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Street Prophets Friday: Exploring Warsaw (photo diary) [1]

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Date: 2025-06-06

Greetings and welcome to another bit of open-threaded fluff, a little community diary for folks to use to share a bit of their week, promote their own recent diaries, announce upcoming events, post their own photos and art— whatever, it's open.

As for myself, last week didn't really bring any exciting updates to the garden for my gardening diary. And I'm curious to see how things look this week; we've gotten a good amount of rain.

A couple weeks back, I'd posted the last of my Tábor diaries. I'd like to hop back to that last Sunday in the lovely Czech town of Tábor, over a month ago now, because we left around lunch time, drove back to Prague and promptly packed our bags for an early Monday morning flight to Warsaw.

Mrs the Werelynx works for the Czech government agency that regulates pharmaceutical drugs and this year is Poland's turn to head the European Union's agency which works to coordinate the cooperation between other pharmaceutical control agencies in other countries in the EU. Representatives of these agencies and their individual departments have regular meetings online and several times a year they make an effort to meet in person. About a month ago, that meeting was held in Warsaw, Poland.

Mrs the Werelynx was going, and with just a slight bit of juggling of my schedule, I was able to go too.

We'd been in Poland before a couple of times. You could say we've been dozens of times, but dancing back and forth over the border while hiking up the side of a mountain doesn't really give one a taste of Polish culture— or of the language, or of the food. Our first real trip to Poland was back in 2014 when Mrs the Werelynx's adorable brother got married to a lovely woman from Warsaw.

The first day of conferences for Mrs the Werelynx's work week in Warsaw was mostly just a series of meet-and-greet events set up by the Polish members. And because the other members would be flying in at odd times, Ewa was kind enough to invite me along to the lunch event she had organized.

Mrs the Werelynx and I had just enough time to figure out the train into the city from the airport, the winding trek to our hotel to spruce up a bit and drop our bags off in our room, and get to the fairly fancy restaurant where the lunch was taking place. We were right on time.

Ewa had told Mrs the Werelynx that she had ordered a lot of food and that she wasn't expecting full attendance, so I was more than welcome to join them. And truly, as we sat at a table set for twenty there were plenty of empty seats so I didn't feel as if I was imposing on anyone's hospitality.

I got to chatting with my neighbors at our end of the table, and what a fascinating group of people! The wait staff brought tray after tray of tasty things to sample, representing a number of European cuisines and as the lunch rolled on, a few late stragglers arrived to join the party. And then a few more. And a couple more … soon they were taking chairs from nearby tables and packing themselves in as best they could into the crowd at the main table. I was starting to feel a bit conspicuous. About that time, the woman on my right got a call from someone asking her if she knew what was going on in her home country of Portugal. While we were having lunch the electricity had gone out in Spain and Portugal. If it had been more than just a power grid breakdown it could have been one of those "Where were you when ..." moments. Why, I was helping myself to a bit more of the Caesar salad ...

Everyone was charming and friendly to me, so my awkwardness at being the only non-colleague at the table had pretty much passed by the time the lunch ended. Ewa then took us on a short walking tour of a few of her favorite spots in Warsaw.

Ogrod Saski— the Saxon Garden dates back to 1713

The fountain in Ogrod Saski— as of this photo it still hadn't been turned on after the winter

Ewa wanted to get a group photo in front of the fountain and as she was setting things up and preparing to take a pic on her phone, I stepped in from the sidelines and volunteered to take the picture. She exclaimed, "Oh yes! the perfect person!" and, after I'd taken the group's picture, we both shared a couple quips about how I'd just earned my lunch.

We walked through the grounds of the university and poked our noses into one or two buildings. Nice library, eh?

Police cars, patrols and sirens everywhere! Coincidentally there was a meeting of the heads of the Baltic states in Warsaw that week.

We got as far as the river before we ran out of time and Ewa had to hurry off to her daughter's apartment to change for the party that evening. We made our way slowly back through town to our hotels, our group getting smaller and smaller as we went. Lunch had perhaps lasted a bit longer than anticipated. That's a rousing success I'd say.

Outside the Warsaw Scientific Society. Recognize that guy?

Nicolaus Copernicus, of course. He gets his own square and a statue in front of the Scientific Society.

That crazy, curvy glass roof is something I explored on another day.

And this tower you might recognize from the background in an earlier photo. It was a landmark that wasn't far from our hotel and made it easy to find our way home. It's The Palace of Culture and Science and I'll be writing more about it next week.

The evening's entertainment was a chance to chat and mingle in the 40th floor bar of the Hotel Presidential

Glimpse of the sunset from a corner of the bar

The upper floor of the bar was reserved for the members of four different EU committees that were related to pharmaceutical sales and regulation. I got to see several of my friends from lunch and met several new people that evening.

No escaping that tower ...

Taking pictures at the windows as the party slowly ended offered all sorts of interesting reflections to play with.

I liked the look of the lit shelves of bottles behind the bar on the floor below.

Thanks for stopping by. There should be more of my adventures in Warsaw for next week. It's sure to be more in line with what you might expect from a practically unemployed artist wandering around that bustling city.

This is an open thread.

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