Well, things are certainly speeding up now that the weather is good and we've had some time to feel out our travel buddies and plans. As always there's much to tell. I'll update a bit and make another more detailed post when i have time (when i go back to boring america). I'll explain my encounter with the Polish medical system in this post.
I got my friend Anna to take me to the doctor way back when my leg was infected. I was really dreading it, but actually with anna's help it was no worse than a trip to urgent care back home, with one exception. I went to the international student office to ask their recommendation where I could go and Ursula made a few calls and told me I could go to a place at 2pm when the doctor would be available and that somebody from the office could go with me. So I came back later and a nice young lady from the office went with me. The inside of the building looked really communist. Very institutional, old, bad colors, weird lighting. I don't really know how to describe it. We found the reception and they had us wait a while. Eventually somebody who worked there walked by and started talking to my interpreter friend for nearly 10 minutes. Then she turned to me and said "sorry, you will have to come back tomorrow before 12 to see the doctor." I was pondering how the hell so many words can be summarized so tersely.
The next day anna came with me. I didn't wanna fuck around so I whipped out my US passport to the receptionist the first chance I got. Apparently it helped because later anna told me it was much easier for me to see the doctor than she had ever seen. I walked up a lot of stairs and waited around in the hallway for 15 minutes to see the doctor. I took off my pants, she poked my wound asked two questions (through anna, which was a little awkward) as a nurse bandaged it then sat down to write a lot of things. It turns out that she gave me 4 prescriptions with some rather cryptic dosage instructions and told me to come back in a week. At the pharmacy down stairs I got 2 antibiotic pills and two ointments. They were just in a box like an OTC, and the pharmacist (after my request) wrote on the box with a pen a '1 x 2' or '1 x 3' apparently indicating the dose, but it still didn't seem so obvious if it meant 1 pill twice per day or once per day you take 2 pills. It turned out I had to take 1 pill every 12 hours, another pill every 24 hours, put on one cream in the morning and afternoon, and a different ointment every night. The night ointment was awful. I'm pretty sure it was a tube of tar. Four fucking medicines seemed a bit much. Back home I would have received one prescription I'm pretty sure. A few weeks later when i managed to get some internet access, I checked to see what the prescriptions were. One of the creams isn't approved for use in the US because it is essentially useless (resistance). Polish people are generally hypochondriacs and ask for a lot of medicines fairly often.
The next week on my appointment I took off my pants again and she looked at it and wrote me another prescription for one of the same pills and told me to come back again in 10 days. Goddammit! I was greatly improved and I didn't think i needed more antibiotics but it's important so i played along. The pills had given me some harsh diarrhea. After a few more days I got a horrible sore throat and my tongue turned black. It was a great pain to swallow. I was pretty scared, but then i vaguely remembered from microbiology class that 'hairy black tongue' was a side effect or long term antibiotic use. I was pretty angry. My leg seemed fine and it was really hell to live with this throat problem so i quit taking the pills and didn't go back to the doctor for my next appointment. After shitting hot snakes for about 3 weeks (NOT FUN) my bowels finally sorted themselves out and now I feel better than ever (except when I'm hung over).
The whole shebang cost about 60 bucks and i think i will get reimbursed if i ever make the time to do the paperwork, so I'm not so much worse for the wear.
Maybe I can talk about my how i resolved my computer problem in the next post...or maybe how I lost my dorm deposit, that's a good story.
One last bit of what I've been up to, I went to Prague and Slovenia for 10 days. It was such a great trip. I was really surprised by how amazing Slovenia is. It helped that I had a super cool guide to introduce me to her family and friends. Then i took a road trip to Budapest with a few friends the next weekend. Unfortunately i broke my second camera in Budapest somehow. I still have some photos, but I've got a backlog on my flickr site. I just uploaded some pics from home base, Wroclaw. I gotta run now, I'm heading for that body of water between Finland and USSR. peace
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
It’s time for another bitchy post
Due to my internet issues this post is a few weeks old but was never published until now! There have been updates, especially to the part about the shit weather and my medical problems. Life has improved immensely since this post so don't feel sorry for me!
I swear Murphy’s Law is so much more intense in Poland than anywhere else in the world. Everything goes wrong, every day, all the time. Take a simple thing like going to class for example. My dormitory is not in a bad location, but not a particularly good one. There is no university campus, only buildings scattered about that you have courses in. Naturally, all of my courses are in bum fuck Egypt. It’s called Koszarowa (for the street), and it’s a former Red army camp in a really far away useless place. They must have chosen to rent these building because it was cheap. Furthermore, the university doesn’t have shuttles there, instead we use the public transport system. Ninety percent of the buses are noisy, rattling, shaky metal shit boxes. Only two per hour go from near my dorm to Koszarowa. It is always crowded and I often have to stand on the 30 minute trip. I had no idea which stop to get off at the first few times I went and got lost. I got off at the right stop and walked the wrong way, or I got off at the wrong stop. This is the middle of nowhere and there are no people in the street to ask. Sometimes the stop names aren’t labeled. Sometimes the stops are named differently on schedules posted in different locations. DAMMIT POLAND. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
The first time I go to find a class I go early because I anticipate getting lost. I end up walking around in a desolate place with warehouse looking buildings and a field. I find another bus stop and wait for it. Eventually and miraculously I do make it to Koszarowa only fifteen minutes late. I consult the three print-outs I had received a week earlier from the international student office, which showed the schedule of courses offered in English. One sheet has the addresses of each course and the room number and instructor. But it says only the institute that offers it and the street, Koszarowa 3. This one address includes at least five large buildings inside the walled compound. Another sheet only says that it is courses for master students (which are the courses we take because they are in English), but it doesn’t say what department or what address. I found out they are all in Koszarowa also. You don’t have to enroll in courses, you just need to show up. I choose the building I think my course is in and search long and hard for room 205. This is difficult because numbers are not in order Poland. It can go 207, 212, 237, 215, 240, 220. Nonsense. I find the room and sit down. There are 6-8 girls speaking Polish and then an instructor arrives late and begins speaking some Polish junk that I don’t understand. I approach and show my schedule, asking if this is the right course. She talks to one of the students and then the student tells me, “other building.” I start the room search again in the next building. When I arrive there are a few other international students waiting outside the door. The motherfucking teacher never even showed up for class. All my time and frustration just for nothing.
I came back for another course the next day. The story is almost the same. Then the next week one of the instructors still doesn’t show up so my friends and I get angry and start asking around. They go to the front desk and the receptionist makes a call. It turns out one of our courses had changed the time to one hour later, yet nobody was informed. There is no fucking effort to communicate a goddamn thing in this place.
My roommate is the only foreign student studying physics in this university of 50+ thousand students. In the first two weeks of classes he has shown up for courses but the instructors never have. Naturally he gets a bit frustrated. He sent me the following text last week: “Mother fuckin poles. I had to wait two hours in between the lessons and nobody showed up. We r not gonna learn or study anything in this country.”
He is the only student in several of his classes, but he said it will be like an independent study.
Also, there is a policy that there must be at least five students in a course or it will be canceled. Because there is no enrollment process you have to wait a few weeks (we only have each course one day per week) to see how many people decide to attend for the semester before you even know if the course will take place. One of my instructors had to travel the second and fourth weeks of classes. We only had three people attend for the first and third week, so we will not decide if the course is to be canceled until the fifth week, but it looks probable. By the sixth week it is obviously too late to join another course to pick up the credits we need. What the hell are we supposed to do? On one of the days my class was canceled I went to check out another class offered at the same time to ask if maybe I could still join. Guess what? I show up at the time and place on the time schedule and there was a class going on in the room. I didn’t want to interrupt to ask what was going on, so I sulked home. I’m guessing they changed the time and/or location of that course also, without telling anybody. Typical Polish communication block.
Also, instructors tell us we can find the syllabus on the school website, which is in all Polish. One instructor told us he left a book on reserve in the library that we needed to photocopy a chapter from (they have 15 books in English). The library did not have the book. Another professor gives us handouts in class but never has enough for every student. GODDAMMIT POLAND.
Aside from this though, all of my Professors are incredibly smart, well-read, and give good lectures. They just exhibit Polish behaviors sometimes. I’ll elaborate a bit on how great the courses later, but this is a post for complaining not commending.
I waste 45 minutes each way to go to a class. That is equal to the time I spend in class. On Wednesday I have a course at 10 then another at 2, then my language course in the city center (far away) at 5pm. So my day goes like this: 9am drag my dead ass out of bed to drink a cheap energy drink and go to the bus stop for the 10am course, kill a few hours between classes, enjoy another good lecture, travel back to my dorm for a 30 minute stopover to make a sandwich, then on to language course, return home by 7 to fix dinner and then drink away my wasted life. Typical Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday I only have one course so there is more time for cooking and drinking.
