Day 383-387 The Amazing City of Boats, Lodz

I was invited to a breath taking wedding in Poland over the weekend. This was the first time I went there and I was blown away. The beauty of the country, the kindness of the people, our shared history mirroring the second half of the 20th century, the architecture that tells stories on every single square meter, the continuous redeveloping of the ruins of the past to preserve the aesthetics from before. Lodz which means boat is the third biggest town in Poland developed on the promises of the textile industry during the 19th century. The legend says when Andrzej Wajda’s Promise Land (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVHTcb0idew) about Lodz was Oscar nominated he was asked in Hollywood how Poland, that poor Eastern European country could have afford to finance all the sets in the film? By the interviewers biggest surprise he said it was all original. It is truly touching that on Saturday morning we walked around in the palaces and on the streets, where the film was shot. I arrived to Warsaw on Friday morning after 3 hours sleep and visited the Palace of Culture, which is the tallest building in the Capital. Walking around the 30th floor I tried to find the landmarks shown on the maps with more or less success. In the great hall by the lifts there is a plaque commemorating that the palace was given to the Polish people as a gift by The Soviet Union in 1955. It is in English. The history of Warsaw up on the 30th floor is only in Polish though, so I didn’t understand much apart from the pictures. In the evening after all of us the bride’s and groom’s guests arrived from abroad we visited Manufaktura, which has been redeveloped into a grand shopping and leisure centre once the textile industry fall apart at the end of the communism. To me as an Eastern European it was very emotional to see how the place has been transformed and preserved creating jobs in the town. I remembered the knitting factory in the county town of Bekescsaba back in Hungary, which just started to be demolished recently after being unused for almost 20 years. The restaurant La Vende (http://www.lokacje.pl/restauracje/Bistr-8580.html) where we had delicious dinner had a fairy-tale interior with lots of white antique style furniture and bunches of lavender everywhere. Saturday morning we were taken on a sightseeing tour on a tram originated from the 1910s and combined with a bus engine a lot later. We had a really good tour guide, who took us to 2 of the biggest of the 150 weaving factures in Lodz and to the animated film museum. I recognised some of my childhood favourites for example Bolek I Lolek (in Hungarian Lolka es Bolka) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWu9Kuf6OHM) and Philemon i Boniface (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu1TsthiN8&feature=related). Of course, the latter was daubed to Hungarian  when I watched it. To be continued … 