Zagreb Vegan Scene: Green Point
Green Point offers vegetarian fast food, which is always necessary to have in a city. It’s a small space, with only a counter behind which the one worker heats up the frozen patties, makes smoothies, and easily prepares whatever else they offer. Obviously, and sadly, there is no bathroom.
The burger was pretty good. It tasted like slightly more interesting Boca burger, and had bit of spicy salsa, along with tomato and lettuce on a big bun. It needed more sauce to counter all the breading, but there were few vegan options.
I wouldn’t go out of the way to come here if you are vegan. Vegetarians would have tons more options that looked more interesting. But hey if you are hungry and it’s past 7pm, it’s a great option to have.
Varšavska ulica 10
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Another Overnight Train: Kyiv to Warsaw
I’m on my last overnight train! At least for this trip! You know we will take them again soon I’m sure but I expect least a few months where I don’t have to ‘sleep’ on dirty sheets with strangers and smoke all around while I have to pee really badly and I am ready for that. This final journey leaves Kyiv/Kiev at 4:41 and arrives in Warsaw at about 8am. Well we aren’t terribly sure what time we arrive at our actual destination because the schedule has no less than SIX (6!!!) ‘Warsaw’ related stops listed! Three of them just say Warsaw but are 10 minutes apart? The others I think are the names of other train stations in Warsaw but ahh. The Warsaw group of stations span from 7:53 am arrival to 8:30 so we hope to find someone who can help ensure we don’t get off in the North Philly part when we want the 30th Street part. The schedule also says that the border crossing stop will only be an hour and fifteen minutes, which is entirely doable for my bladder. Huzzah and hooray! Also we don’t have any stops in Ukraine the entire way from Kyiv to the border, which we should reach about midnight, so that’s a solid 7 hours of relaxation time without worrying about bathrooms closing.
She did not stop talking. I’m not much of a talker myself but this was beyond normal human levels of communication. She was Ukrainian but dating a man in Warsaw and I think the man was English or at least does a lot of business in England. So she was excited to talk to us about London, which she has been to many times. Bianca talked about their relationship, how long they’ve been together and where she hopes it goes even though we are STRANGERS. She said he’s in the restaurant business so they get to eat at all the most famous restaurants in England and Europe and if this were a normal conversation I would have asked if any were the restaurants that we’ve eaten at or heart of but I didn’t have the strength to attempt interrupting her and what’s more I really didn’t care. We learned all about the types of cars she has ridden in and which ones her boyfriend owns or plans to buy. I feel like she is probably having an affair with a married guy?
It was all so annoying but relatively innocuous at first, but as she got more comfortable/ran out of other words, she spoke about matters that revealed she was a HUGE F-ING RACIST and prejudiced against literally every disadvantaged group. So fun to realize that you are trapped in a box with a bigot for twelve more hours, right??? I just sat there and took notes on what she was saying the entire time so nb that these are all her words. She told us about the president of Belarus and how great he is, because he will fly around his country to see if people are farming (as they are supposed to) and if he sees anyone on a farm who is not working hard, he will throw them in prison and maybe that’s what Ukraine needs to be a stronger richer country! “This is great and smart job!” she told us. Then she told us how she saw a black lady in London who paid black men to have babies with her every year so she could keep collecting benefits and we were DONE with this bullshit by this point so Z explained (he was trying so hard not to scream) how that is one of the most trotted out Tory lies in their attempt shore up support in their (horrid) base for getting rid of social welfare. She didn’t really get the hint that we were Not Interested In Shittalking Minority Groups so she then told us about a group of Jews from Israel that she saw in a Polish airport. These Jews, she told us, had curly hairs (perish the thought!) and costumes (like Slutty Nurse?) and they smelled awful (true) and prayed together (you don’t fucking say) with everyone watching like it was a big to-do and now she doesn’t need to go to the circus because she saw that. So I responded “yeah all religion is super crazy right and every religion’s traditions are like a big show” and made her agree that way which felt like as big a win as I could get under the circumstances since she was clearly an Orthodox Jesus-lover of some sort. Ughhhh.
I would have taken even more bathroom breaks than necessary but it was not exactly comfortable in there. You know how most public restroom stalls are so poorly designed that you have to like squeeze around the toilet in order to open/close the door because people who get hired to do ONE JOB are incompetent? Well here you had to somehow squeeze behind the toilet in order to get inside and close the door. Brushing your teeth was not fun in there.
