Warsaw -Senior backpacker goes to Slovenia (1)

 Last summer I was on a top of some peak in the Glossglockner national park, looking toward distant mountain ranges stretching to the east. That’s why I decided to come to Slovenia for this summer. So far Moscow has been the gate-way for me to travel to Europe from Japan just because I could not endure the long flight of more than 10 hours. But fortunately this year the LOT Polish airline launched a new direct line between Warsaw and Tokyo (Narita) this February, which allured me to try this airline to add also Warsaw to one of my destinations for 2016 summer. 

  

 I made a reservation for two nights in total at an old hotel in front of the Old Town Market Square, one night on July 18 before going to Slovenia and the other on July 30 before returning to Japan. The plane arrived at the Frederic Chopin Airport around 14 pm, so I had a time to stroll around the square with the Royal Castle and St John’s Cathedral before dusk and was surprised to find that this area gave really a medieval-like atmosphere as if they had been there for centuries although it was completely devastated during the WWⅡ. 

  

  

 On the way back to the hotel, I noticed a standing signboard along the backside street of the Cathedral, indicating the opening of Chopin piano concert at 18:00 played by one of young eminent Polish pianists. At first I hesitated to enter into the hall because I was not well dressed for attending at a high-class concert with a rough summer shirt in sandals. But I was so enchanted by a lady at the front who explained me about the today's event in a splendidly elegant manner and made me decide to be in. This was a salon-like concert with at most 30 seats in a cozy room and wine served during an intermission. Anyway I like Chopin as my wife is teaching piano at home.

  

After the concert, I learned that she was also one of the renowned Chopin pianists in Poland, so I bought her CD for my memory in Warsaw. Her name was Katarzyna Kraszewska and gave me her autograph. I regret that I could not come again tomorrow to listen to her Chopin due to my departure for Slovenia.


 In the music hall I happened to have a chat with a young French man. As we talked during an intermission over a glass of wine, I knew that his mother was a pianist and his father very recently had been appointed as a professor of physics at Tohoku University in Japan. He himself had been travelling in Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan one month ago. After the concert we took a dinner together near the old town market square and talked over Japan and EU in which I had a special interest after the UK voting to leave EU. It was a really pleasant and enlightening conversation for me as he was a lawyer working for EU. 

 Only one night in Warsaw, but it gave me a pleasure to meet talented people and learn their unique personality. Warsaw was more than expected!

(to be continued; the next is "Kamnik" in Slovenia)