Days 1 & 2 Lublin
On the 24th I hopped on a minibus to the town of Lublin. I was supposed to be getting the train but I missed it somehow. I was standing on the platform and the screens kept saying it had been delayed for 15 minutes. The train standing on the platform had a different destination on the side of the train but it turns out that was the train I was supposed to get. I'm not sure where the delay was because it left precisely on time. Very annoying.
The minibus kind of sucked because I had to sit sideways to fit my legs in the seat. Thankfully it wasn't full or it would have been a terrible 4 hours.
Lublin is a beautiful little town which was apparently a contender for capital of Poland back in the 1700s. It's dominating feature is a white castle standing guard over the old town. Oddly the castle is on lower ground so I'm not sure what the reasoning was for putting it there. Mountains to the back maybe?
Not too much to say about the town really. It seems fairly typical of small towns in Poland. Lovely market square, lovely old town and plenty of places trying to attract the tourist dollar. I spent my first night walking around and taking in the sights. It's a very picturesque place to visit. Checked out a local pub that had about 20 taps of craft beer (obviously) and had an amazing chilli burger. I've missed chilli throughout Europe! It's not common in European fare in my experience.
On my second day there I went out to their open air museum (Muzeum Wsi Lubelskiej) which, similar to the one in Aarhus, has a bunch of old buildings they have moved to a central location and created a big village with buildings of different eras grouped together. This place was much bigger than the Aarhus one and had a lot of open space. The older buildings were quite close to those I saw in the similar village museum in Japan. Thatch roves and the beams and such inside.
I appeared to be the only visitor and half the buildings in the place were locked so I couldn't go in them. Kind of annoying but in the end it was probably a good thing. I was getting bored of walking in and out of buildings by the time I reached the end.
From there I got the bus down to the Lublin Castle. It's a fairly bright castle from the outside but the inside doesn't really match. It's kind of odd and it definitely feels rebuilt. I can't remember if it was ever destroyed or not.
The castle now houses a local museum and art gallery.
I climbed the tower for a view over the city which given the castle isn't the highest point was kind of silly. There was a memorial at the bottom of the tower commemorating I think Jewish people who died while being imprisoned there during the nazi occupation.
The museum was pretty tiny. It only took me an hour to make my way through the museum, the attached cathedral and the art gallery. The gallery had a big exhibition on Pablo Picasso and works inspired by him after a visit to Poland. I just don't get the style of artwork. All of the Picasso stuff (mostly lithographs and some sculptures) was utter shit in my opinion. There was some nice modern pottery with abstract imagery on them but I do lack an appreciation for pottery.
After that I basically wandered through the old town for a while then kept wandering and went through some different parts of the city. Ducked my head into a few churches that always had multiple people praying so I quickly left without taking photos (seems rude to interrupt someone's genuine worship). I found a big shopping centre and wandered through there for a while before Heading back to the hostel. I think I grabbed a kebab on the way back for dinner and picked up a few craft beers from the local bottle shop to drink in the hostel.
The next morning I jumped on a train to Warsaw. The train was delayed by an hour for some reason. A nice Polish girl who was sitting next to me heard me muttering to myself in English and kindly explained what the woman over the loudspeaker was babbling about so I went for a walk around the area and picked up some nice Polish pastries to snack on. I'll miss all the nice baked goods when I get back to Australia.
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