When we arrived we took a two week intensive Polish language course. Then they told us to meet on a certain day to take a placement test. We were all beginners and we know we need to take the beginning Polish course but still they told us to take the test. We went for the test and it was suuuper fuckin hard. It was for all people who were studying Polish. All of the beginners just looked at it and walked out except for one of my friends and me. The test administrator told us that if we couldn’t understand anything then we could go to room 25. I still took the test. It had some multiple choice along with the fill in the blank, listening section, and essay. Naturally, I finished quickly and went to room 25. They told me to go to the class with the native English speakers. There were about 20 in the class and most of them were friends of mine. I knew I could never learn a thing in this large group of friends. We just goof off, and a language course with more than 10 people is really bad. The next day I went to the office and asked to switch to another section. It was difficult to make them understand why I wanted to and they told me to wait two weeks and come back again to ask because the courses may have people drop out. I knew this was bullshit and I just left feeling defeated once again. The next week they posted the groups of the people who had taken the exam. I was in a different and smaller group than my friends. Hooray! They returned our test to us in the class. I got 24 out of 140. YEAAHHHH!!! The other students were a very strange mix. They were 2 older Spanish guys who I think have lived here for a while, a couple Indians who have lived here for 2 years, a German guy who has lived here for a while, a couple Chinese students who were here last semester, and an Indian girl who I want to punch. I want to punch her because she is a know-it-all who tries to answer every question. Also, she promptly corrects other students, and sometimes will answer questions directed to the teacher. But the class is really a good for me. It’s really challenging. After the first course though, our teacher had to travel for a week and a half (3 class periods!). We combined with another class. Shit, another huge class. I don’t get much attention and I’m totally lost, but I’m not about to be the asshole who slows it down for the whole group of 25.
So that’s the school problems.
And the weather is always shit here. I’ve never lived in a place where the weather was so consistently horrible for 3 months. There is an expression here that translates to something like (excuse the horrible translation) “March weather is a pot,” meaning that all different weather is thrown in and you never know what you will get. Today for example (Tuesday), there was sun in the morning (but very briefly), then hail, rain, sun (for a few minutes), then blizzard like conditions for half an hour, then cold cold wind. This is not an exaggeration. It cycles through EVERY type of weather in a very short period of time some days.
I think I have a staph infection in my leg. It’s killing me, really painful. I am so intimidated by the process of trying to find a Polish doctor. It will take a really long time, be really frustrating, and no English will be spoken. I’ve been trying to do a lot of favors for my Polish friend lately so she will help me out. I helped her move, I keep her supplied with chocolate and I’ve been teaching her loads of American idioms. She says she can go with me Friday, if I survive until then. First though, I need to print off my insurance card, but I have no printer and I just experienced a jump drive meltdown. DAMMIT. All the stress here has forced me to drink and swear like British sailor. I joke about these things with my English friend Emma, who has as much difficulty as me here. My personal favorite joke is (Background for the joke: Germans have a reputation for being super organized even to the point that one of the first phrases people who study German learn translates as “there must be order/organization”) so I say “I totally understand why the Germans wanted to take over Poland. All this chaos on their doorstep must really irritate them. Actually I wish the Germans would take it again so I could get some things accomplished.”
Like I said, Murphy’s law is the only thing I can count on in Poland. I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning because I don’t want to know what will happen next. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I really do enjoy it immensely here, but it can be so challenging.
I swear Murphy’s Law is so much more intense in Poland than anywhere else in the world. Everything goes wrong, every day, all the time. Take a simple thing like going to class for example. My dormitory is not in a bad location, but not a particularly good one. There is no university campus, only buildings scattered about that you have courses in. Naturally, all of my courses are in bum fuck Egypt. It’s called Koszarowa (for the street), and it’s a former Red army camp in a really far away useless place. They must have chosen to rent these building because it was cheap. Furthermore, the university doesn’t have shuttles there, instead we use the public transport system. Ninety percent of the buses are noisy, rattling, shaky metal shit boxes. Only two per hour go from near my dorm to Koszarowa. It is always crowded and I often have to stand on the 30 minute trip. I had no idea which stop to get off at the first few times I went and got lost. I got off at the right stop and walked the wrong way, or I got off at the wrong stop. This is the middle of nowhere and there are no people in the street to ask. Sometimes the stop names aren’t labeled. Sometimes the stops are named differently on schedules posted in different locations. DAMMIT POLAND. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
The first time I go to find a class I go early because I anticipate getting lost. I end up walking around in a desolate place with warehouse looking buildings and a field. I find another bus stop and wait for it. Eventually and miraculously I do make it to Koszarowa only fifteen minutes late. I consult the three print-outs I had received a week earlier from the international student office, which showed the schedule of courses offered in English. One sheet has the addresses of each course and the room number and instructor. But it says only the institute that offers it and the street, Koszarowa 3. This one address includes at least five large buildings inside the walled compound. Another sheet only says that it is courses for master students (which are the courses we take because they are in English), but it doesn’t say what department or what address. I found out they are all in Koszarowa also. You don’t have to enroll in courses, you just need to show up. I choose the building I think my course is in and search long and hard for room 205. This is difficult because numbers are not in order Poland. It can go 207, 212, 237, 215, 240, 220. Nonsense. I find the room and sit down. There are 6-8 girls speaking Polish and then an instructor arrives late and begins speaking some Polish junk that I don’t understand. I approach and show my schedule, asking if this is the right course. She talks to one of the students and then the student tells me, “other building.” I start the room search again in the next building. When I arrive there are a few other international students waiting outside the door. The motherfucking teacher never even showed up for class. All my time and frustration just for nothing.
I came back for another course the next day. The story is almost the same. Then the next week one of the instructors still doesn’t show up so my friends and I get angry and start asking around. They go to the front desk and the receptionist makes a call. It turns out one of our courses had changed the time to one hour later, yet nobody was informed. There is no fucking effort to communicate a goddamn thing in this place.
My roommate is the only foreign student studying physics in this university of 50+ thousand students. In the first two weeks of classes he has shown up for courses but the instructors never have. Naturally he gets a bit frustrated. He sent me the following text last week: “Mother fuckin poles. I had to wait two hours in between the lessons and nobody showed up. We r not gonna learn or study anything in this country.”
He is the only student in several of his classes, but he said it will be like an independent study.
Also, there is a policy that there must be at least five students in a course or it will be canceled. Because there is no enrollment process you have to wait a few weeks (we only have each course one day per week) to see how many people decide to attend for the semester before you even know if the course will take place. One of my instructors had to travel the second and fourth weeks of classes. We only had three people attend for the first and third week, so we will not decide if the course is to be canceled until the fifth week, but it looks probable. By the sixth week it is obviously too late to join another course to pick up the credits we need. What the hell are we supposed to do? On one of the days my class was canceled I went to check out another class offered at the same time to ask if maybe I could still join. Guess what? I show up at the time and place on the time schedule and there was a class going on in the room. I didn’t want to interrupt to ask what was going on, so I sulked home. I’m guessing they changed the time and/or location of that course also, without telling anybody. Typical Polish communication block.
Also, instructors tell us we can find the syllabus on the school website, which is in all Polish. One instructor told us he left a book on reserve in the library that we needed to photocopy a chapter from (they have 15 books in English). The library did not have the book. Another professor gives us handouts in class but never has enough for every student. GODDAMMIT POLAND.
Aside from this though, all of my Professors are incredibly smart, well-read, and give good lectures. They just exhibit Polish behaviors sometimes. I’ll elaborate a bit on how great the courses later, but this is a post for complaining not commending.
I waste 45 minutes each way to go to a class. That is equal to the time I spend in class. On Wednesday I have a course at 10 then another at 2, then my language course in the city center (far away) at 5pm. So my day goes like this: 9am drag my dead ass out of bed to drink a cheap energy drink and go to the bus stop for the 10am course, kill a few hours between classes, enjoy another good lecture, travel back to my dorm for a 30 minute stopover to make a sandwich, then on to language course, return home by 7 to fix dinner and then drink away my wasted life. Typical Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday I only have one course so there is more time for cooking and drinking.
When we arrived we took a two week intensive Polish language course. Then they told us to meet on a certain day to take a placement test. We were all beginners and we know we need to take the beginning Polish course but still they told us to take the test. We went for the test and it was suuuper fuckin hard. It was for all people who were studying Polish. All of the beginners just looked at it and walked out except for one of my friends and me. The test administrator told us that if we couldn’t understand anything then we could go to room 25. I still took the test. It had some multiple choice along with the fill in the blank, listening section, and essay. Naturally, I finished quickly and went to room 25. They told me to go to the class with the native English speakers. There were about 20 in the class and most of them were friends of mine. I knew I could never learn a thing in this large group of friends. We just goof off, and a language course with more than 10 people is really bad. The next day I went to the office and asked to switch to another section. It was difficult to make them understand why I wanted to and they told me to wait two weeks and come back again to ask because the courses may have people drop out. I knew this was bullshit and I just left feeling defeated once again. The next week they posted the groups of the people who had taken the exam. I was in a different and smaller group than my friends. Hooray! They returned our test to us in the class. I got 24 out of 140. YEAAHHHH!!! The other students were a very strange mix. They were 2 older Spanish guys who I think have lived here for a while, a couple Indians who have lived here for 2 years, a German guy who has lived here for a while, a couple Chinese students who were here last semester, and an Indian girl who I want to punch. I want to punch her because she is a know-it-all who tries to answer every question. Also, she promptly corrects other students, and sometimes will answer questions directed to the teacher. But the class is really a good for me. It’s really challenging. After the first course though, our teacher had to travel for a week and a half (3 class periods!). We combined with another class. Shit, another huge class. I don’t get much attention and I’m totally lost, but I’m not about to be the asshole who slows it down for the whole group of 25.
