Trip to Wedel, like a greedy school kid.

Every year in December Wedel, the most famous Polish chocolate company, has an open day. You have to book in quick as tickets vanish in seconds on the internet.We got in the second it opened online and had to get the third time we wanted! It is that popular. But I do recommend it.

because you get samples

of all sorts

even new things. like this watermelon flavoured chocolate.

Not everyone likes chocolate on the weekends.

Chocolate on the move

boxed up for the masses

And wrapped for transport.

These guys

make cool things

bears too

Frogs and elephants

Even the board room table has the company symbol built into it.

And the light fixtures

It is always chocolate time on this clock.

The arrow points to where all the chocolate went.... in me.

There is also chocolate art

Balerinki

Everything in this display is chocolate.... except the woman.

Even though it was Decemeber we could still walk outside.

And headed into Nowy Swiat where the Christmas decorations were going up.

with a small army

Everyone seems to be happy.

May Day and other times around town

Art of the Polish landscape is upon you......

Well now that Spring is in full swing,
I will get to see the blossomy trees,
Feeling the sun is out and mosquitoes about,
The birds sing causing a pleasant din,
But where is the rain on the Warsaw plain?
Away I hope as without it I can cope,
But how and why does that pig over there fly?

Yes, that was an ode to a painting I discovered and attached with the blog. It is certainly interesting. I am not sure how old it actually is and not sure where from, that said, I do like it. I think it can be associated with many things in Poland. Many things will happen when pigs fly! Let\s hope that they don't with the swine flu going round!

However, one thing that has happened of recent times in Poland is that it is officially in drought! Well Warsaw is anyway, and on the last weekend, the long weekend for labour day, the forests were closed for fear of bushfire! It is certainly the last thing I expected in Poland, let alone in Spring in Poland. I think they must be using all the rain water to water the vodka crops instead of using it for normal rain, well maybe.

The weekends weather has been amazing, we were able to go for a long stroll on Friday from where we live over to an area called Wilanow, it is now mostly a new subdivision. It is miles and miles of apartments that, at this stage, are yet to be sold. There are few if any shops, restaurants and cafes. Also no public transport can be found in the new allotment, so it is quite a long walk to the main road to find a way into town. Luckily for all the people on holidays for Labour Day on this main road, there is also the Palace Wilanow. This was absolutely crammed with people! They were all over the place, eating icecreams, parading their fanciest shoes, highest socks and displaying only their happiest of grannies.

The weekend before we took the chance to tour around the town centre again, where we went to some nice areas. There are so many random things to find in a town centre like Warsaw. We went to the Praga side of the river, where we walked around some nice parks, we also went past the most famous Chocolate factory/company in Poland, E.Wedel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.Wedel This is on the shore of a small lake and is certainly not the most attractive factory ever (not many factories look good though), but I had hoped for something prettier from a chocolate factory. Alas, there was no Willy Wedel singing and dancing. They also have a little shop at the front of the factory which is in a Romanesque (and Grotesque) style. It really stands out in its white form in front of a very drab dark grey factory, but unfortunately the shop only sells what is able to be bought in Supermarkets. This is a huge disappointment, as we had hoped that it would have something really different and nice. This emotion caused us to go to the city centre and go to the Wedel café/bar/restaurant thing (see photos). It is a place of opulence, lots of polished bits, old wooden and velvet chairs along with delicate truffles and THE most rich hot chocolates you have ever had. We ordered two, a mint and a cherry flavoured one. They came out with the appearance of mud or something equally unattractive, they had tacky glace cherries on it, to indicate which was the mint and which was cherry (photo above). We then proceeded to consume these rich delicacies, especially with the excitement of the sugar rush that would surely follow. I thoroughly recommend to anyone visiting Warsaw to go and try one of these, they are simply divine.

