Chopin's Left Hand

That Monday morning, Gosia went to work, and I slept in.

Her flat mate Karolina would take me out later that day.  I didn't want to start early, as I was starting to feel a little sick in my throat.  I wanted to make sure it didn't turn into anything serious.

Karolina took me to see more of Warsaw, including the Gestapo prison memorial and a memorial to Jewish families effected by the war.  We also went to a well known park and "synagogue".  I say synagogue in quotation because, well we thought it was a synagogue.  The statue of one of the John Pauls out front threw us off for a second.  We peeked inside, saw a Hulk sized portrait of Jesus and decided it probably wasn't a Jewish place of worship.

For my last night in Warsaw, a group of us went out for drinks, including vodka of course.  Just as we decided the place was a little lame and we would move on, we were informed that it was half price Monday.

What a great concept.

Several rounds of shots, drinks, beers, later.  We each shelled out the equivalent if eight dollars.

Man I love Poland.

The next morning I said my sad goodbyes to Gosia before she left for work.  I wasn't due in Krakow for several hours, so I was finally going to go see the man that had sparked my interest in Poland in the first place.

Chopin.

Why aren't geniuses like him born any more? Young extremely talented musicians.  Actually that's probably not fair of me.  I'm sure these savants are still around, just no body especially cares, which is unfortunate.

Anyways.  The Chopin museum was awesome.  Tuesdays are free, which was convenient.  The odd thing was, they would only let seventy people in at one time.  I soon found out why.  When you bought a ticket, you got a key card.  You had to activate it when you entered the museum, and you used it throughout to interact with the displays. It would let you choose music to listen to, here historic accounts of Chopin as well as his inner circle of friends. 

I had to hurry my way through a bit to make sure I had time to catch my train, but from what I gathered, Chopin was rather obsessed with a certain George Sands.  George was a woman, although I don't think George was her given name.  She seemed to be a masculine/lesbian character. Appearing beautiful in portraits, but described as "different" in letters by others.  It seems they had a more platonic love, but I'm not quite sure what happened to her in the end...

I rushed back to Gosia's apartment afterwards, and Karolina saw that I got on the right tram to the train station.  I headed for Krakow where I would meet my next host, Ambrozy (not pronounced like it looks in English).

Na Zdrowie Warsaw
On to Krakow
Tegs