So that’s the school problems.
And the weather is always shit here. I’ve never lived in a place where the weather was so consistently horrible for 3 months. There is an expression here that translates to something like (excuse the horrible translation) “March weather is a pot,” meaning that all different weather is thrown in and you never know what you will get. Today for example (Tuesday), there was sun in the morning (but very briefly), then hail, rain, sun (for a few minutes), then blizzard like conditions for half an hour, then cold cold wind. This is not an exaggeration. It cycles through EVERY type of weather in a very short period of time some days.
I think I have a staph infection in my leg. It’s killing me, really painful. I am so intimidated by the process of trying to find a Polish doctor. It will take a really long time, be really frustrating, and no English will be spoken. I’ve been trying to do a lot of favors for my Polish friend lately so she will help me out. I helped her move, I keep her supplied with chocolate and I’ve been teaching her loads of American idioms. She says she can go with me Friday, if I survive until then. First though, I need to print off my insurance card, but I have no printer and I just experienced a jump drive meltdown. DAMMIT. All the stress here has forced me to drink and swear like British sailor. I joke about these things with my English friend Emma, who has as much difficulty as me here. My personal favorite joke is (Background for the joke: Germans have a reputation for being super organized even to the point that one of the first phrases people who study German learn translates as “there must be order/organization”) so I say “I totally understand why the Germans wanted to take over Poland. All this chaos on their doorstep must really irritate them. Actually I wish the Germans would take it again so I could get some things accomplished.”
Like I said, Murphy’s law is the only thing I can count on in Poland. I’m afraid to get out of bed in the morning because I don’t want to know what will happen next. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I really do enjoy it immensely here, but it can be so challenging.
return from the black hole
I've got so much to tell since the last post. Firstly I must apologize for the long dead period, but I'm in Poland and these modern things such as Internet have been problematic for me here. But now I should have consistent Internet.
I've had complications of all sorts to tell about. The weather just got nice which absolutely transformed this city like nothing I've ever seen. It greatly improved my mood and optimism as well. Check back soon because I hope to catch up a bit before the Easter break. I've planned to go to Prague and then to Slovenia to my friend's home! yipee yayayayayayayayayaya!!!!!!!!!
I've had complications of all sorts to tell about. The weather just got nice which absolutely transformed this city like nothing I've ever seen. It greatly improved my mood and optimism as well. Check back soon because I hope to catch up a bit before the Easter break. I've planned to go to Prague and then to Slovenia to my friend's home! yipee yayayayayayayayayaya!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
I stole bowling shoes and slept on a bridge.
Sorry, maybe the title spoiled the ending, but still don’t you want to know how it happened? Somebody organized a three day ski trip to a place just across the Czech border about 3 hrs away. It was for students from several universities in Wroclaw, but mostly exchange students. I heard about it through the grapevine and managed to sign up. The communication network for everything is pitiful. Nobody bothers to tell anybody anything. There are very crude and sparse notifications through Facebook, a Yahoo! Groups email thing (which I don’t understand, but apparently you must have a Yahoo email account to subscribe), and word of mouth.
Anyway, I managed to get on the list and pay my money. For about $60 we had transportation and two nights stay in a decent hostel with breakfast included (but only before 9:30 as I found out). I knew it was a big group going, but after asking all my friends if they were going I discovered I only had one friend and another person I barely knew that were coming with me. Whoohoo! New friends!
I should take a pause here to discuss the level of Polish public drunkenness because I don’t know where else to bring it up. While waiting for the bus to leave at 6am I saw a guy stumbling around with a can of beer in his hand. Also, it is very common to see rough looking middle-aged guys on the tram drinking a beer in the morning or afternoon. I think Sunday afternoon is prime drunk time. While taking a walk one day I saw people stumbling around on three separate occasions within one hour. My favorite was three old men down by the river. One of them trips on the sidewalk, nearly falls down, shouts some obscenities, and then begins to piss on the edge of the sidewalk. Another good one was told to me by a friend who understands Polish. She said that early one morning on her way to class she walked by a couple old guys on the sidewalk passing a bottle of vodka back and forth as one of them mumbled (translated) “we drink sloooww.”
Back to the ski trip. I tried to sleep a little on the bus ride, but it didn’t work so well. Instead I mostly had chat and chocolate with my Polish friend Anna. Then we stopped at a money changer at the Czech border. I changed about 300 Polish Zlotys, which equals a bit less than $100, in return for around 1,800 Kc. I think they were called cronura or something. I didn’t worry about trying to do the math I just spent the money. Eighteen hundred, I felt filthy rich! I think our group was around 50-70 people, with many Spanish. I was the only American, which is always awesome. With so many people it took foooreeeeevvvveeeeerr to get all our bags from the bus and get checked in to the hostel. We had the entire place filled. In my room was a Spanish guy, Manuel, and two Belgians, Gil and Julian.
A German girl and I ditched the group in order to move faster. We were starving, for food and for snow. She was a good ski buddy because we had the same skill level, but the lift chat was a bit forced and awkward. It was great to be back on skis, but the conditions were no good. There was sooo much fog I couldn’t see 20 yards in some places. Also, it had warmed up a bit the previous week and the snow was all ice or slush. I skied till the lift closed regardless. We went out for dinner with a pretty large group so it took forever and we were all starving. It was worth it though because a friend told me to try a dish that was special to the Czech Republic. It’s called something like Smaczezny Sery, and it’s a big slab of fried cheese. It’s a little like a mozzarella stick, but it’s huge and more liquefied while remaining crusty and breaded on the outside. It approaches the maximum threshold of cheese that can be safely consumed in one sitting, and it’s absolutely genius. I even got into a friendly debate with Anna the Germ about the merit of this human achievement. My point was that the inventor was probably one of the few humans smarter than Einstein. Her argument was that it was probably some drunk guy that accidentally dropped a piece of cheese into hot oil. Also noteworthy is that this fried cheese is the only dish listed in the vegetarian section on the menu. I find this funny because all of my vegetarian friends are vegan and therefore don’t even eat dairy. That evening I was exhausted and took it easy, just chilling out and meeting some people in the hostel bar.
The next day I spent the whole day skiing. This time I found a new partner, Anna the Germ. She told me that Germans often make the mistake of calling themselves Germs instead of Germans and naturally the nickname stuck. She was a snowboarder and liked the same slopes as me, and she was much more fun to converse with on the lift. Again I skied till the lift stopped and my legs were exhausted. Tonight was party night though. First we split up into smaller groups for dinner. I went with my Polish friend Anna and it was a group of seven Polish people and me. Perfect! I’m trying pretty hard to learn Polish and Polish people love that I’m trying. Somewhere along the course of the meal I started speaking with a Borat accent. Borat, the character of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, says a few Polish words such as dzienkuje (thank you), bardzo mi milo (nice to meet you), and a couple others. Apparently Cohen has some Polish people in his family and drew from the language in creating his beloved character from Kazakhstan. Anyway, the people thought it was so funny when I spoke like that, so I couldn’t stop. Now I have this horrible habit that comes out sometimes, especially when I’m drinking. It is addictive and infectious. All of my friends trying to learn Polish immediately cover their ears and tell me to stop for fear of becoming infected with my fun accent, but the Polish people laugh.
We made pre-party number one with the Polish people at the hostel and they told all the jokes they knew. Even though it was in Polish and I only understood the bad words, they were quite funny, especially when they translated some of it for my sake. Then we went bowling with a huge group of people. It was great. I spent the rest of my Czech money on beer and bowled the worst game of my life. I’d rather not mention any numbers. Then the party moved to a club across the street. I went with the crowd and forgot to change my shoes. I was wearing tacky orange and black bowling shoes in Silver Rock Bar. It wasn’t long before my friends started pointing this out to me. They always laughed really hard, except the girl who organized the trip. She didn’t seem to be so entertained by my stupidity. She told me I have to go back right now to return the shoes because we (she) will get in trouble. I was busy shakin’ my groove thang so told her I would do it later, or tomorrow.
At one point I saw a guy I (not from our group) leave and shut the door hard, then another guy seated in a booth jumped over a chair and ran out the door to punch him in the face. The bouncer stopped it quickly and the guy who punched him came back inside and sat down like nothing had happened. A few minutes later the guy who was punched came in and shook the guy’s hand. Strange. They would be 86’ed (thrown out) at any place I’ve ever been at in the USA. Apparently it is pretty common for people in a club to scrap in this part of the world. There is a club called Alibi across the street from my dorm. On a weekend night, my friends say that you can just hang out on the balcony and watch fights. I’m yet to watch fight night.
