Poznan, Poland.

Today was an extremely long day. It all started at 5:15 AM Berlin time, or 11:15 PM to you folks on the east coast. The Atlanta crowd was probably still at Swallow in the Hollow celebrating Michelle's birthday. Crazy to think that my day was starting before their's even ended.

In any event, I was up that early so I could catch the Berlin-Warsaw Express, which would take me to Poznan, Poland. I figured I could fit in a day trip and Poznan looked fairly promising. I got in about 9:30 and headed for the Stary Rynek, the old town square. The city was built up around it and every tourist attraction is within walking distance of it.

My first stop was the Muzeum Archeoligiczne, which as you can guess is an Archaeological museum. It was pretty cool, and I finally got to see some Egyptian artifacts. The one weird thing about the museum was that only part of it was translated into english. Half the exhibits had both English and Polish and the other half had only Polish. Maybe they had a budget shortfall, who knows.

After that I wandered around a bit until it was time for the daily spectacle at the town hall, the Ratusz. As the clock on the tower strikes noon, two mechanical goats come out of the clock and butt heads twelve times. According to local legend, two goats started fighting on the steps of the Ratusz and it alerted the townspeople to a fire that had just started within the building. This commemorates that at noon every day.

When that was over with, I headed over for a tour of the Ratusz, which looking back, I could have done without. From there I grabbed lunch and then headed to a museum featuring medieval weapons. Unfortunately it was closed (closed museums is getting to be a common theme on this trip) so I had to settle for a visit to the Muzeum Instrumentow Muzycznych, which houses a huge collection of musical instruments.

Now, I know certain people get into these kinds of things, but this has to be the single most boring museum on the face of this and and probably even several other nearby planets. It was just a bunch of old musical instruments sitting in glass cases with no real information about the significance of what you were looking at. The museum is supposed to house several instruments belonging to Frederick Chopin, but if it does, there wasn't a mention of which ones they were.

After that excrutiating experience was over with I visited the Muzeum Nardowe, the National Gallery of Art. It was a great museum with works dating back to the late 1400's, but as I was getting extremely tired by that point, I didn't really get to enjoy it as much as I should have.

Overall the museums were fairly disappointing, but the town had a great atmosphere and what the museums lacked, Poznan more than made up for with food and drink. I should have just skipped the tourist attractions and hopped around from bar to bar all day.

For lunch I had an unbelievable dish of pierogies stuffed with cottage cheese and potato. It was awesome, not to mention cheap. I had that and a cup of coffee and the bill came to 15 zloty, or roughly $4.50. The restaurant even came complete with one of the best musical selections I've ever heard, a club-mix of the theme from Chariots of Fire. It was hilarious.

For dinner I went to a restaurant mentioned in my guide book and it was awesome too. The recommendation was to try the fried camembert cheese. It was like mozzarella sticks on steriods. I could have eaten about three plates full. I washed that down with a couple of Polish beers and headed over to the Columbus Pub for dessert. I figured since I'm from Columbus, I should stop in.

I had some more Polish beer and some potato pancakes with blueberry preserves. Once again, awesome. Definitely well worth it. While I was there, I decided I couldn't leave Poland without having some of their national drink, vodka.

The bartender recommended a Polish vodka called Zubrowka. It was flavored with something called bison grass and tasted kind of sweet and herbally. Definitely different from the usual vodka we get in the US.

On the way back I even found Zubrowka mentioned in my guidebook. What I read was a little frightening though. Apparently, according to Polish lore, every stem of bison grass used to flavor this vodka has actually been urinated on by bison. Since reading that, I've been spending my time hoping to God that's not true.

All in all though, my trip to Poznan was well worth it. If you happen to go, take my advice, skip the museums and just eat and drink your way through town. You'll be glad you did.