Warsaw

• Public bike hire system

  • It’s called Venturilo, but you can’t create an account if you don’t have a Polish mobile number. However, you can still access the service via the Nextbike app where you can use country’s number.

  • You need to keep 10 zl in your account to use it, and the minimum top-up is 10 zl. This can be annoying if you your account drops to 9 zl, because then you have to add 10 zl and end up with 19 zl in your account, even if you mostly intend to ride for free within the 20 minutes. But at the end of the day this is like $5-$10 NZD.

  • If you park your bike in an area with the yellow 15 zl symbol, you will be charged 15 zl for parking there. This caught me out - I thought they were preferred parking spots and that I’d be credited 15 zl. In hindsight this was silly of me; they’d go bankrupt if that were the case.

• Milk bars (bar mleczny)

  • These vary in quality, but they are pretty consistently affordable and they’re certainly a very Polish thing. It’s not ever really going to be amazing quality - it’s cheap, filling, cafeteria-style food, a tradie’s lunch. Kind of the equivalent of a bakery in NZ (the kind that sells fried chicken and iced buns, not sourdough and matcha lattes). If the servers are brusque and rushed, that’s an authentic experience.

• Polish restaurants in Warsaw: the two we tried were both amazing. BAJS (around $30-$40 NZD pp) and Wege Polka ($20-$30 NZD pp, all vegan).

• Museums

  • POLIN: Regretfully we didn’t make it to this museum with illness etc. It’s the history of Jews in Poland, and said to be amazing. This is pretty key given that a significant chunk of Poland’s population were Jewish at the time of WW2, and the Holocaust with its millions of deaths targeted the Jewish community particularly in Poland. It will be my top priority the next time I visit.

  • Neon Museum: Small but worth it especially if you’re into graphic design and typography. Just quite a unique topic!

  • Katyn Museum: Small but a detailed and well designed overview of this tragic event.

Gdansk

• The absolute top two things to do in Gdansk are to go to these two museums, probably in this order:

  • WW2 museum (set aside at least half a day, like 3 hours absolute minimum but ideally more like 4-5).

  • European Solidarity Centre

• 100cznia (prononuced “sto-chin-nyah”) is a cool area for summer outdoor food trucks and events (check their website).

• Accommodation: Noli Studios was where we stayed. This was a very slick outfit targeted at digital nomad-type millennials, like a cross between airbnb and co-working with 24h self-checkin via ipad and abundant communal spaces (gym, sauna, coworking, games room, big shared kitchen, library - all very Scandi style and immaculate). The location was slightly further from Old Town and the like, but that still only means a 10 min walk away.