I like Poland and was looking forward to the concert in Warsaw, which I’ve not visited before. So was a bit disconcerted to find that it had been voted the ugliest city in Europe by TripAdviser. It is indeed a rather unlovely city but after a short readup on the history of the place one can understand why. Completely razed to the ground in 1944 by order of Hitler and then finished off by the Russians. Who then helped to rebuild some of it under the communist regime using the best of Soviet architecture. Remarkably, the old town center, which was completely ignored by the Soviet era reconstruction, was rebuilt to the original photographs and drawings by private donations and nowadays looks like “the real thing”.

Getting to Warsaw had been a long day as we’d stayed longer than intended in Berlin in order to enjoy a good lunch at Buddha Home, an excellent Nepalese restaraunt in Berlin. Add to that some atrocious weather and Polish roads and we were lucky to haul in to Warsaw just before midnight. Much of the roads weren’t so bad, but the autobahn simply ends about 100 km before Warsaw and suddenly becomes a two lane road through the countryside along with all the traffic from the autobahn. I guess they ran out of money.

The Warsaw concert is in the Palladium Club, which is kind of an old variety club that has seen better days. It has a good feel to it though and the staff are friendly (like most everyone in Poland). The stage is a little small but the equipment is good and we have a good sound and light show and the concert goes real well. Big thanks to the organizer, Gosia, for getting it together so beautifully.

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