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: