The European Train Odyssey - Two Days in Warsaw

The first stage of my European Train Odyssey had brought me to Warsaw, the capital of Poland.
I'd chosen Poland as a logical starting point for a clockwise circuit of Europe, with plans to explore Krakow, Budapest, Dubrovnik and Sarajevo - all places that had burned their name into the history books down the ages, and that I felt compelled to see.
Starting in Poland meant that there would be some hard moments here, as this country had been the tragic and violent fulcrum of European history for centuries - repeatedly invaded, occupied, ravaged, rebuilt and ravaged over and over again.
I found Warsaw to be a heady mix of the old and the new - a jumble of shiny skyscrapers jostling for space alongside Gothic communist-era concrete palaces in one neighbourhood, and with an almost entirely reconstructed Old Town some distance away.
The wide-open plazas that stood between these places seemed to harshly disconnect the city's most notable quarters from each other.
Knowing that the city had been rebuilt from almost total destruction during the Second World War was one thing.
Visiting the Warsaw Uprising Museum, around the 75th anniversary of that brave, doomed expression of the indomitable Polish spirit, was quite another.
Learning that these local heroes had risked everything, only to be left horribly exposed between two implacable enemies who cared little for their sacrifice, was tragic in the extreme.
Warsaw delivered some more amusing lessons though.
Taking part in an outstanding Vodka History tour of the city in the company of Bartosz, I learned that vodka actually originated in Poland before it was appropriated by her neighbour, Russia.
According to Bartosz, vodka was first referred to there in 1405, nearly 50 years before it was mentioned over the border.
I also learned more about the ethnocentricity of history, as Bartosz pointed out that the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski had begun to break the Enigma code machines in 1932, several years before Alan Turing had even started work at Bletchley Park.
This was the sort of thing that I wanted to learn - a new way to look at old history.
A memorable start, even though those vodka shots made it a little bit harder to remember it all.