Sunday Strolls

Well, for me, there is nothing better than crisp skies, warming sunshine, blooms, blossoms and the chance to walk the streets with someone whose company you adore. So on Sunday Marty and I went into the heart of the city. We are always searching for markets, the last one we were able to explore was the Kolo market Northeast of Warsaw. This Sunday we thought it would be great to venture more and find something else, something traditional and of a long term existence. So we grabbed the sneaky bus (named so because it always manages to sneak past early or late from our stop and so I will tend to miss it often) all the way into central Warsaw and the Nowy Swiat (which means new world), it really is the heart of town. When we arrived there, the street was bathed in sunshine creating some gorgeous shadows, reflections and refractions of the sunlight. It was an inspiring thing to see when you have your camera in hand and time to burn. However, before going snap happy we ventured to our main reason for coming into town. A milky bar, or in Polish "Bar Mleczny"(read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_bar), one of many scattered around Warsaw and maybe around the country, I am not sure. They are remnants of the communist era and are full of old people, students and even the odd family enjoying the food, or at least enjoying the price. The one we visited, "Bar Mleczny Familijny" is located right on New World Street, and is, to put it bluntly, bland in appearance, lacking finery and with the distinct appearance that it was decorated by someone with a love of linoleum and differing shades of brown. As you will have read from the link above, they aren't meant to be glamorous and are also the cheapest eats you will find anywhere in town. For those of you who are fans of the Simpsons, just imagine lunch lady Doris combined with Agnes Skinner and you can picture the old ladies who work there. Grumpy, slopping plates down, spilling the soup at the counter, mumbling to each other about how people look, but to me, this is the greatest part of the experience. I loved seeing them treating everyone with the same level of disdain as if they were still stuck in the communist era and needing to be a good comrade. I ate the traditional bigos, Marty had sweet pierogi (Dumplings with soft white cheese inside and covered with thin cream and sugar). We also had two bottles of water and all this set us back a whopping 12.50PLN ($AUD5.20, EUR2.88, GBP2.53).

So after this pleasant and supercheap meal we strolled to Mirów (Miroov) which is one of the neighbourhoods of the Wola district just West of the City and the Wisla (Vistula) River. We love markets so we strolled to the Hale Mirowskie (Har-le Mirov-ski) which was constructed between 1899-1901 and was then the largest trade centre for Warsaw, until the Uprising in 1944, where most of this was destroyed by the Germans. There are now only two market halls remaining, unfortunately they are not open on Sundays, but we were able to stroll around in them a little, also to see the outside which had been sprayed with bullets during previous fighting. The markets are really beautiful and the brick facades make a great diversion from the area, which is mostly surrounded in concrete, or con-cretin, as I like to call them, structures.

After there we wanted to continue seeing some old relics of the past that Warsaw finds it hard to show as there aren't many remaining. So we continued on to the area of the old Ghetto. This was the small ghetto, the larger one being further North. We found the location of the old wall and walked the streets around there, observing some of the very few brick buildings remaining (there really are not many at all). Then we had the greatest stroke of luck. We were walking along past an old Jewish Silver Factory called Norblin. It is about a block worth of old factory. We saw the gate was open and started walking in, where we were stopped by a guard who said we could only come in if we had tickets to the theatre event that was on there. We said we didn't have tickets but would really love to look around the old factory, if we could. He said it was fine as long as we didn't take any pictures..... hmmm tough choice. So we didn't take any pictures................. in front of him! :) It was a most extraordinary location, full of old rusting machinery and in need of desperate repair to seal roof holes the size of cars. Then Marty remembered that it was to be knocked down to build an exciting new development, that is, wait for it, a shopping complex! Wow! However, it is said that it will still be beneficial to society, as it will have locations where you can buy coffee. Phew, praise the lord for this! I cannot tell you how magical it was to see this old factory. It was great to have these little holes to peak through and the contrast of bright blaring sunlight and pitch blackness in other areas. Although it makes it nearly impossible to photograph something and make it look decent. I was there with a heavy heart when we knew it was to be flattened, as it is one of the very few things that is pre-war in Warsaw, let alone in this area of Warsaw, where the Uprising gave the Germans the excuse to burn and dynamite the majority of the area. This really is a treasure and I could envisage many great spaces for Warsaw's artistic community to come, collaborate and enjoy a quiet space in the centre of the city. I don't know what I can do, or what anyone can do to stop the "progress" of another shopping mall. I hope the "Global Crisis" is able to stop it, as it appears the Polish Government are not interested in this sort of heritage.

After this we needed to satisfy ourselves and returned home to drink some Hungarian white wine and eat some small Spanakopita (Feta and Spinach pastry parcels) that I had been thinking about making for a long time.