Being in Warsaw is like being in two different cities. See:
Same place. The huge spatial differences only occur about a ten minutes walk from one another. It was really strange and interesting walking from the huge skyscrapers into the Old Town. It's so cheap for corporations to have satellite headquarters in Poland now that all of them have been snapping up any free available land and workers. There is construction everywhere in the city, and even more giant skyscrapers on the way.
It was really only whilst I was walking around Old Town that I felt I may have belonged there once, long ago. None of the buildings are taller than five stories, and they're all different colors with different ornate decorations on the windows and doorways. The Old Town Square is all paved in cobblestone, and there aren't any cars throughout the district. The restaurants are all tiny and cute (and cheap) and the people are all very nice.
Old Town at night
The only thing that was hard was the fact that I didn't speak Polish. Obviously I knew this would be somewhat of an issue, but I wasn't quite ready for what happened at the Milk Bar we went to. Milk Bars are kind of a Communist relic in Poland, old cafeterias with really cheap food. We went in, ordered, and gave our receipt to the ladies at the window. They kept yelling at us in Polish, which was... difficult. I had NO idea what they were saying, and wasn't getting any food. Luckily a nice older lady negotiated with them for us and we all eventually got the food that we ordered. I think.
I wasn't able to find anything about my family there this time, unfortunately. We did go to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, but there was very little there about the Jewish population during this time. My friend (he lives in Warsaw) told me that there would be a Jewish Museum opening next year and that I should come back and see it... I intend to.
I believe the whole old town was imported recently from somewhere else, to make up for the fact that the *old* old town was completely leveled in the war. Is this right? Yes, I can imagine trying to navigate Polish would be tricky -- I lived in the Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn for the last four years and all I ever learned was "thank you," "yes," and "zywiec" (the beer). Pretty pathetic, but that language is hard!!
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