And Now For Something Completely Different

Over the weekend 12 –13th June  Elaine & I visited Warsaw for the wedding of our friends Matt & Karina.



A great time was had by all.  If you ever get an invitation to a Polish wedding I recommend you go.  The reception started just after 6:00 pm, we left at 3:00 am and the party was still going.  I thought we did well to last 9 hours.



On the Sunday, after too little sleep we tried to do some site seeing.  This is the Palace of Culture.  Apparently there is a viewing gallery in there somewhere but we could not figure out the signs.  I like the photo though.



Finally, this statue was a few hundred yards away from our hotel.



I was surprised to see the statue and when in Warsaw I couldn’t figure out the connection.  A little web research provided this explanation:

“Charles de Gaulle is the subject of Warsaw’s newest monument. Striding away from what was once the Commie party HQ the monument is a gift from the French government. A resident of Warsaw in the 1920s, de Gaulle is a bit of a hero in these parts for the role he played in The Battle of Warsaw in 1920. With Europe in turmoil following the aftermath of WWI the Red Army launched a huge military strike, aimed at enslaving the rest of Europe. The Bolsheviks expected an easy march to Paris, but the Poles has other ideas. With the Red Army just 23km from Warsaw Marshal Piłsudski launched a deft action to split the Bolshevik forces in two and encircle them. The battle raged from August 13-August 25, 1920, with the Poles claiming a historic victory in what Woodrow Wilson went on to describe as the ‘seventh most important battle in history’. The Bolshevik forces were decimated, and Europe saved. De Gaulle fought with distinction and was awarded the highest military honour in the country, the Virtuti Militari.”