We were out late. The music was bad. The place was full of muscled up meat-head looking Euro-douches so I was doing my best to encourage the others to go back to the hostel for afterparty festivities. Eventually we headed back, but first had to stop outside the front door to watch the entertainment. The front door was up a short steep slope from the street. The slope was a perfect sheet of unclimbable ice. We watched at least 3 people fall on their ass. Great fun. We took the side path, which was more level. After hanging out in the hall and finishing up our drink supplies we made it to bed. My alarm clock on my mobile phone works roughly 50 percent of the time, so I don’t always set it. I asked Polish Anna to wake me for breakfast at 9am. Instead she woke me at ten minutes till eleven, after breakfast was closed, to ask why I didn’t come to breakfast. Dammit. So I told her to let me sleep. She replied that we have to check out of the room by 11 or pay for another day. Double dammit. Our room was a smelly chaotic mess and I was tired. I put on my clothes and bowling shoes and threw all my shit into my pack. I’m ready. I took my satchel down to the dining room where everybody was piling all their things. Then I set out to find a bottle of water, because my mouth was dryer than the Gobi desert. You would be a fool think that it would be simple to find a bottle of water, as I was. In fact, there are no simple tasks in this part of the world.
The first place to check for anything you might want is a Kiosk. These are little shacks, usually green in color, where an old woman lives out her day selling a ridiculously wide range of goods from a space no bigger than a small closet. In the kiosk you can buy phone cards, tampons, random children’s toys, cleaning supplies, train tickets, magazines, snacks, postcards, stamps, and God only knows what else, but of course you have to know how to ask for whatever you want by name in the local language. These kiosks have windows but they are entirely covered with all the things that are stocked. There is only a tiny hole with a sliding window, at about the height of your belly button, where you can exchange words and money. I found a kiosk. It was not open. Every other building in town was a restaurant, ski shop, or hotel. Really, these are the only businesses here. I don’t want to go sit down at a restaurant to order a glass bottle of water that I cannot take away. I’m a man on the move dammit. I check a couple ski shops and hotel lobbies, but no bottled water or vending machines. I go to a tourist information office that sells a few knick-knacks. It even has a freezer full of ice cream. It’s the middle of fucking winter and I’ve not seen anybody walking around with an ice cream cone! Why do you sell ice cream but no water? Czech Republic seems to be a senseless as Poland.
I ask the tourist info receptionist where I can buy a bottle of water. She says “at the kiosk, but it’s Sunday and they aren’t open today (which I already found out).”
“Where is the nearest gas station?” I ask.
“Two kilometers, that way.”
“Thanks.” I leave. GRRRRR!.
I will not survive that walk without a drink of water. And these bowling shoes aren’t very comfortable for walking in anyway. I keep checking everywhere. The Internet café isn’t open. A little shop that sells lift tickets and a few souvenirs had Absinthe for Christ sake, but no water. I was tempted, but decided against it. Then I find a little shopping center and give it a try. It has a couple shops selling the same snow gear, both are closed. Then I lay my eyes upon the most beautiful sight of my journey. Asia Store convenience store. I think the name is strange, but then see that is run by an Asian family. Ahahaha. I saw another store a day or two before called Asia store and I thought it sold goods imported from Asia. Apparently in this town though, the Asians are the only people with enough business sense and work ethic to be open and sell necessary items on a Sunday. I buy a bottle of water and a bottle of Absinthe (a gift for friends of course, as Absinthe can be bought within Czech but few other places). It’s a pretty nice day and I decide it’s really not worth 50 bucks to me to spend another day skiing on the same slopes with such shitty snow. I chug my water and find a comfortable seat resting against the truss of a pedestrian bridge, overlooking a beautiful stream and mountains. I fell asleep. 20 minutes later the group of my Polish friends, who had been making fun of my shoes pretty steadily, happened to pass by. They laughed a lot and took a few pictures. One of them scolded me and told me to take them back now. I told them, “go away. I’ll do it later. I’m tired.”
In all honesty I was considering keeping the shoes. After all, if you read my previous post about my shoe problem then you have an idea what’s going through my head. In fact I was wearing the broken shit-shoes on this trip and I had one wet foot the entire time. Not fun.
I went back to my rest, then I got cold so I went to a restaurant for some more gooey melty fried cheesy goodness. Then I decided I had to return these damn shoes because this one girl who organized the trip was really bothered by my laziness in returning the shoes. I walked into the bar and snuck past the three people at the bar and into the back room where the four bowling lanes were. I looked around for my shoes, but they had cleaned up and taken them elsewhere. I knew had to ask the bartender who was talking to his two friends at the bar. I walked out slowly. They were all waiting for me to come around the corner staring at my feet…When they saw my bowling shoes they started laughing so hard they nearly fell to the floor. The bartender pointed to where my shoes were and I quickly changed them without saying a word and left.
Then I walked to the slopes to hang out at the outdoor bar. I tried spend the rest of my koruna on Jagermeister while waiting on the lifts to close for the day. Everybody was exhausted. I went for dinner with some of them, but had spent all my money. Then back to the hostel dining room where everybody’s stuff was strewn about with reckless abandon. It looked like a refugee camp. Then the buses came for us. It was a horrible 3 hour trip home. The bus was so hot and smelly. The road was so horrible it was like riding on a wooden rollercoaster and all I wanted to do was sleep. Impossible.
It was a great weekend.
Anyway, I managed to get on the list and pay my money. For about $60 we had transportation and two nights stay in a decent hostel with breakfast included (but only before 9:30 as I found out). I knew it was a big group going, but after asking all my friends if they were going I discovered I only had one friend and another person I barely knew that were coming with me. Whoohoo! New friends!
I should take a pause here to discuss the level of Polish public drunkenness because I don’t know where else to bring it up. While waiting for the bus to leave at 6am I saw a guy stumbling around with a can of beer in his hand. Also, it is very common to see rough looking middle-aged guys on the tram drinking a beer in the morning or afternoon. I think Sunday afternoon is prime drunk time. While taking a walk one day I saw people stumbling around on three separate occasions within one hour. My favorite was three old men down by the river. One of them trips on the sidewalk, nearly falls down, shouts some obscenities, and then begins to piss on the edge of the sidewalk. Another good one was told to me by a friend who understands Polish. She said that early one morning on her way to class she walked by a couple old guys on the sidewalk passing a bottle of vodka back and forth as one of them mumbled (translated) “we drink sloooww.”
Back to the ski trip. I tried to sleep a little on the bus ride, but it didn’t work so well. Instead I mostly had chat and chocolate with my Polish friend Anna. Then we stopped at a money changer at the Czech border. I changed about 300 Polish Zlotys, which equals a bit less than $100, in return for around 1,800 Kc. I think they were called cronura or something. I didn’t worry about trying to do the math I just spent the money. Eighteen hundred, I felt filthy rich! I think our group was around 50-70 people, with many Spanish. I was the only American, which is always awesome. With so many people it took foooreeeeevvvveeeeerr to get all our bags from the bus and get checked in to the hostel. We had the entire place filled. In my room was a Spanish guy, Manuel, and two Belgians, Gil and Julian.
A German girl and I ditched the group in order to move faster. We were starving, for food and for snow. She was a good ski buddy because we had the same skill level, but the lift chat was a bit forced and awkward. It was great to be back on skis, but the conditions were no good. There was sooo much fog I couldn’t see 20 yards in some places. Also, it had warmed up a bit the previous week and the snow was all ice or slush. I skied till the lift closed regardless. We went out for dinner with a pretty large group so it took forever and we were all starving. It was worth it though because a friend told me to try a dish that was special to the Czech Republic. It’s called something like Smaczezny Sery, and it’s a big slab of fried cheese. It’s a little like a mozzarella stick, but it’s huge and more liquefied while remaining crusty and breaded on the outside. It approaches the maximum threshold of cheese that can be safely consumed in one sitting, and it’s absolutely genius. I even got into a friendly debate with Anna the Germ about the merit of this human achievement. My point was that the inventor was probably one of the few humans smarter than Einstein. Her argument was that it was probably some drunk guy that accidentally dropped a piece of cheese into hot oil. Also noteworthy is that this fried cheese is the only dish listed in the vegetarian section on the menu. I find this funny because all of my vegetarian friends are vegan and therefore don’t even eat dairy. That evening I was exhausted and took it easy, just chilling out and meeting some people in the hostel bar.
