We’ve been in Warsaw for a month. It kinda happened by default.
The original plan was to visit Warsaw for a few days as we traveled through Poland — from Krakow, north to Gdańsk on the Baltic Sea.
Warsaw, the capital – and largest Polish city (metro population 3.25 million) – is about half-way between those two cities. It’s also the kind of historic, cultural, and cosmopolitan destination that my wife and I wouldn’t miss.
But I delayed in making Gdańsk accommodation arrangements. The few “good deals” on Airbnb (under $1,000 per month) were snapped up in April. A summer month near the beach on Poland’s north shore would have cost us at least double.
Instead, we booked a month in central Warsaw for $1,070 in a peaceful, historic, yet unsettling neighborhood.
The ‘Kortn’s Crib’ video tour below shows our place in the former WWll Jewish Quarter.
Kortn’s Crib, Warsaw edition
As you saw in the video, our apartment building is located right next to the Mila 18 memorial site. (Our address is Mila 1).
The memorial – an earthen mound with several stone markers – was built atop the bunker where Jewish resistance fighters made their ‘last stand’ as German Nazis methodically burned and demolished the Warsaw Ghetto in April of 1943. (Only a handful of survivors escaped to tell the tale.)
This was after an estimated 250,000 Polish Jews were “liquidated” from the ghetto in the summer of 1942; sent to the Treblinka death camp.
Most of those souls left the ghetto on trains which departed from the Umschlagplatz – a boarding station barely two blocks from our Airbnb location. Today, one block in the other direction, is the Polin Museum. A profound exhibit detailing the history of the Polish Jews. All around our neighborhood are monuments, plaques, memorials.
Of course, we’ve visited these nearby locations — and many other saddening places in Warsaw. We are living amongst them. Where our four-story, communist-era, apartment building now stands, hundreds of thousands of people were brutalized, starved, murdered between 1940 and 1943. The whole area could be considered a grave site.
It’s certainly one of the most sobering places we’ve ever stayed in our ten years of vagabond travel. I can tell you, there is a somber ‘energy’ here – and in all of Warsaw. Still, we are thankful we got the accommodation – and education – that we did.
As always, be thankful and generous, happy trails and more beer.
Life is NOW!
Thanks for reading and watching, “Kortn’s Crib, Warsaw edition.”
About Theo
Tedly (Theo) retired early from the news business to wander the planet with wife Ellen. He enjoys exploring all Earth has to offer: jungles and beaches, volcanoes and deserts – always drinking beer along the way.
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