We got ready for bed finally, and shooed Bianca up to her loft hoping that it would make her quiet. The sheets are wet and smell like pee so that’s super fun. Gotta go out with a bang on this final overnighter! As much as I would have hated being on the top of the triple decker, and as much as I needed to be on the bottom because of my bathroom use, it was really scary to be down there. There was only about a foot and a half of space between my bed and Z’s – if I bent my knees they’d hit his bunk – and with two whole adult humans above me on those creaking flats that we put into place, I was pretty nervous that everything would come crashing down.
Finally they came into our cabin and a mean lady made me take Z’s giant bag out from under my bed and unpack it, like all the way down to the ramen. She paused, deliberating whether the ramen was worth fighting, decided it wasn’t, and then left. It’s all such a ridiculous process. The schedule had said that customs would be finished at 3:10am but we didn’t even get there until 3:15am so I realized I had forgotten about time changes and stuff. Blahhhh what a night.
BUT WE’RE DONE! We landed, figured out which Warsaw we wanted of the six, and we were back in the EU! Hello! No more overnight trains! At least for the next few months! We felt like home was getting closer and closer, especially when the Warsaw train station greeted us with this:
Man we were so tired so we tried to get an Uber, but because of how confusingly the streets around the station are laid out, the Uber couldn’t find us! So we had to cancel that and try another one gahhh Uber sucks but it was our only decent option right then. Finally one came and took us to our hostel, Dream Hostel Warsaw, which we had to walk the final bit of the way to get to because of the layout of the streets there. Ack Warsaw what is with your streets? We were so cranky and everything seemed to be going wrong, especially when we were told at the hostel that the room would not be ready for 4-5 hours. I wanted to cry. Traveling for so long is EXHAUSTING.
Luckily, Warsaw was worth all of this initial b.s. It was one of my favorite destinations, although it might all be due to finding the vegan pierogie place. Stay tuned for the next few posts, which will be objectively happier. Okay maybe not the one where we talk about the history but the food one for sure!
BYE TRAINS! *Phoebe whisper* forever.
Warsaw, Poland: Beautiful and Welcoming City with a Tragic Past
This lady above was our guide in the Old Town for the first tour, and then for the World War history tour (the big long most important one) we had a young man take over. Both were very good (but the boy was my favorite) and both told us that they were newly engaged (not to each other), because every single guide in every single free walking tour we’ve ever taken, across the globe, has told us that they were newly engaged (I think as a ploy to get more tips, but like, no harm no foul, get that paper.)
While this fighting occurred inside the walls, outside the walls the Germans were attacked at various points by Polish resistance groups. However, the numbers of fighters in and outside the Ghetto kept falling, and eventually there was no organized defense left, just survivors who hid in the sewers and dugouts referred to as bunkers.
The Nazis searched out these hiding places and would smoke or flood the inhabitants out, or just use explosives on the area. One of these dugouts was the infamous Mila 18, with approximately 300 people inside, including smugglers and ZOB commanding officers. The smugglers surrendered to the Nazis, but the ZOB command refused to move. The Nazis threw tear gas down into the bunker, and a few people managed to escape uncaught, but the rest committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide instead of surrendering to the Nazis.
At this point in the tour, an (white female (always) (dammit)) American woman asked the tour guide “Why didn’t the Jews just fight back when this all started??” All the decent people gave her side eye and the guide explained that the events didn’t just jump from zero to murder in a day. The oppressors, like all oppressors, started small, with sacrifices you couldn’t really risk everything fighting against when it seemed like something you could live with. Then the oppressors would add something else to the mix, and the same question is asked of you: is this the breaking point, or will it be okay? Most people think things will be okay for them, that things couldn’t get too out of hand in modern society. But soon you’re faced with a pile of small atrocities stacked on top of each other and the stack leads to complete injustice and horror, and by that point it’s too late to do much. We visited Warsaw many months ago, and even then I was shocked that the lady didn’t realize that the same thing was happening in the USA. I wonder if she can see today how ignorant she sounded, or if she realizes that we’ve reached the point she was talking about, when people should be fighting back. Every day, the leaders of American chip away at the rights of citizens and innocent people, and they degrade our institutions so much that our checks and balances are now a joke, a joke that for the most part they are in control of. But aside from trying to fight back civilly (in the courts, with fundraising, with calling offices), no one is rioting in the streets or risking their lives to fight it. We excuse it day by day as something we can live with, something that we will change when decent people are back in power. But look at what the incremental nature of these injustices has led to. There are literally babies being snatched from their families and locked up in cages. And we are not rioting in the streets for them. Is this the point when we should be? If we don’t, will it be too late to fight against what happens next? I am scared of what will happen next as I’m sure all decent people who aren’t morally bankrupt are, but I’m also scared of what’s happening now and what’s already happened. We’re supposed to study history in order to learn from it and not repeat the mistakes of the past, but that’s hard to do when people who want to repeat history are in charge.