The next day I spent the whole day skiing. This time I found a new partner, Anna the Germ. She told me that Germans often make the mistake of calling themselves Germs instead of Germans and naturally the nickname stuck. She was a snowboarder and liked the same slopes as me, and she was much more fun to converse with on the lift. Again I skied till the lift stopped and my legs were exhausted. Tonight was party night though. First we split up into smaller groups for dinner. I went with my Polish friend Anna and it was a group of seven Polish people and me. Perfect! I’m trying pretty hard to learn Polish and Polish people love that I’m trying. Somewhere along the course of the meal I started speaking with a Borat accent. Borat, the character of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, says a few Polish words such as dzienkuje (thank you), bardzo mi milo (nice to meet you), and a couple others. Apparently Cohen has some Polish people in his family and drew from the language in creating his beloved character from Kazakhstan. Anyway, the people thought it was so funny when I spoke like that, so I couldn’t stop. Now I have this horrible habit that comes out sometimes, especially when I’m drinking. It is addictive and infectious. All of my friends trying to learn Polish immediately cover their ears and tell me to stop for fear of becoming infected with my fun accent, but the Polish people laugh.
We made pre-party number one with the Polish people at the hostel and they told all the jokes they knew. Even though it was in Polish and I only understood the bad words, they were quite funny, especially when they translated some of it for my sake. Then we went bowling with a huge group of people. It was great. I spent the rest of my Czech money on beer and bowled the worst game of my life. I’d rather not mention any numbers. Then the party moved to a club across the street. I went with the crowd and forgot to change my shoes. I was wearing tacky orange and black bowling shoes in Silver Rock Bar. It wasn’t long before my friends started pointing this out to me. They always laughed really hard, except the girl who organized the trip. She didn’t seem to be so entertained by my stupidity. She told me I have to go back right now to return the shoes because we (she) will get in trouble. I was busy shakin’ my groove thang so told her I would do it later, or tomorrow.
At one point I saw a guy I (not from our group) leave and shut the door hard, then another guy seated in a booth jumped over a chair and ran out the door to punch him in the face. The bouncer stopped it quickly and the guy who punched him came back inside and sat down like nothing had happened. A few minutes later the guy who was punched came in and shook the guy’s hand. Strange. They would be 86’ed (thrown out) at any place I’ve ever been at in the USA. Apparently it is pretty common for people in a club to scrap in this part of the world. There is a club called Alibi across the street from my dorm. On a weekend night, my friends say that you can just hang out on the balcony and watch fights. I’m yet to watch fight night.
We were out late. The music was bad. The place was full of muscled up meat-head looking Euro-douches so I was doing my best to encourage the others to go back to the hostel for afterparty festivities. Eventually we headed back, but first had to stop outside the front door to watch the entertainment. The front door was up a short steep slope from the street. The slope was a perfect sheet of unclimbable ice. We watched at least 3 people fall on their ass. Great fun. We took the side path, which was more level. After hanging out in the hall and finishing up our drink supplies we made it to bed. My alarm clock on my mobile phone works roughly 50 percent of the time, so I don’t always set it. I asked Polish Anna to wake me for breakfast at 9am. Instead she woke me at ten minutes till eleven, after breakfast was closed, to ask why I didn’t come to breakfast. Dammit. So I told her to let me sleep. She replied that we have to check out of the room by 11 or pay for another day. Double dammit. Our room was a smelly chaotic mess and I was tired. I put on my clothes and bowling shoes and threw all my shit into my pack. I’m ready. I took my satchel down to the dining room where everybody was piling all their things. Then I set out to find a bottle of water, because my mouth was dryer than the Gobi desert. You would be a fool think that it would be simple to find a bottle of water, as I was. In fact, there are no simple tasks in this part of the world.
The first place to check for anything you might want is a Kiosk. These are little shacks, usually green in color, where an old woman lives out her day selling a ridiculously wide range of goods from a space no bigger than a small closet. In the kiosk you can buy phone cards, tampons, random children’s toys, cleaning supplies, train tickets, magazines, snacks, postcards, stamps, and God only knows what else, but of course you have to know how to ask for whatever you want by name in the local language. These kiosks have windows but they are entirely covered with all the things that are stocked. There is only a tiny hole with a sliding window, at about the height of your belly button, where you can exchange words and money. I found a kiosk. It was not open. Every other building in town was a restaurant, ski shop, or hotel. Really, these are the only businesses here. I don’t want to go sit down at a restaurant to order a glass bottle of water that I cannot take away. I’m a man on the move dammit. I check a couple ski shops and hotel lobbies, but no bottled water or vending machines. I go to a tourist information office that sells a few knick-knacks. It even has a freezer full of ice cream. It’s the middle of fucking winter and I’ve not seen anybody walking around with an ice cream cone! Why do you sell ice cream but no water? Czech Republic seems to be a senseless as Poland.
I ask the tourist info receptionist where I can buy a bottle of water. She says “at the kiosk, but it’s Sunday and they aren’t open today (which I already found out).”
“Where is the nearest gas station?” I ask.
“Two kilometers, that way.”
“Thanks.” I leave. GRRRRR!.
I will not survive that walk without a drink of water. And these bowling shoes aren’t very comfortable for walking in anyway. I keep checking everywhere. The Internet café isn’t open. A little shop that sells lift tickets and a few souvenirs had Absinthe for Christ sake, but no water. I was tempted, but decided against it. Then I find a little shopping center and give it a try. It has a couple shops selling the same snow gear, both are closed. Then I lay my eyes upon the most beautiful sight of my journey. Asia Store convenience store. I think the name is strange, but then see that is run by an Asian family. Ahahaha. I saw another store a day or two before called Asia store and I thought it sold goods imported from Asia. Apparently in this town though, the Asians are the only people with enough business sense and work ethic to be open and sell necessary items on a Sunday. I buy a bottle of water and a bottle of Absinthe (a gift for friends of course, as Absinthe can be bought within Czech but few other places). It’s a pretty nice day and I decide it’s really not worth 50 bucks to me to spend another day skiing on the same slopes with such shitty snow. I chug my water and find a comfortable seat resting against the truss of a pedestrian bridge, overlooking a beautiful stream and mountains. I fell asleep. 20 minutes later the group of my Polish friends, who had been making fun of my shoes pretty steadily, happened to pass by. They laughed a lot and took a few pictures. One of them scolded me and told me to take them back now. I told them, “go away. I’ll do it later. I’m tired.”
In all honesty I was considering keeping the shoes. After all, if you read my previous post about my shoe problem then you have an idea what’s going through my head. In fact I was wearing the broken shit-shoes on this trip and I had one wet foot the entire time. Not fun.
I went back to my rest, then I got cold so I went to a restaurant for some more gooey melty fried cheesy goodness. Then I decided I had to return these damn shoes because this one girl who organized the trip was really bothered by my laziness in returning the shoes. I walked into the bar and snuck past the three people at the bar and into the back room where the four bowling lanes were. I looked around for my shoes, but they had cleaned up and taken them elsewhere. I knew had to ask the bartender who was talking to his two friends at the bar. I walked out slowly. They were all waiting for me to come around the corner staring at my feet…When they saw my bowling shoes they started laughing so hard they nearly fell to the floor. The bartender pointed to where my shoes were and I quickly changed them without saying a word and left.
Then I walked to the slopes to hang out at the outdoor bar. I tried spend the rest of my koruna on Jagermeister while waiting on the lifts to close for the day. Everybody was exhausted. I went for dinner with some of them, but had spent all my money. Then back to the hostel dining room where everybody’s stuff was strewn about with reckless abandon. It looked like a refugee camp. Then the buses came for us. It was a horrible 3 hour trip home. The bus was so hot and smelly. The road was so horrible it was like riding on a wooden rollercoaster and all I wanted to do was sleep. Impossible.
It was a great weekend.
Friday, March 6, 2009
update
So if you're a regular reader then you may recall that I promised to share some of our inside jokes. Sorry, but you will have to wait. I think I have some more pressing posts about problems that arise in Poland. Seriously, everyday it is something. I am still in the stage where I can just laugh it off, but I think I may snap after a couple more months.
Also, I'm going on a ski trip to Czech Republic for the weekend. So czech back next week for more!
Do widzenia!
Also, I'm going on a ski trip to Czech Republic for the weekend. So czech back next week for more!
Do widzenia!
Don’t mess with Polish toilets
As I mentioned before, we had recently acquired a store of cleaning munitions. We had an old plastic toilet bowl freshener hanging on the edge of our bowl, but its freshening briquette was beyond used up. I set out to replace it! I didn’t think it would do any good hanging on the edge of the bowl above the water level, so I thought maybe I should put it in the tank. I thought I was being clever, but as usual I was not.
A Polish toilet typically has one big flusher button in the center of the tank lid, on the top of the flushing reservoir. Our dorm has especially cheap plastic tanks. I pried off the lid and heard a snap. Upon closer inspection of the lid, I found this to be the most asinine design for a toilet I’d ever come across. Thomas Crapper must be rolling over in his grave! The plunger is a straight pipe connected to the button, but is easily detachable. It lifts straight up and down during flushing action. There is another small, skinny, loose plastic piece with a hook end that is attached to the button. Apparently the hook attaches to a lever on the float, which is a plastic air-filled piece that runs vertically up and down on a plastic pole located at the side of the tank. The little hook-ended piece attaches to the float so that when the water is refilled and the float is back at its highest level, a lever pushes this plastic piece which returns the flushing button from the depressed position. I know the design well enough to draw up plans, take them to China and reverse engineer the toilet. But this would be stupid because the design is absolute stupid shit.
