From Budapest to Warsaw

For our last night in Budapest we went to a folk dance and music show.  We thought it might be too touristy, but in the end it was quite nice.  The dancers were very energetic and well choreographed ... I just loved that business where they bend their legs and whack at their feet.  It all reminds me a bit of Fiddler on the Roof.  

After a nightcap in the bar, we said farewell to Guy and Pascale, Cathy and Sandy.  We're going to miss having them along for our second week.

Yesterday morning we flew to Warsaw with Joan and Karl.  We're staying at the Hotel Bristol, which is one of the few buildings that survived the war.  Warsaw was 85% destroyed during WWII. 

We went to the "Museum of the Warsaw Rising" for the afternoon.  I never quite figured out the difference between an "uprising" and a "rising", but this museum is basically about a few months in 1944 when the war was drawing to a close and the Poles in Warsaw decided to fight back, unsuccessfully, against the Germans.  The museum had an amazing number of old videos and photos as well as some interesting artifacts. But it was displayed in a bit of a jumble, and it was almost like solving a puzzle to figure out the main messages.  On the one hand, you could be cynical and say that the Poles only started to fight once it was clear Germany was going to lose.  On the other hand, you could see that unlike Hungary, which was occupied first by Germany and then the Soviets, Poland was split between the two and essentially was at the front line of the war for many years.

In the early evening we attended a piano concert of Chopin music in a small hall with an extremely talented pianist.  Chopin is a big deal here in Warsaw, and we've seen him turn up everywhere.  Then we had a tasty dinner featuring a Polish duck specialty.

One other note.  I should have mentioned earlier in the blog that we happily took Ubers while in Prague.  The app worked great, even if it was a bit hard to understand the choices of car types.  But in Hungary, we learned that Uber was banned by the government at the insistence of the taxi drivers!  Our friend Balasz was quite annoyed at this, using it as an example of how out of touch the government is.  When we arrived in Warsaw yesterday we were happy to see that Uber is back in business here!

Donna 

Thousands of people were staging an anti-government demonstration when we arrived in Warsaw yesterday..