We Saw, Warsaw It Wore Us Out

We were feeling pretty good by the time we reached Poland, but the border crossing was unlike anything we’d experienced so far.

We got flagged and pulled out of the line, then mildly shouted at by a woman in fatigues asking for a “car passport.” We didn’t have one. We showed every document we did have related to the car, but she just kept repeating “car passport” as if that might eventually make one appear. Eventually her supervisor came over, gave a quick look, and waved us through with what can only be described as a very bored Polish hand gesture. It was all a bit surreal.

We encountered quite a few variations of that same “bored hand wave” throughout the day after that. including having a receipt basically thrown at us.

We carried on and decided to stop at an MOP truck stop for the night. Cotty even found a free shower, which felt like a very solid win. We called it an early night in the hope of continuing our streak of avoiding bad weather.

Warsaw itself… we saw a lot of it, and it definitely wore us out. In a good but slightly chaotic way.

We parked outside the city centre and tried out the transit system, using both buses and trams. At one point we got turned around and went one stop in the wrong direction, but recovered quickly enough that it almost felt intentional.

We spent the day dodging rain, walking through a mix of big central buildings near the station — the kind of huge, solid architecture that feels very imposing in a good way — and then into a beautifully preserved old town. The contrast between the two was really interesting.

One of our favourite parts was wandering through a quieter residential neighbourhood that looked full of little cafés and restaurants. It felt like it would have been perfect for an evening out if we were the “eat out” type of travellers — which we very much are not, haha.

The river was beautiful, and the parks were extremely well cared for.

We also have very mixed but generally positive thoughts about Warsaw from Cotty. He felt it deserved more appreciation, but also admitted it might have landed differently if we hadn’t already been through so many old towns in such a short span of time. The downtown felt solid and familiar in places, and the shopping malls were surprisingly similar to the larger ones back home in Canada. Cotty REALLY appreciated the care that was put into the recycling system in one of the malls!

We both came away really appreciating the affordability, and I was particularly impressed by how much care clearly goes into infrastructure. Even the mall bathrooms were oddly delightful and free of charge, which feels like a very specific but important travel metric. Scrounging for euro change is a hassle.

After that, we retreated again to a MOP truck stop just outside the city, happy to reset after a full day of exploring.

Today is a reset and lounge day. We slept in and took things slowly this morning, catching up on a few outstanding life tasks and figuring out how best to avoid the worst of today’s weather.

The plan, as we start making our way toward Berlin, is simply to take it easy and treat it like a proper day off on the road.

We’re hoping to explore Berlin tomorrow in better weather — fingers crossed.