Thursday, June 16, 2016

Sunday, June 12 --Warsaw Uprising Museum

Hi All,

Today was another really nice day out, but myself and one of the other interns decided to use part of the day to explore the Warsaw Uprising Museum (because free admission on Sundays- duh). Anyways, Poland like much of Europe was, at one point, in the process of being conquered and subsequently ruled, by Germany and the Soviet Union. So the Uprising Museum is ultimately filled with tons and tons of history dating back to September of 1939, the beginning of the Germany invasion of Warsaw. This museum is 3 floors and packed with history. We spent a solid 2 hours, maybe closer to 2.5 hours and barely made it through floor 1 and glimpses of floor 2. I hope to make it back another day, because even though History was never my favorite subject (surprise, I'm in Engineering) this museum made the history extremely interesting and riveting. While some was hard to see (the conditions of the Jewish Ghettos, not even concentration camps), the stories of the courage and strength of the Warsaw community, the young men AND WOMEN that stood up for their city and country and fought for their rights and way of life to persist as they tried to overpower the Germans was really inspiring to see, hear, and read about.

The stories of various people important to the uprising

Complete with period-relevant phones


Motorbike with sidecar, anyone?

Beautifully orchestrated layout of history in the museum

One area devoted to discussion of Jewish Ghettos and Nazi infiltration 

"A special badge, the 'Warsaw Shield' is introduced in 1944 for German soldiers fighting to suppress the Rising."

Interns climbing through the model (sewer) tunnels . . . #OnceAKid #AlwaysAKid 

After the museum we went to a local chain of restaurants that serves traditional Polish cuisine-- Zapiecek. The waitresses even wore traditional Polish dresses here (tbh I'm not sure how I feel about this but I won't go on a feminist rant), but this restaurant was recommended by IAESTE committee students and various people at work say its one of their favorite places to have traditional Polish food. After all, it was quite good. Their menu definitely had a lot of options that sounded wonderful and if I go back, I will definitely be able to find something else to try as well. Perks- they also have a English edition of the menu and tons of pictures! I'm a sucker for pretty pictures of food on menus, what can I say, they help me decide when I have never had most of the traditional cuisine before.

Traditional Polish Dumplings

Enjoying the evening on the patio :) #umichenginabroad 

1 comment:

  1. This group of MIISP students is so unique because you all really share some important parts of history!

    ReplyDelete