"Oh Susannah" and mutant red squirrels

We're heeeeeere . . . and it's awesome!! Things went pretty well yesterday and we are settled in at our hotel which is basically right in the center of the city. We have a great view of a large building that was a "gift" from Stalin (he made them an offer they couldn't refuse) and thus has been nicknamed after a certain part of his anatomy. Our tour guide is pretty awesome; he knows what he's talking about and is really cool. Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant that served us what Dr. Bizub termed "Polish soul food." It was five courses, starting with mincemeat pierogies, including a rather interesting soup that contained strips of kielbasa and an entire hard-boiled egg, some salad, pork (which was rather delicious) with a side of . . . well I wouldn't know how to really describe them - kind of like chewy gummies but potato flavored?, and ending with fruit crepes (which I, in my uncultured, non-"Bon Apetit" reading ignorance thought were just flimsy tortillas before being hastily corrected). There were people playing music there . . . the oddest assortment of music any of us had ever heard. They started out with Latino or something, and then moved into the most interesting montage of songs you could imagine, including but not limited to "Jingle Bells," "Spanish Eyes," "Rock Around The Clock," "Oh Susannah," "Yankee Doodle," and another Christmas song that I can't remember the name of. It was quite an experience.

Today we did a tour of Warsaw and picked up a second guide, one who just does Warsaw, especially for this. It was really weird doing it by bus, though, since I've only ever walked cities. It was so odd to be looking at stuff just going by in a bus. I really do think that the only way to really see a city is by walking it, but we do have a limited amount of time and we did get to see more stuff this way. It's just so great to be walking around these quaint, beautiful streets. This morning we saw Lazienki Part which was lovely. They have peacocks just roaming around, and a few of them did the complete tailfeather display for us, which was very cool. We also saw giant red squirrels with huge ears - here we are, standing in front of this incredibly historically important statue of Chopin, and we're taking pictures of the squirrels. Apparently Polish squirrels come in the red and black varieties. We walked around the Old Town a little bit - very neat, and just had a cool feeling about it. It reminded me a lot of Bremen, actually. We also went to the museum for the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, which was really fascinating, although you'd need practically an entire day to see everything in there properly. Our Warsaw guide also took us to his parents' house to show us a 20 minute documentary - it was slightly odd to just be sitting in their living room like that, but it turns out that his aunt hid 3 Jews and the one guy's Gentile fiancee in that house during the Ghetto Uprising. For me that had a lot of significance, so that was really neat to find out.

Anywho, I shall leave off here . . . tonight we're eating somewhere in the Old Town and then Chels and I are going to explore Nowy Swiata Street 'cause it's really pretty and we just drove through it today. Take care, all.

Kate