we have had almost 6 weeks without rain.

However our afternoon in Warsaw changed all that. In spite of the rain, with the aid of Gortex jackets we trudged for about 20kms around the city. Firstly we were amazed to discover a part of the wall the Germans had built around the Warsaw ghetto. As big fans of Leon Uris and his book ‘Mila 18’ we were keen to find this historical relic. With the aid of a map, which was becoming increasingly difficult to manage as it became soaked and fell apart, we eventually found the street and the number, but not the wall. Finally we huddled in the window of an upholsterers shop to try again to read the map away from the pouring rain. We were embarrassed when the upholsterer saw us through his window. As he came out of his shop we thought we were in trouble. In fact he guessed what we were looking for and with a key from his pocket he opened a locked gate to allow us into a private courtyard to see this preserved wall. It was shocking to think of the day the Nazis surrounded this community with a wall and did their best to then starve the Jews inside to death. With the rain pouring and the spring temperature falling we caught a glimpse again of what it really means to suffer.

After a visit to an awesome museum about the Polish uprising at the end of the war it was more walking in the rain to find Warsaw’s old town. Such bleak weather meant we almost had the place to our selves. After buying an authentic Polish dinner of dumplings, meat and potatoes it was back to a warm shower in a very nice hostel called Nathan’s Villa.