Pink Sauce

This is day three in my "report" of the trip I made to Warsaw with the London Gay Men's Chorus for Europride between 15 and 18 July 2010. The days leading to the trip, the journey itself and the first evening in the city are described here . The second day can be found here . Pictures of the day . Having set my phone alarm but forgotten to turn it on, it is only after about 10min to get ready that I errupted out of the hotel to see the old banger of a communist-era coach that was going to take us on another tour of Warsaw leave the curb, on that second morning. Thankfully, the tour people had a second smaller vehicle for overflows and I jumped into that. It was just me and the young driver who rattled on in an overexited way until we joined the main group on Constitution Square, a vast ensemble of autere building dumped in the middle of the city without care for the existing street plan. This was apparently mostly a show piece where official demonstrations took place. Fro...

This is day two in my "report" of the trip I made to Warsaw with the London Gay Men's Chorus for Europride between 15 and 18 July 2010. The days leading to the trip, the journey itself and the first evening in the city are described here . Pictures of the day . The first night in Warsaw, in the luxurious room I had all to myself (it's about the size of my flat!), felt unfortunately quite short, after the previous night's extended meal and meanderings in the unknown city. It was at a time not unlike that of a usual working day that I got up, got ready and went down to breakfast before joining a walking tour of the old town (the area where we were the night before). Meanwhile, others in the Chorus were being packed into an old-fashioned bus for a different sort of tour. More about that later. Warsaw has, of course, a long history but one mostly marked by conquest, destruction and domination by a foreign power. This is particularly true of the last 200 hundred years....

What an eventful and varied time, the past week has been! So much so, that the oldest details are already fading into a mist of oblivion while the present doesn't feel quite real either. Most of Saturday was spent vainly trawling south London in search of floor varnish to protect the wooden floor of my new flat. It's not until Monday that I was finally able to find (Ironically in the shopping centre across the road!) the require products in the required shade and start the process of staining and varnishing the floor. On Sunday I attended a meeting of my reading group to discuss Gypsy Boy . We were lucky to be joined by the author himself and had a very interesting and enjoyable afternoon. Tuesday saw a trip to Ikea (where I bought a sofa ), more floor activities and a final dash at packing my stuff (mostly books, of course) in preparation for the move itself on Wednesday. The effective ministrations of Rocket Van meant that the all business was over and done with in 1h30. Sad...