Minor Basilica of the Holy Cross

Not far past the Presidents Residence on the Royal Route is the Minor Basilica of the Holy Cross.  I didn't want to take many pictures inside because Mass going on and I didn't want to be a distraction.

St. Michael and Florian Cathedral

A short walk from the hotel I stayed in is the Cathedral of St. Michael and Florian, where I went to Mass Sunday morning.  Here are a few shots:

Dinosaur At O'Hare

Back In The U.S.

Back safely in the US, in Chicago waiting for my final flight, to Philly.

I left the hotel at about 6:30 this morning, and made sure to get to the airport in plenty of time.  Unfortunately, the flight to Frankfurt Germany was delayed 40 minutes because it hit a hawk or some other large bird on the way.  My connecting flight to Chicago was only hour after the scheduled arrival of the flight from Warsaw.  I thought for sure I would miss.  But I got off the plane with 15 minutes to go.  Ran through Frankfurt airport, and zipped though pass control (fortunately there was no line) and made it!

When I get to Philly that will be three flights in one day (although my body thinks it's Tuesday morning already).

Anyway, I have many more pictures and stories to post from the trip.  I will try to knock all those out over the next week.

Benedictines

On my last night here in Warsaw I paid a final visit to the Benedictine chapel where I attended the divine office and adoration on Thursday.  Mass was in progress so I didn't go in, but could here the nuns chanting the Gloria in Latin.  I was glad to see the chapel was quite full.

Like most things in Old Town it was rebuilt after being destroyed in the war.  They had some pictures posted outside that I hadn't noticed before:

remember you can click to enlarge.

And right near that is a statue of St. Benedict:

I was glad I had one last chance to stop by there and hear the nuns a little.  In my short experience there, I grew quite fond of it.

Correction

In the post Stare Miasto, I indicated that the statute on the tall pillar is of King Jan Sobieski.  It is actually Sgisimund III.  I correct the post below.  It's there because Sigisimund III is the one who moved the capital of Poland from Krakow to Warsaw in  1596.  One note about the column, it was originally solid marble, but when the communists rebuilt it after the war, they made the column out of concrete, and simply covered it with marble.

Chuck Norris In Polska

Who would have thought that Chuck Norris does his banking in Polska!?

Not so Old Town

Last night the conference arranged a guided tour of Warsaw for us.  The most fascinating thing to learn about, is that 90% of Old Town is reproductions!  Almost of all the pictures I posted, are of buildings that are not even 60 years old.  The Royal castle for example was only completed in 1980.

After the war, many other European countries and business offered to help rebuild Warsaw, but they viewed it as an investment.  They wanted to build investment property.  The people of Warsaw, God bless them, just wanted their homes back.  "But you don't have any money" they were told.  So they rebuilt Old Town with their own hands.  Mostly by people who lived there before the war.  There some pictures on display (that I will try get shots) that show Old Town after the war.  It was basically heaps of bricks.

The stone in the center of this picture is one of the few original stones used to build the castle.  I'll try to get a better picture, but if you look closely you can see it has cracks and war damage.

Conference Wrap Up

We finished the conference today.  It was a lot of fun and I had many great conversations with the other participants.  Here is the University of Psychology and Social Sciences, where they do some math education research.

I think there will be much good fruit for our work at Drexel.

Praga Północ

Warsaw is divided into several districts.  Śródmieście is in the center on the West side of the Vistula river.  That is where Old Town and most of the attractions are.  The IGI conference and my hotel are on the East side of the Vistula in the district of Praga Północ.  Most of the new development efforts in Warsaw are done on the West side of the Vistula, so Praga still has many buildings that were damaged in WWII.  I don't know if they will show up well, but here are a few pictures ones near my hotel.

But here is one that looks like it is about to be rebuilt:

Stare Miasto

Stare Miasto is the Old Town area.  Here are some more pictures from Old Town, but not the central market square.

Some houses.

Remnants of the city wall

City wall with houses (apartments?) behind.

Oldest Monument in Warsaw, Sigismund III.

Alley way

Source of Surprises

Someone should refer the management to a good marketing consultant.  I'm not sure that advertising your fish soup as a "source of surprises" is all that appetizing (top menu item).  You can click the pictures to make them bigger.

