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Hello sinister. I am your Tourist Information Service and as such I'm going to use my authority upon you all: "go and visit Warsaw". I'm a pretty crap person to take up this role as I know very little about the place but I am filled to the eyeballs with enthusiasm to tell everyone about it so. 30th of October After a stay in Hackney with the (silent on sinister:( Ali+Alex, they sent me on my way with packed lunch in hand and hangover in head to fight a path through London's well filled tube with my ENORMOUS bag of stuff and burst though Victoria's automatic doors to look for a bus with no name. The bus with no name had been a concern since I first found out about it a week before when I rang up and spoke to the particularly unhelpful travel agent. After confirming when I wanted to go and where to, I asked her what time to expect said bus and what it company I had to look for. "I don't know, just get there early" she said, her staightened northern accent momentarily braking to reveal it's rougher edge. Back to the present day I had very little trouble finding the bus as the time had infact been printed on my ticket and the bus was clear to see as the one surrounded by frighteningly good looking people who stood out a mile against the backdrop on Londoners. My mind was sent back to the last time I was in this situation, in February, when lost in central Poland's Wroclaw bus station. The station had tens of coffee machines dotted about the place and I remembered thinking how much happier the beautiful people would be if they were replaced with Martini despensers. My Anglo-Polish was not all it could have been but enough passed between me and the driver. He bundled me aboard and ran in a LeMans24hour stylee to his seat before taking off at some pace over Vauxhall bridge towards Dover. It was at about this time that I got into deep prayer for the safety of my legs, it went like this: "Dear God, don't let the woman sitting before me discover the joys of the reclining bus seat" repeated every few minutes. I think it worked, as she was very still until we stopped in a German service station for a few minutes. Everyone shot off to the shop,bought up a years worth of cigarettes and manged to squeeze about five smokes into the 15 minute period before getting back in the tin-can-with-wheels. Whereupon the woman sitting in front of me got into an eqivilant of seated DDR, giggling with amusement that her seat not only went back and forth but also sideways, my knees dodged the hard edge of the seat-back tray and it missed by a small ammount each time. It was some hours(days?) later that the bus got to the outskirts of Warszawa, instantly plunging into the sort of traffic jam that preludes a big city. Not a bad thing, I got to play a fave game of gazing dearly at eastern european cars for an hour. Of course we would be late, about 6 hours as it turned out and Ola, sensably, thought better than to wait around getting herself bitten by the cold on the off chance that I may turn up at sometime. Then my phone set it's self to sleep(for the rest of the week) and through no fault of their own I'd no luck with the station's payphones. HMMM, in my usual state of *organisation* whilst abroad, I was running low on ideas. I walked to the centre, towards a tourist info place that one of my books had mentioned as the place to go to find help. I don't know wheather it was still open at that time but don't really car ether because on my way there I heard the blessed sound of Liverpudlian. Not usually the source of excitment, today was different and the man was probably a little shaken after my burst of "HelloyoujustspokeEnglish,haveyougotaphone?pleasecanIborrowit?I'minamessetcetc.." but being a total star he let me use it and soon after I was explaning myself to Miss Lalala, her voice coming down the phone like a big flashy lighthouse to me lost in a storm. Needless to say, after such a long trip it was brill to finally get there and to not be sleeping on the streets, I was made very at home. Ola's flat even having a view of the massive Palace of culture from the balcony, which was my one big must see in Warszawa. If I was an itinery sort of person then I'd have had "Go and see the Palace of Culture" written at the top of the page in gold leaf ink with additional flourecent highlighting underneath. Returning once again to my Tourist Information Person persona I think you should all know that it was well worth seeing, later on in the week we went upto the 30th floor of the sandstone monster, which was a very long way up and the lifts were so quick you felt really light when they came to a stop high in the sky. Really its the history behind it thats interesting...(forgive me the odd mistake) After the war when Poland came under Communist rule, Stalin and his party thought it'd be great if they were to build 8 of these palaces over their empire in a show of power to the west with their Empire State and Crysler Buildings and a show of control to the people of the countries within. The largest is this one in the centre on Warsaw and looking at it even today it casts a huge imposing message across the city. Go see it!! Throughout the week Ola was a mega guide to have, one night we went to a club to try my first ever Carambola:), it's a liquor made from starfruits and we had it with grapefruit juice to start with. With this it's like a refreshing alcopop with added alco and pop that soon had us with designs on a whole bottle of the stuff. Seeing that we were potential addicts, the barman reappeared and shuffled two more Carambola based drinks our way. These were cloudy pink and had the grapefruit kicked out in place of rum, mmmmmmm. Lovely,more alco and less pop, we continued our Carambola journey with the original mixture before braving the very cold outside and running for/after the bus. It was pretty ****ing cold the next night aswell when we went to see a display of Yann Artuss-Bertrand's "Earth from the Air" photos that were stuck on the fence of this huge park. It's a really good idea to put them there, out of the galleries and onto the street as you hear so many people promising. Brilliant pictures too, not just aerial photography, but each of the hundred odd pictures a proper piece of art in it's own right. We both agree that flying about the world taking pictures and money for them is a pretty good job to have. Again the warmth of public transport was fully appreciated on the homeward tram. And while I was there it was Halloween! A party had been organised at Ola's flat, thankfully almost everyone dressed up, with a Warrior Queen being a memorable sight among throngs of witch's and carpet-wearing-people-with-sticks. I've never seen so many different Vodkas in my life, some yummy, some repulsive, all responsable for me staying in bed til late the next day. Met lot's of new and old friends though, among the sinister flock were Kamil(forgive me the spelling) hello! and Maja, hello! And all to soon it was time to go home:( Not quite home though! Seeing the Lord Major's fireworks on the Thames was a fitting end to my holiday. Thank you Ali+Alex for letting me live in Hackney and ride on 38 buses and be a Londoner for a bit. But now I am home, winter in wife-swapping Broughton-Astley is not looking much fun, but far better for the Polish trip :) James. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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