Mobbed by squirrels

Daylight only lasts until 1600 here, so we changed our plans this morning to make use of it: we decided to go to the royal park to feed the squirrels first, and only then to the museum. I was feeling sick tonight, getting up a lot to blow my nose or get more toilet paper. Garfield must have known I was sick because he came into bed to lick me and rub up against me, and try to make me feel better. In the morning he got under the blankets with us.

First we went to exchange a little more cash so we'd have enough for lunch after the museum, and we had breakfast of tea and chocolate muffins at a nice bakery there. It's a chain, but I can see why it is popular. Because we went there first we had to change a few buses to get to the park. We ended up on the south end of it and walked through over half the large park in an hour or so. At first we walked behind an old lady who was feeding seeds to the ducks, and she stole some of our animals.

Our hosts had provided us with some walnuts (in their shells and without) to feed the squirrels in the Lazinowski park. I warned Leia that if she should get mobbed by squirrels she should throw the nuts and run, since they are only after her nuts. One squirrel actually chased us around, saying, "Gimme the nuts, I know you have them!" Leia hasn't seen squirrels up close before and we had a lot of fun feeding them. To get our attention they'd stand up and thump their chests with their little hands, saying, "Me, feed me!" Some of the bolder squirrels climbed up on our jeans to get at our nuts. A yellow duck ate some crushed walnuts out of the palm of my hand, which is unusual for them. At one point I was like a Disney princess surrounded by birds and squirrels. Leia was excited about having squirrels climb on her and eat out of her hands, and it's safe to say that Lasinowski park was a highlight of Warsaw for us.

It was still light when we visited the Warsaw Rising Museum, that is a museum of the resistance movements in Warsaw during WW2 and afterwards against the Soviets. It's small, but interesting and nicely arranged. There's less to read than many history museums (though it is there to read if you want) and a lot of imagery is used and relics on display. For example there was a printing press with a man working it to print posters in Polish, in an exhibit on underground printing presses. The message is kind of depressing: it didn't look like these uprisings accomplished much of value. At the end (for a small additional fee) there was a short 3D movie "city of ruins" flying over a digital reconstruction of the bombed-out Warsaw. Leia said, "So it looks like that was a bad idea." This museum has a large collection of WW2-era weaponry donated by families of resistance members, like submachine guns, machine guns, pistols, rifles, and bayonets. That was interesting to me because some of those weapons were common only in a short span of years and look positively archaic now. Poor Leia developed a fever when we got to that part and needed to rest, so we soon watched the short film and went out.

We met Kasia again for lunch, and on the way to the university her friend and fellow-student Igor recognized us on the bus. They stayed together on our couch the first time we met them. Since we were not feeling well we didn't want to go far, and as Kasia had never had Indian food we decided to go briefly to a little Indian restaurant nearby the center. We carefully finished off the last of our Zloty on shared dishes: the restaurant seemed expensive to us but it was only in comparison to the other extremely cheap places there. Leia and I together spent less in two days than the cost of one half-price train ticket, and we did not particularly economize apart from couchsurfing. We didn't stay long in the restaurant and were too sick to go for a walk anywhere else, so we went home and Kasia jumped on the bus with us to buy us bus tickets, because our day passes had expired around noon. She rode a couple stops with us before parting.

We were already packed, so I showered and Leia napped for a short time until it was time to say goodbye to Garfield and the freezing cold of Warsaw and catch a bus to our train back. This time we had "roommates" in our train cabin, but only for part of the journey. We played on the computer a little but mainly rested on the ride back. I was hungry when we arrived in Berlin, so I had a "China Box" of stir-fried noodles at the bus station and became an active, if late, participant in Eating Smelly Food on Public Transportation Day.