17 Dec, 2009
Celebrate Frederic Chopin’s birthday
Posted by: Michał In: famous Poles|travel|travel tip
This one is for music lovers planning a trip to Warsaw.
To mark the bicentennial of Frederic Chopin’s birth (yes, he was Polish), the Polish capital has published a Chopin audio city guide.
Available in eight languages, the guide will take tourists to some key locations related to the great pianist.
You can download the audio guide from Warsaw City Hall’s website (in English and other languages) or you can get in while walking through the capital as there will be several ‘music banks’ with special codes, which you can scan using your mobile – and get the audio files this way.
If you are a Chopin fan, you’ll be pleased to know that next year over 2,000 evens are planned across the globe to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth – and over half of them will take place various cities across Poland.
Just remember that – as Chopin was born to a French father and Polish mother – his name will often be spelt in two different ways in Poland. Frederic Chopin is the internationally recognised spelling of course, but Poles will refer to him as Fryderyk Szopen. The pronunciation is similar, just swap the French accent for a Polish one 
So, if you haven’t been yet, it looks like 2010 might be a good year to visit Poland at last!
Frederic Chopin Statue in Warsaw – image © Patrick F via Flickr, used under Creative Commons licence
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