Warsaw Blog

By Jimmy Quigley, Director

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Friday 4 p.m. ...

Arrive at Warsaw International Airport with my camerawoman, Mary Farbrother. As we stroll through the lounge I'm approached by a dodgy looking minicab driver, who offers to take us to our hotel for a price ... as the queues for a cab are enormous I take him up on his offer (Don't recommend you get dodgy cabs in Warsaw!). I'm struck by how spacious Warsaw is, really big wide boulevards and lots of trees in autumnal colors. If you're agoraphobic then look out!

Friday 5 p.m. ...

Hotel ... Have a cup of tea, can recommend the Polish lemon tea. Hook up with Pawel at the Warsaw Film Festival where he is the chairman of the jury. He complains about watching too many austere eastern European art house movies where nothing happens! We have a chat and end up talking about Polish football; I believe he thinks I'm a bit mad!

Saturday 9 a.m. ...

Hook up with Pawel and we're off, he doesn't stop talking -- this guy is seriously intelligent. I guess when you live under Communism it focuses the mind! At the market he explains how he used to get his bootleg records on cardboard with grooves cut into it. He takes us to the Rozyckiego market, which sells everything from underwear to dead batteries to Kalashnikovs!

Midday ...

The Palace of Culture and Science, Stalin's gift to the Polish people and, as Pawel says, "there to remind them of who's boss." Now, fortunately, it's a buzzing center for culture with cinemas, theatres and bars. We end up in a conference room where a strange competition is taking place. It's a game called "Cashflow," a way of teaching Poles the inner workings of capitalism.

4 p.m. ...

Powazki Cemetery ... Pawel tells us about his youth and how he queued overnight for a pair of jeans. They were 10 inches too long but he didn't care! I ask him if he washed them and all the dye ran out and he replies that he never washed them as they were too valuable! We wander the graveyard and Pawel talks of it being a place where one can deconstruct a society. If one wants to understand the magnitude of what Warsaw has experienced in the 20th century then this place explains a lot, he says. We bid our farewells and Pawel recommends the Old Town for dinner as he heads for the film festival, to hand out the winning trophy to a Croatian movie -- "Sorry for Kung Fu".

Terror suspect out of hospital Investigators combed through Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's history Sunday in hopes of learning how the British-educated son of a Nigerian bank executive ended ...

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