Bar mleczny etc (milk bars, herring and donuts part 2)

It stopped snowing, but it stayed cold. The last time we endured an April snow was in Minneapolis over 25 years ago.

But we were refreshed and warmed by fish and doughnuts and set off for the Polin Museum.  Along the way, a brisk Flanieren through one of Warsaw's many, many gardens (often post-palatial).

The imposing exterior of the Polin Museum.

The exhibits cover a thousand-plus years of Jewish life in Poland.  As with the Muzeum Farmacji, there were exhibits that your humble co-authors nerded out over (garlic for health! an amulet! ha-Kohen!), but the overall effect was sort of disjointed.  Probably because the museum directors felt obligated to explain everything.  The main exhibits are arranged chronologically, from 900 - present, and we ducked out in 1939.  It was just too much.  Note for Mur: the Frankists were given a fair anount of real eatate, and yes, they have Olga T's books in all the bookshops. A dopey aside: here is medieval Warsaw and its Jewish quarter, which is exactly where we are staying (the blue part).

We went down to the Łazienki gardens and parks, where we had planned to go tomorrow, but it was late, much was closed, and it was still cold!  So we went to the famous Warsaw institution, the milk bar (bar mleczny), which I always thought was a Communist-era worker's canteen (I recall eating in one in Prague, another freezing evening a billion years ago), but it turns out they date back to the 1890s and probably (it occurred to us) inspired the dairy restaurants of the East Coast.

This one ("Prasowy") dates back to 1954 (it has been refurbished, although we walked past a couple yesterday which were not). 

Imagine an Ikea restaurant aesthetic, but stripped of consumption and commerce, frequented by everyday people in the neighborhood (and their dogs--the dogs of Warsaw are another "tail"), and meatballs replaced with pierogis, latkes, and hearty, delicious beet and cabbage soups.  And a complimentary glass of kompot!