When I realized what an irreversible tragedy I had caused by removing the lid I aborted the original mission and set out simply to fix what I had broken. I spent a goddamn hour messing with the lid trying to put on the lid while simultaneously connecting two separate flimsy plastic pieces to the button. Impossible, I’ve only got 2 hands. You would need a remote controlled robot inside the tank, or possibly a small trained monkey to attach the pieces after the lid is replaced. The monkey would then drown itself as a result, and monkeys aren’t cheap. I tried only connecting the plunger, but then the button was stuck. I was late for meeting up with my friend. She came by and I had to explain to this pretty girl that she had to wait a few minutes, because I was busy playing in the toilet. I finally gave up, left the lid off and put up a note saying, “Stupid American broke the toilet. Remove and replace the plunger by hand for now. I’ll fix later.”
I went for a nice walk and lunch with my friend. When I returned I wanted to destroy the toilet. I could always defecate on the balcony if I had to. Instead I just pushed the lid back on with a snap and went to check my email. When I returned later to test it, miraculously, it worked! I will never remove a Polish toilet tank lid again, and I would advise you to do the same.
A Polish toilet typically has one big flusher button in the center of the tank lid, on the top of the flushing reservoir. Our dorm has especially cheap plastic tanks. I pried off the lid and heard a snap. Upon closer inspection of the lid, I found this to be the most asinine design for a toilet I’d ever come across. Thomas Crapper must be rolling over in his grave! The plunger is a straight pipe connected to the button, but is easily detachable. It lifts straight up and down during flushing action. There is another small, skinny, loose plastic piece with a hook end that is attached to the button. Apparently the hook attaches to a lever on the float, which is a plastic air-filled piece that runs vertically up and down on a plastic pole located at the side of the tank. The little hook-ended piece attaches to the float so that when the water is refilled and the float is back at its highest level, a lever pushes this plastic piece which returns the flushing button from the depressed position. I know the design well enough to draw up plans, take them to China and reverse engineer the toilet. But this would be stupid because the design is absolute stupid shit.
When I realized what an irreversible tragedy I had caused by removing the lid I aborted the original mission and set out simply to fix what I had broken. I spent a goddamn hour messing with the lid trying to put on the lid while simultaneously connecting two separate flimsy plastic pieces to the button. Impossible, I’ve only got 2 hands. You would need a remote controlled robot inside the tank, or possibly a small trained monkey to attach the pieces after the lid is replaced. The monkey would then drown itself as a result, and monkeys aren’t cheap. I tried only connecting the plunger, but then the button was stuck. I was late for meeting up with my friend. She came by and I had to explain to this pretty girl that she had to wait a few minutes, because I was busy playing in the toilet. I finally gave up, left the lid off and put up a note saying, “Stupid American broke the toilet. Remove and replace the plunger by hand for now. I’ll fix later.”
I went for a nice walk and lunch with my friend. When I returned I wanted to destroy the toilet. I could always defecate on the balcony if I had to. Instead I just pushed the lid back on with a snap and went to check my email. When I returned later to test it, miraculously, it worked! I will never remove a Polish toilet tank lid again, and I would advise you to do the same.
This building is strange pt. II – the demon hell scream!
One night at about 2am as I was sleeping like baby, I heard a quick loud crunch of static, then an blood curdling demon hell scream blasting in my room at about 130 decibels. I jumped up terrified, but it stopped and I fell back into my vegetative state. The next day I didn’t even remember this event until my friend Emma asked me, “Did you hear that horrible screech on the intercom in our rooms last night?”
“No, what are you talking about?” I reply.
“I came on in all the rooms last night at around 2am.”
A cold shiver runs down my back as I scream like a little girl. “AHHhhh. Yes, I remember that now!”
A few nights later there was a going away party for some Spanish guy in the common room on the 12th floor. Some of the people from the previous semester are leaving and they have parties. I have never met these people and will never see them again, but a party is a party so I am there. At around 11:30 they began heading out to catch the last tram to city center. This party was moving to the club, but I decided to go to bed. My throat was really sore and I wasn’t in the mood for going out. I get ready for bed and chat with my roommate for a bit, then around 1 or 2am I lay down and turn off the light. About 2 minutes later the intercom blasts, “UWAGA UWAGA,” some angry sounding Polish stuff, then in English “this is an emergency situation, you must leave the building now, do not take the elevators.” Then there is a horrible sound like a 1950’s ambulance siren. I’m wearing only my athletic shorts, so in case the building is actually on fire I grab my most prized possessions in the room, my pimp shades (the green ones I had just bought the night before), and my ridiculous shiny teal and yellow hat. I put on my scarf coat and pink house slippers and go to the lobby. The alarm is going off for at least an hour and the lobby is packed with people. I’m talking with friends and joking around, but some people are really pissed off. My friend Georg is in the reception office while a few older Polish guys are messing with the alarm trying to turn it off. Georg has been here a year and a half already and knows the building well, and he speaks a bit of Polish. When the alarm finally gets shut off I ask Georg what the hell is going on. He says that 8 or so alarms went off at the same time and that’s why it was so much trouble.
I know the reputation of the Spanish, and since they were having a party tonight there is no doubt who is to blame. They have been known to destroy rooms and start fires in the past. The rumors I heard the next day were “one of the Spanish guys punched a smoke alarm.” Also I heard that one of them was smoking inside. I choose to believe the first story.
This place is nuts.
“No, what are you talking about?” I reply.
“I came on in all the rooms last night at around 2am.”
A cold shiver runs down my back as I scream like a little girl. “AHHhhh. Yes, I remember that now!”
A few nights later there was a going away party for some Spanish guy in the common room on the 12th floor. Some of the people from the previous semester are leaving and they have parties. I have never met these people and will never see them again, but a party is a party so I am there. At around 11:30 they began heading out to catch the last tram to city center. This party was moving to the club, but I decided to go to bed. My throat was really sore and I wasn’t in the mood for going out. I get ready for bed and chat with my roommate for a bit, then around 1 or 2am I lay down and turn off the light. About 2 minutes later the intercom blasts, “UWAGA UWAGA,” some angry sounding Polish stuff, then in English “this is an emergency situation, you must leave the building now, do not take the elevators.” Then there is a horrible sound like a 1950’s ambulance siren. I’m wearing only my athletic shorts, so in case the building is actually on fire I grab my most prized possessions in the room, my pimp shades (the green ones I had just bought the night before), and my ridiculous shiny teal and yellow hat. I put on my scarf coat and pink house slippers and go to the lobby. The alarm is going off for at least an hour and the lobby is packed with people. I’m talking with friends and joking around, but some people are really pissed off. My friend Georg is in the reception office while a few older Polish guys are messing with the alarm trying to turn it off. Georg has been here a year and a half already and knows the building well, and he speaks a bit of Polish. When the alarm finally gets shut off I ask Georg what the hell is going on. He says that 8 or so alarms went off at the same time and that’s why it was so much trouble.
I know the reputation of the Spanish, and since they were having a party tonight there is no doubt who is to blame. They have been known to destroy rooms and start fires in the past. The rumors I heard the next day were “one of the Spanish guys punched a smoke alarm.” Also I heard that one of them was smoking inside. I choose to believe the first story.
This place is nuts.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
This building is strange.
One morning after a long night, I woke up around 10 or 11 and went to the kitchenette for some tea and Cheerios when somebody rang our doorbell. I didn’t recognize them, so I assumed they were friends of the Chinese guys, because it’s common for people to stop by to say hello. It’s a friendly building. I was wearing nothing but a pair of athletic shorts, and the man and woman visiting were dressed quite nicely. I didn’t know who they were, and they were in my home at an unreasonable hour so I didn’t really give a shit. I asked them if they wanted tea or anything to drink and then directed them to the Chinese guys’ room, but only Jason was home. They declined drinks, saying they were only stopping by for a minute. I noticed they spoke with a Polish accent. I sat down to enjoy my Cheerios while eavesdropping on their conversation from time to time. At one point early in the conversation I hear the girl ask something like “Do you ever think about the purpose of life? Do you wonder why we are here?”
At this point I stood up from my savory bowl of American goodness to step into Jason’s room to say “Whoah! Isn’t it a bit early in the morning for such heavy questions? You guys really mean business.” Keep in mind that I was still under the impression that these were friends of Jason and I was just making a friendly joke. Nobody even tried to force some laughter so I went back to my cereal. Then I see these people have a book in their hands and it hits me: these are the infamous Polish Jehovah’s Witnesses I’ve heard about who terrorize our building. I had inadvertently let them inside. Dammit Poland! When I realized this I helped Jason politely escort them out. Then we had a brief conversation about our religious persuasions. We both agreed that these people are strange and left it at that.
