An Autumnal (and definitely not Wintry) Walk in the Woods

Yesterday after my English class at a factory on ulica Augustowka I took a walk through the Jezioro Czerniakowskie reservation. I am assuming that the nearby area of Czerniakow and this reservation are named after Adam Czerniakow, the prominent Jewish Varsovian politician who was appointed leader of the Warsaw ghetto and shot himself the day before the deportations to Treblinka, Auschwitz etc. properly began.

I would thoroughly recommend the book Words to Outlive Us  to learning more about the Warsaw ghetto, it really is a powerful collection of testimonies.

The class went well, for a first timer like myself, and I feel confident that I can deliver a series of lessons that will improve the skills and abilities of my clients/pupils. Teaching is something I have always wanted to do as I enjoy interacting with people and for me the chance to travel around Warsaw is invaluable.

The wind picked up yesterday and for the first time walking through the reservation I could feel extremities starting to lose sensation so standing and drinking in the last of the day's weakening sun felt like a blessing. Time is running out before the winter begins properly and my Barbour Tartan Hunter hat comes out to play. 

The Vattenfal Energy Plant catching some rays.

There was something about the single chimney and squat nature of this abandoned factory that made me feel  uncomfortable. This building has nothing to do with the extermination camps but as I've said before I really feel history 'lives' in Poland in a way which we don't necessarily experience in the UK. The bomb and war damage in cities across Britain was eventually filled in, in Poland, where fighting took place, bullet holes and shrapnel marks remain on the walls of houses that survived the war. It's that sense of the nature of the events of the past surrounding you that I feel when I walk through the streets of Warsaw, particularly on the streets which survive of the ghetto itself.

Finally another recommendation, my Copernicus Warsaw Map has got me out of more than a few muddled wanderings around Warsaw already and has excellent details on bus routes around the city and close ups of suburbs where the number of tower blocks becomes bewildering. At a scale of 1:10000 you can easily navigate areas where the novel scenery and very small street signs gets disorientating. A snip at £12.