Warsaw, Poland

A zippy 3 hour train took us up to the country's capital. It so happened that we arrived on the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. This proved a huge eye-opener as we absorbed the city's violent history, most engagingly from a young Pole called Majek who appointed himself our guide. Precocious with his knowledge if over-ambitious with his English, we took it in turns to decipher his exuberant story-telling.

We'd been warned to expect little of Warsaw but it was a real highlight for us. Even more so when we found out the city had been completely flattened then swiftly re-built after the war, guided by photos and paintings of its previous image.