More From Old Town Market

Some more shots from the Old Town market yesterday:

Old Town Market Place

Here are some pictures of the main market square in Warsaw (more to come):

At the conference

I Had planned on taking a tram to the University of Social Sciences where the conference is being held, but due to the road construction on the main street, there were no trams running in the direction I needed to go.  Found a bus schedule down the street passed the construction, figured out which bus to take, realized I bought the wrong kind of ticket.  Oh well, no one seems to check the tickets.  I was a tad late, but now I am here.  Markus, the creator of GeoGebra just finished his overview of the last ten years of GeoGebra, and where it is heading.

Random stuff from the Royal Route

The Royal Route looking towards Old Town

Cardinal Wyszynski

You can imagine my surprise to find this likeness of myself in Warsaw!

Random palm tree.  Definitely not on my list of things I expected to see.

Nicolas Copernicus

I think it's a floor plan of church that was destroyed in the war.  I'm not sure.

For Fulton

Some construction trucks working near my hotel.

Thursday afternoon and evening

In the afternoon I started down the Royal Route which leads to the Wilanow Palace is in the southern district of Warsaw, also called Wilanow.  Its probably 12-15 miles, so there is no way I would walked the whole thing, but I figured I would head down that until I got tired.  Along the way you pass the presidential residence, and the ministry of culture.  There are of course, more beautiful churches along the way.  I walked for about 30-40 minutes, but once I got pretty far from Old Town, it was less interesting.  There will still quite a few monuments, and other random stuff, but I was getting tired and I wanted to spend some more time in Old Town.

I did a little souvenir shopping, and the proprieter put my things in this really bright purple/pink gaudy looking gift bag.  "I'll put this in nice gift bag for you," he says, "you can reuse it for someone else."  Right.  I wouldn't do that to anyone I cared about.  I realized then that the bag also screams, "hey this guy is tourist, all you folks around begging for money, be sure to hit him up."   At least the one guy was honest, and said he wanted the money for beer.  Actually he was the only, but I felt sure it was the bag that drew his attention, so I dumped it off back at the hotel.

There are always people playing music or doing some kind of show around the Old Town square.  Its hard to make out but at the end of this alley there is a lady playing beautiful violin music.  Earlier in the day another fella was playing the accordion.  And the tram one time there was a gentleman playing the violin.  All sharply dressed folks too.  The violin players looked they just stepped out of the orchestra.

By this time was about 6:00pm (18:00) and I was getting hungry.  I saw a nice place that in a side alley earlier that I had picked out.  Looked like a simple place, and their sign said "traditional polish food."  I was a bit skeptical of a place that wrote their sign in English, but since I don't know any Polish I had to be flexible and the prices looked reasonable.  When I went in and ordered "meat dumplings" the hostess didn't understand a thing I said (which actually reassured me a bit).  But then she thought for a moment and got it.  So I had meat dumplings (perogies) and hot mead.  I ordered cold mead, and she confirmed "cold" but I got steaming cup mead with my meal.  I can say, hot mead will become winter staple around my house.  It was awesome.  The dumplings were great too.  The meat filling reminded me a little of my grandfather's homemade ravioli filling.  The "shell" was very flaky and very slightly sweet which went terrific with the savory filling.  And it was served with chopped fresh dill.  All in all, and excellent meal.

I noticed earlier in the day, a chapel for the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration.  I saw on their schedule (which they had posted in Polish and English) that they have public Compline and Matins (well Office of Readings).  So I popped back over for that.  The chapel is very small (it can hold maybe 50 people).  The whole nave is under a dome that creates that an awesome sound.  The chant of the nuns was very simple (mostly recto tono for the psalms, but they did do normal plain chant for the compline psalms) but it was angelic.  Especially in that chapel with the audio effect of the dome.  A great way to cap off the day!

Tomorrow will be the first day of the IGI conference.  So, I'll be doing much less traveling.

Thursday Morning

Zbigniew arranged for me to meet with one of the priests here in Warsaw who is involved with the explorers.  He is being assigned to a  parish in NY this October, so he was anxious to meet someone from America.  We had a nice conversation over coffee and he show me how to read the church schedules.  He is excited to be able to help out with our Explorers in the US anyway he can.

By the time we wrapped up it was a little late to go to Krakow, so I just wandered around Old Town Warsaw for the morning.  I'm glad I did, I found many random beautiful sights along the way.  Around every corner was something neat to see.  For now I will just put up a few pictures.  I took tons, but I don't have time to post them all now.  This afternoon I will walk down the Royal Way towards the old palace.  Not sure if I can actually walk the whole way there or not.  More to come later.