Another morning I was woken by the doorbell. I answered the door in my shorts and party glasses (yeah the pimp green shades with the lines) and it was the young girl from the building administration giving every room a box of cleaning supplies. Wow, this was cool. It had some window cleaner, dish washing soap, other random Polish chemical cleaning substances, a few strange looking cloth mats, a few rolls of reprocessed newspaper intended to be toilet tissue (I coined the term ‘ass-raper toilet paper’ to describe it), and some toilet freshening briquettes in plastic holders. I was still a little disoriented so I took it quickly and retreated to my room before they could ask for money.
One evening I had a few people over for dinner and drinks when the doorbell rang. It was an older woman from the building administration. I recognized her and was afraid she had come to collect money. Both my roommate and I had received notes to pay the rent, although it was a mistake in my case. She had a form, and despite her lacking skills in the English language, together we had deduced that she had come to inspect our furniture inventory. My roommate had just moved in so this was the standard procedure so he wouldn’t have to replace something he didn’t destroy or steal. It’s my understanding that the Spanish students often destroy property. They have a reputation as the craziest party animals.
Anyway, there were about 5 or 6 of us there having dinner and of course we all stop to watch her. And my roommate Zorro, who likes to joke, starts invoking one of our more silly and persistent jokes about our friend Anders. He introduces him, saying something like this, “This is my friend Anders, he ____________.” You can fill in the blank with any combination of the following: is Jewish, has a mother from Guatemala, is Gabriel Morgan’s cousin, is cheap. We of course find this funny under normal circumstances, but there is a woman ransacking my room, moving tables and opening drawers and cabinets to look for serial numbers. I don’t like it. Also, I have a lot of booze and I am not sure if it is allowed to have it in the building even though the rule is never enforced. She is trying to ask who lives here because we have several people in the room. Still Zorro is trying to introduce Anders (who is 100% Norwegian Atheist by the way). I’m telling him to shut the hell up out of one corner of my mouth while trying to tell the woman that Zorro and I live here. The woman is confused and thinks Anders lives here. Eventually I settled it. I had to sign some paper and she left.
Everyday is exciting. I never know what to expect.
At this point I stood up from my savory bowl of American goodness to step into Jason’s room to say “Whoah! Isn’t it a bit early in the morning for such heavy questions? You guys really mean business.” Keep in mind that I was still under the impression that these were friends of Jason and I was just making a friendly joke. Nobody even tried to force some laughter so I went back to my cereal. Then I see these people have a book in their hands and it hits me: these are the infamous Polish Jehovah’s Witnesses I’ve heard about who terrorize our building. I had inadvertently let them inside. Dammit Poland! When I realized this I helped Jason politely escort them out. Then we had a brief conversation about our religious persuasions. We both agreed that these people are strange and left it at that.
Another morning I was woken by the doorbell. I answered the door in my shorts and party glasses (yeah the pimp green shades with the lines) and it was the young girl from the building administration giving every room a box of cleaning supplies. Wow, this was cool. It had some window cleaner, dish washing soap, other random Polish chemical cleaning substances, a few strange looking cloth mats, a few rolls of reprocessed newspaper intended to be toilet tissue (I coined the term ‘ass-raper toilet paper’ to describe it), and some toilet freshening briquettes in plastic holders. I was still a little disoriented so I took it quickly and retreated to my room before they could ask for money.
One evening I had a few people over for dinner and drinks when the doorbell rang. It was an older woman from the building administration. I recognized her and was afraid she had come to collect money. Both my roommate and I had received notes to pay the rent, although it was a mistake in my case. She had a form, and despite her lacking skills in the English language, together we had deduced that she had come to inspect our furniture inventory. My roommate had just moved in so this was the standard procedure so he wouldn’t have to replace something he didn’t destroy or steal. It’s my understanding that the Spanish students often destroy property. They have a reputation as the craziest party animals.
Anyway, there were about 5 or 6 of us there having dinner and of course we all stop to watch her. And my roommate Zorro, who likes to joke, starts invoking one of our more silly and persistent jokes about our friend Anders. He introduces him, saying something like this, “This is my friend Anders, he ____________.” You can fill in the blank with any combination of the following: is Jewish, has a mother from Guatemala, is Gabriel Morgan’s cousin, is cheap. We of course find this funny under normal circumstances, but there is a woman ransacking my room, moving tables and opening drawers and cabinets to look for serial numbers. I don’t like it. Also, I have a lot of booze and I am not sure if it is allowed to have it in the building even though the rule is never enforced. She is trying to ask who lives here because we have several people in the room. Still Zorro is trying to introduce Anders (who is 100% Norwegian Atheist by the way). I’m telling him to shut the hell up out of one corner of my mouth while trying to tell the woman that Zorro and I live here. The woman is confused and thinks Anders lives here. Eventually I settled it. I had to sign some paper and she left.
Everyday is exciting. I never know what to expect.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
To Wroclaw!
I had stayed in Krakow for about 10 days altogether. Mostly I just relaxed, read, studied Polish, took nice walks, and saw the sights. Notice, I didn’t mention party. Yes, I had a decent respectable life for my days in Krakow, but for the last night I decided that I would go out with a bang. It worked out perfectly that there was a group of 10 beautiful Irish girls staying in my hostel that were happy for me to join them for a night of clubbing. They were all college friends from Trinity College in Dublin on a weekend party trip. They were…umm, how should I say…airhead, high-maintenance kind of girls, but friendly and fun.
I was just hanging around in the hostel common room glancing over my Teach Yourself Polish book when three Englishmen came in and struck up a conversation. They were staying in the cheaper hostel downstairs, which shared the same management and reception. They were nice to me, but hooligans nonetheless. We had a beer and then they went to buy more. They gave me a couple beers and Lay’s paprika flavor chips. Their plan for the evening was to drink as much as possible and make slimy comments to and about pretty women, and they were already off to a good start in the hostel common room. I didn’t want to join them, but they cajoled me into it, saying “Come on Tim, come out with us tonight. You’ve never had a night out with British boys. We will show you how to do it. It will be great.”
I gave in but said only for an hour, and only one or two pubs. Well it turned out to by much longer, because I had trouble getting rid of them. It was still early for going out, maybe 9-10pm. We went into a nearly empty pub and they wanted drinks as fast as the bartender could pour them. One after another. Then the biggest hooligan of the trio (the other two were actually pretty nice and respectable) started talking shit, you know friendly jokes. Stuff like which country speaks proper English, USA or UK. I go right back at him, pointing out his poor grammar, and then saying something like “oh you’re from London; you must be a Man U fan.” Don’t say this to a drunken Brit, it won’t go over well. He promptly showed me his tattoo of his favorite team’s logo, Crystal Palace. He also wanted to fight me. His friends calmed him down. Then this guy gets all friendly again and makes me sing football chants with him, and he tests my memory of the words. They are all horrible things about Germany. One is about English planes shooting down German planes. Another has the line “and if you are from Germany surrender or you die.” I took my leave from these guys at my first opportunity and found the Irish girls at a club. We got a hookah and some drinks and then danced a bit. I got back to the hostel kind of late.
I wasn’t quite in top form in the morning, but I had business to take care of. I had to get a train to Wroclaw this day. I managed to get the ticket in the morning. It was good for any train to Wroclaw for the next 24 hours and they left approximately every 2 hrs. I decided I would go to the hostel and chill out, have a snack, and chat with this really cool girl who worked there. She grew up in Texas, but her parents are Polish immigrants and she returned to Poland for University. Anyway, I decided to take the 1:47 train. I was drinking my juice and drawing some great doodles in the guestbook chronicling my love of Krakow. I totally lost track of the time. I looked at my watch and it was 1:30. It took at least 15 minutes to walk to the train station. I grabbed my bags and said goodbye before setting out, walking at a blistering pace with my heavy bags. I didn’t know where the platforms were, or even which platform my train was leaving from. I found a platform, which had a train. I asked a woman in a uniform if this was my train, speaking in charades sign language. I only understood that this wasn’t it in her long reply. I saw only two other trains in the station so I set out for them. It was 1:46. I had one minute to catch my train. None of the signs under the platform have the name of the city I’m headed for. Only one of them is leaving at the time on my ticket, to Jelenia Gora. This name sounds vaguely familiar from my guide book, and I think it is in the direction of my city. I run up the stairs and see a man in uniform about 20m away looking up and down the train. He is the only person still standing on this platform and I pause, heart racing, and look him in the eye as he blows a whistle. I make a move to a door on the train and pull it open and hop on. Less than 2 seconds later the train starts moving. “Oh shit, I really hope this is the right train. I may have problems. I’m so stupid. I could have just waited 2 hours for the next one and would have been certain to ride the right train,” I scold myself.
I know my ticket is for a seat. I’m in the sleeper section though, and I don’t know which direction to go, or even if it is possible to move between carriages. I begin walking through the train and pass a girl. I show her my ticket and ask where to go. She barely speaks English and is just as clueless as me. I keep walking and find some seats a few cars ahead. I’m carrying heavy bags and sweating a lot. I find a section with a few open seats and enter. I’m pretty worried at this point. I decided just to wait until the ticket inspector comes to find out if I had taken the right train and sat in the right section. It was a very suspenseful 30 minute wait. When he came by and checked everyone’s ticket. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary when he looked at my ticket so I gave a big sigh of relief.
