Warsaw (Part II)

I don't typically like to do tours - listening to someone recite history by rote is not a good investment of my time, especially considering I'll forget most of the information by the end. But in Warsaw I came across one I couldn't quite pass up. Adventure Warsaw takes you off the beaten path in a yellow coloured Socialist Nysa 522 (see picture) to the Communist highlights of the city. What's more, the tour guide/driver walks a fine line between being lively, funny and crazy. Our guide, for example, had many anecdotes and stories from history but kept on going on wild tangents that were often-times irrelevant yet nonetheless amusing.

The open-air market market in the district of Praga looked similar to an Arabic bazaar, except with Socialist overtones. The stalls were made of faded green wood rotting away at the seams and were manned by grey-faced old ladies and old men selling everything from wedding dresses to hair dryers and Gillette blades. No one shops in this market anymore. On the chance that we would stumbled on shoppers, they would be elderly. The women and men working at the stalls leave their post to chat with their neighbour, a cup of tea in their gloved hand. They would stop chatting and glance at us for a brief second before picking up their conversation again. They know we're not here to shop, that we're just here to take a look at thing of the past and to imagine how it used to be. But these are the last days of the open-market - there are plans in the works to remove the stalls and use the land to develop real-estate projects.     

At the other end of the market our tour guide pointed to a door behind him and, with a big smile on his face, said, "this is the best place. It's a sex shop and there's an old man working inside!" He walked up the few stairs to the door, opened it and stepped in. After a few seconds he waved us into the shop. There was an elderly man inside. He sat behind a desk stacked with old pornographic magazines and next to a shelf filled with sex toys. Behind the front door were various random items on sale such as old vacuum cleaners, used guitars, used sun glasses and more. The old man looked frail. He squinted at the light from the sun that reached inside his dark and mouldy shop. His head bobbed up and down as we walked in and he smiled, amused and slightly embarrassed. After everyone walked out our tour guide said a few words to the old man and closed the door behind him, forcing back the sunlight out of the shop.