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While I was doing my usual Internet rounds this morning I came across this on the BBC Football site and I proceeded to make the following submission:

“Dear Steve,

How come your voice goes all high pitched when you get excited on the radio?

You sound like Theodore of ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ fame.

Ta,

Dan”

It reminded me of an occasion a couple of years back when my pal Nimrod (who will be well known to some of you) sent a serious (no comedy effect intended) email to Kevin Nolan while he was still picking up his yellow cards in a Bolton shirt. And it was published! It went something like this:

“Hi Kevin,

I like cooking Kevin. What food do you like to cook and eat Kevin?

Thanks loads Kevin.

Andy Haslam, Horwich (aged 12 and 3 quarters)”

That still makes me howl now.

Also, does anyone else reckon Fat Sam was wearing one of these when this occurred?

Now we’ve got all that daftness out of the way, let’s talk Warsaw. First up was another trip to the central station to try for the Krakow train ticket again. It was a doddle this time round with a minute queue and although the lady didn’t speak a word of English I’d allowed for this by preparing a note before-hand saying ‘Krakow’ and the date and time it should leave and arrive at it’s destination, as well as the price I expected to pay (40 Zlotys for the specific train I’d picked rather than around 100 for most of the others). If you find yourself in the same situation the InterRegio train is the cheap one you want.

Warsaw isn’t set up very well for walking. I keep finding myself foot-wrecked with huge swathes of uncrossable land in front of me. There’s lots of strangely placed traffic lights, awkward and unlikely dead-ends with underground mazes as your only possible route. Still, all in a day’s adventuring.

My plan of having a fridge magnet of every destination visited that I’ve carried forward from my USA expedition isn’t going too swell. They don’t seem to flog them anywhere west of Belgium so my retrospective purchase list (and I tell you this, I actually have one) is growing by the city. When I finally hang up my backpack there’s going to be some serious eBay action on the go.

The main place for me to visit today was The Warsaw Rising Museum and was also the main reason for me staying an extra night in the city as it wasn’t open yesterday. It only cost me 3 Zlotys to get in with my stud. card (to put it in perspective, I’ve been paying about the same for a bottle of water) and I’d have happily paid considerably more. It’s a brilliant detailing of the Nazi invasion and everything that followed until ‘liberation’ by The Red Army. I was told you need about 2 hours to get round it and as is my modus operandi I arrived exactly 2 hours before closure. In my opinion you need 3 to do it properly.

So for grub tonight I went to a Communist themed restaurant named Pod Czerwonym Wierprzem (lnn Under The Red Hog). It was a little bit tacky but it was quite good fun either choosing from the proletariat menu or the bourgeoisie one. I went for ‘Fidel’s Cigars’ – pork chops rolled into a cigar shape served with spicy Cuban tomato sauce, possibly cooked on the thighs of a virgin. Plus some boiled potatoes on the side and another pint of Zwiec (actually 2 as there was a promotion on apparently). It was a bit pricier than last night’s meal but still pretty cheap and was reasonably nice too.

Okay, I’ve not really met anyone in the hostel so rather than squat around the place on the Internet with some tins all night, I’m off to watch ‘Wrogowie Publiczni’ at the local cinematic purveyor.

So ‘Public Enemies’ was pretty much what I expected after reading many ranging reviews. I missed the first 3 or 4 minutes which normally I will religiously not do but I’d already paid my 16 Zlotys, or erm, 3 quid. Depp was good as always and it was shot well, but even though it kept me interested just about, it was light on anything else of real quality and very Hollywood all over. It’s a shame really as Dillinger certainly is an intriguing character. One other thing of note is that after doing a bit of research (which I can’t help but do on fiction or semi-fiction) I wish I’d of seen the flick before I went to Chicago as I’d have looked up the Biograph Theatre while trundling around the city’s Lincoln Park area.

Krakow tomorrow, well actually I’m here most of the day still as my cheapo train doesn’t leave until about 18:00.

I quite like Poland.