Warsaw


FUTURE BACK TO THE


Poland’s sprawling capital is steeped in history — with its diverse display of architectural styles — yet nowhere embodies the city’s drive to reinvent itself like the formerly run-down district of Praga. By Nicola Trup


vacations of my childhood were spent visiting my grandmother here in Warsaw, and her home wasn’t too dissimilar to the one we’re looking at now: laminate wood furniture, orange-brown color scheme, electronics by a variety of eastern European brands I’d never heard of... and many, many tchotchkes (trinkets).


Y


ou probably don’t remember apartments like this,” says my guide, Iza Danil. But I do; the summer


Te key difference is that this apartment in


front of us is a reconstruction. It’s part of the tiny Czar PRL museum, dedicated to Poland’s communist past, which is hidden away in an old industrial building I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find again. Lining the walls of the museum are displays


of sports memorabilia, vintage consumer goods and diagrams of unrealized city plans — and there’s a cafe serving alarmingly red soda with a retro label (“It’s like drinking sugar with water,” says Iza). Poland is, of course, somewhere with a


strong sense of history, and nowhere more so than the capital. Around 85% of the city was destroyed during the Second World War, and it later spent decades under communism, so the Warsaw of my childhood seemed grey and gloomy, even in summer. Yet, in recent years — particularly since joining the European Union in 2004 — the city has been noteably smartening up and developing a cool, creative vibe. Te area around Czar PRL, Praga, is


perhaps the clearest example of the city’s recent regeneration. Once considered pretty shady, it’s now Warsaw’s hipster epicenter, and as the artists have moved in, so have the developers, building new apartment blocks and converting old factories into quirky galleries and museums (you’ll find exhibits on neon signs, the local area and — soon to come — vodka) along with smart restaurants, hotels and even an outpost of Google’s Campus tech hub. Tere are still a lot of run-down buildings


too — I’m not surprised when I hear Roman Polanski used the area as a location for his


92 | asta.org


World War Two movie Te Pianist — but little by little Praga is changing. We walk down the district’s main street,


ulica Zabkowska, where through the open doors of a tiny store, Pierozki Gosi, I spot two old ladies making pierogi (filled dumplings). Just a few yards away, the neighboring bars are setting up for the evening; craft beers and acoustic tunes are the order of the day. “Tere’s a very cool place I want to show


you,” says Iza, leading the way down the street to Skamiejka. She’s surprised to find it expanded since the last time she was here; it used to have just a handful of seats, but now it’s taken over the next-door hair salon and has several tables. If Czar PRL was like a Polish grandmother’s apartment, Skamiejka is like a Russian grandmother’s, with vintage furniture accented by doilies and vases of flowers. We’re a little too early for dinner (the


menu includes Russian, Polish and even Georgian dishes) but the owner, Tamara, explains the restaurant acts as something of a cultural center for the local Russian-speaking community, with a variety of musical performances, movie screenings and literary events on certain nights. On other evenings, you just turn up for pelmeni (another type of dumpling) washed down with vodka. Praga has long been a unique place, Iza


informs me. “It was only incorporated into the city about 200 years ago,” she says. “Maybe that’s why the people here are a bit different.” Te shabby but hip streets of Praga are a


stark contrast to the Old Town, across the Vistula river. Here I spend a sunny afternoon strolling the pristine cobbled lanes, which are lined with townhouse-style apartment ▶


IMAGES: GETTY; ALAMY


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