If you take a walking tour of Warsaw with friendly local legend Pse, it’s just like being there … and feeling like you are a local, such is the insight into the city he energetically imparts! More than a vicarious experience! I did three ‘Psexceptional’ walking tours in the four days we were in Warsawa – the “Old Town” tour, the “Food and Beer” tour & the “Communist Warsaw” tour. By the end not only did I have a palpable feel for the city, but I felt like I was almost an expert on Pse’s idiosyncratic mannerisms and speech patterns as well!
Pse is a very enthusiastic guide, energised like a cache of long-life batteries..he is also very switched on and knowledgeable about all aspects of the city. Despite his not being a Varsovian by birth. I felt we were getting a real insider’s window into the city – warts and all, not just some glossy attempt to put a touristy spin on the place, portraying everything we saw as beautiful and wonderful as sometimes occurs with tour guides coasting through the motions. Pse packs a tremendous amount into his tours, full of informative snippets on the little idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of Warszawiacy, some good, some not so good. He had us on the go, a good pace but not rushed…continually showing us new things & places all through the two hours, not once did he slow down or stop to get a lody despite the fierce heat of the day!
The Food and Beer tour was probably my favourite (kind of a fast food pub crawl of the Soviet high-water mark of working class proletarian cuisine), going to various interesting little out-of-the-way cafés, fast food parlours and back lane bars. For a small charge (about 20 PLN) we sampled so many different types of piva – lagers, porters, pilsners, kozlaks, ales, American-style, Pekin-style, etc. plus culinary oddities such as the “John-Paul II” pączki (a donut of Papal proportions which I passed on!). One of the non-alcoholic beverage ‘highlights’ was the “wonderfully insipid” Oranzada (this sugary ‘treat’ was the soft drink of choice of the old Communist Party apparently). I enjoyed the visit to Soviet Warsaw’s first American-style milkbar (next door to the home of Poland’s double Noble laureate in Science, Madame Curie). We also got an informative commentary on the story behind the construction of the dynamic Warsaw Uprising monument.
On the last night of the visit I did yet another fascinating tour with another guide (Pse must have been resting his larynx!) called “Warsaw Crime” which visited locations in the city with a secret criminal past – the site of assassinations and attempted assassinations of atheist presidents and “Black September” Middle East terrorists, weddings gone wrong, and an improbable plot to liquidate Hitler on the corner of Jerozolimskie and Nowy Swiat right at the start of the World War in 1939, etc.
Endnote: Bad food ThursdayApparently the last Thursday before Lent is the day Varsovians really let themselves go in so far as food discipline goes. Bakers and confectioners in the city go on a donut-baking frenzy known as “Fat Thursday” (Tlusty Czwartek). The locals are given licence to indulge (or over-indulge) in calories-galore pastries of the pączek kind. The most popular is the Papal gastronomic delight known as kremówka (“cream cake”).
(Photo: America Magazine)
