Warsaw – Warsaw GeoGuessr 2
And, following on from my earlier GeoGuessr in the day, I did recognise this one from the photo. The second and third locations that GeoGuessr had selected were well outside my travel pass zone, so I missed those ones out.
I didn’t bother to guess correctly (in case someone, likely Nathan, questions why if I knew where it was why I am so far out), but it’s the Palace of Science and Culture. I’ve posted some photos from the top of this building before…..
After I had popped to the Bianco e Verde restaurant, I meandered to the nearest tram stop to get back to the city centre. Fortunately, for the sake of this exercise, the tram I got on went near to the Palace of Science and Culture, so this is one of the easier locations to get to. As an aside, the one thing that I’m not keen on in Poland is that you can’t cross the road as a pedestrian when the lights are read. I know that’s the case in other countries, but it still feels odd to stand there with ten other people unable to cross, even though there’s not a tram, car, bus or anything else vehicular in sight.
This is one of the older style trams, which have no accessibility for wheelchairs and the like, which was relatively empty. They’re pleasant to watch the world go by, frequent, never usually too busy and efficient. The newer trams are more pleasant to be on and there seem to be ever more of them, so I assume that there’s a schedule to phase the older ones out.
And there’s the tram after I had got off.
The tram stop was Warszawa Centralna, where I’ve taken several trains from to go to other cities in Poland. I haven’t written the visit up yet, but I went to Warsaw’s railway museum last week and found out that this railway station opened in 1975 and it replaced the hopelessly inadequate former Warszawa Główna railway station. This former railway station, once the most important in Warsaw, is now the home of the railway museum, but more on that in another post.
I’ve never noticed this before, but I think it’s a memorial to railwaymen who died during the Second World War. There are no shortage of plaques like this around the city, with many being relating to the Second World War and the Warsaw Uprising.
Turning the corner, there’s the Palace. This remains a very controversial building and I’ve written before about how it was unpopular with many when the Soviets plonked it down in Warsaw. There is an ongoing debate today about whether it should be taken down and replaced by a park, but I’m not sure that’s entirely useful. It’s now part of the city’s history and has a place in Warsaw’s cultural life, and taking down buildings just because they’re Soviet perhaps isn’t enough of a reason. But, it’s not my country and it’s up to the people of Poland.
And that was near enough for me to the original GeoGuessr location. I did see what the fifth location was, but it transpired that it was also outside of the city’s boundaries and my travel pass, and I thought that two visits was sufficient for today anyway. I’ll return to this little project when I next return to Warsaw, which I’m hoping will be in early 2022. Hopefully that’ll be the catalyst to get me to see different parts of Warsaw, as I’m becoming ever more familiar with this rather lovely city and need to find some more of its hidden secrets.
I’ve never seen a broken tram screen before like this, but, fortunately, it didn’t last very long. And with that, I left the centre of Warsaw to get to the airport hotel, with my flight being tomorrow.