Now I had to make sure I got off at the right stop. Trains only stop for a minute or two at each station and there is no announcement at the stop. I knew the trip would be around 5 hours. I was exhausted from staying out late the night before, but terrified to fall asleep because I would miss my stop. It wasn’t a very enjoyable train ride.
So I made it to Wroclaw dworek glowny (main station) and had scribbled down in my note pad the instructions to reach my dorm from the email my international exchange coordinator sent “no problem I think that is rather easy to get the Olowek from station you can just take the tram number 9 direction Sepolno you get off on 8 stop. The address of dormitory *called Olowek Plac Grunwaldzki 30 *the dormitory is very famous so it will be easy to reach it.”
Obviously this woman doesn’t know me well. I can set out on a simple journey and make it very difficult and get very lost. I found tram number nine and was attempting to buy a ticket from the automatic machine, but was unable to because I didn’t have exact change and the machine had no change. I didn’t care I need a damn ticket but it wouldn’t allow me to overpay for my ticket. I asked some young people what I was doing wrong and they had change and bought a ticket for me. They were so nice. They wouldn’t let me pay them back. I told them I was moving to Olowek and they said they were going that way as well. My stop was only two stops after theirs. Woohoo! Easy like I was told. We chat while on the train. They are students at another University, and they taught me a couple words of Polish and what foods I should try, which I promptly forgot. I got off at the second stop after they got off. I was not on Grunwaldzki, so I asked another person which way. They pointed and I went. I came to ul. Grunwaldzki and looked for number 30. “This neighborhood is really shitty,” I thought. I had been warned that the building was build in soviet style and was a bit run down, but this neighborhood was very dark and unwelcoming to say the least, and it certainly didn’t look like dorms. I arrived in the evening hours but I was told that there would be a reception to give me a key. When I found ul. Grunwaldzki 30 and went inside it was an apartment building with nobody in sight. I rang the first doorbell I came to, hoping that maybe this is how receptionists work in Poland, after all this country does things a bit differently, and in ways I don’t usually find agreeable. An old, angry voice barked through the door, “Slucham?” I know this is how to ask “what do you want?” I say in Polish that I don’t speak Polish, and then in English - I’m an exchange student wanting to move in. Silence…he just ignored me and went back to his business. Then the entrance from the street opens and a guy is dragging a supremely drunk guy into the building. They are both older, around 50 years. The drunken one can hardly stand up and they are yelling at each other. The sober-looking one starts pushing the drunk up the stairs, yells one last thing in his face and leaves. I also leave a quickly as possible. “Shit, what do I do? Where do I go? If I really do have to live here then I’m going to say fuck this I’m not going to study in Poland, I’m going home,” is what I mumbled to myself. I’ve got nobody to contact here. I consider consulting my guidebook to find a hostel for the night and sorting the rest out tomorrow. Again I’m cursing myself for not being more prepared for my inevitable tendency to get lost, especially for this dire case where I know nobody and have all my heavy possessions on my back. Well, I did see a big mall a couple blocks away. I could maybe find some internet there and I may find a phone number for somebody I can call for advice. I look for Wi-Fi in the mall by asking the young woman at information. She speaks no English…dammit Poland. She seems to understand ‘Wi-Fi internet’ though and says “Saturn.” I go to this electronics store and ask. They send me to the second level where I ask again, finally I found the person who speaks English. He tells me they don’t have internet, but the coffee shop across from the store does. I go there and find I have a contact from this university on Facebook. He’s been very friendly and gave his information and offered help to people coming, although he was away on vacation. I called him and told him what I was doing. He told me I had the wrong building, and I realized that I was looking on ulica Grunwaldzki 30 instead of plac Grunwaldzki 30. I had found that this asshole city had made the equivalent of an Elm Street and Elm Avenue right next to each other and I had confused the two. I sighed in relief and blushed with rage and embarrassment. I had to walk another half mile and was sweating, but finally made it to my building. It turns out I got off one stop too soon based on the advice from the strangers who bought me a tram ticket, then I had found the wrong street.
So when I got to the building I had more difficulty understanding what the receptionist was trying to tell me. It seemed important and I judged their message to be something like ‘I will stay in room 77 for one night and I will have to see building administration the next day before 5pm and they will make me move to another room.’ Whatever, they gave me a key and I finally had a bed to sleep on.
I was just hanging around in the hostel common room glancing over my Teach Yourself Polish book when three Englishmen came in and struck up a conversation. They were staying in the cheaper hostel downstairs, which shared the same management and reception. They were nice to me, but hooligans nonetheless. We had a beer and then they went to buy more. They gave me a couple beers and Lay’s paprika flavor chips. Their plan for the evening was to drink as much as possible and make slimy comments to and about pretty women, and they were already off to a good start in the hostel common room. I didn’t want to join them, but they cajoled me into it, saying “Come on Tim, come out with us tonight. You’ve never had a night out with British boys. We will show you how to do it. It will be great.”
I gave in but said only for an hour, and only one or two pubs. Well it turned out to by much longer, because I had trouble getting rid of them. It was still early for going out, maybe 9-10pm. We went into a nearly empty pub and they wanted drinks as fast as the bartender could pour them. One after another. Then the biggest hooligan of the trio (the other two were actually pretty nice and respectable) started talking shit, you know friendly jokes. Stuff like which country speaks proper English, USA or UK. I go right back at him, pointing out his poor grammar, and then saying something like “oh you’re from London; you must be a Man U fan.” Don’t say this to a drunken Brit, it won’t go over well. He promptly showed me his tattoo of his favorite team’s logo, Crystal Palace. He also wanted to fight me. His friends calmed him down. Then this guy gets all friendly again and makes me sing football chants with him, and he tests my memory of the words. They are all horrible things about Germany. One is about English planes shooting down German planes. Another has the line “and if you are from Germany surrender or you die.” I took my leave from these guys at my first opportunity and found the Irish girls at a club. We got a hookah and some drinks and then danced a bit. I got back to the hostel kind of late.
I wasn’t quite in top form in the morning, but I had business to take care of. I had to get a train to Wroclaw this day. I managed to get the ticket in the morning. It was good for any train to Wroclaw for the next 24 hours and they left approximately every 2 hrs. I decided I would go to the hostel and chill out, have a snack, and chat with this really cool girl who worked there. She grew up in Texas, but her parents are Polish immigrants and she returned to Poland for University. Anyway, I decided to take the 1:47 train. I was drinking my juice and drawing some great doodles in the guestbook chronicling my love of Krakow. I totally lost track of the time. I looked at my watch and it was 1:30. It took at least 15 minutes to walk to the train station. I grabbed my bags and said goodbye before setting out, walking at a blistering pace with my heavy bags. I didn’t know where the platforms were, or even which platform my train was leaving from. I found a platform, which had a train. I asked a woman in a uniform if this was my train, speaking in charades sign language. I only understood that this wasn’t it in her long reply. I saw only two other trains in the station so I set out for them. It was 1:46. I had one minute to catch my train. None of the signs under the platform have the name of the city I’m headed for. Only one of them is leaving at the time on my ticket, to Jelenia Gora. This name sounds vaguely familiar from my guide book, and I think it is in the direction of my city. I run up the stairs and see a man in uniform about 20m away looking up and down the train. He is the only person still standing on this platform and I pause, heart racing, and look him in the eye as he blows a whistle. I make a move to a door on the train and pull it open and hop on. Less than 2 seconds later the train starts moving. “Oh shit, I really hope this is the right train. I may have problems. I’m so stupid. I could have just waited 2 hours for the next one and would have been certain to ride the right train,” I scold myself.
I know my ticket is for a seat. I’m in the sleeper section though, and I don’t know which direction to go, or even if it is possible to move between carriages. I begin walking through the train and pass a girl. I show her my ticket and ask where to go. She barely speaks English and is just as clueless as me. I keep walking and find some seats a few cars ahead. I’m carrying heavy bags and sweating a lot. I find a section with a few open seats and enter. I’m pretty worried at this point. I decided just to wait until the ticket inspector comes to find out if I had taken the right train and sat in the right section. It was a very suspenseful 30 minute wait. When he came by and checked everyone’s ticket. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary when he looked at my ticket so I gave a big sigh of relief.
Now I had to make sure I got off at the right stop. Trains only stop for a minute or two at each station and there is no announcement at the stop. I knew the trip would be around 5 hours. I was exhausted from staying out late the night before, but terrified to fall asleep because I would miss my stop. It wasn’t a very enjoyable train ride.
So I made it to Wroclaw dworek glowny (main station) and had scribbled down in my note pad the instructions to reach my dorm from the email my international exchange coordinator sent “no problem I think that is rather easy to get the Olowek from station you can just take the tram number 9 direction Sepolno you get off on 8 stop. The address of dormitory *called Olowek Plac Grunwaldzki 30 *the dormitory is very famous so it will be easy to reach it.”
Obviously this woman doesn’t know me well. I can set out on a simple journey and make it very difficult and get very lost. I found tram number nine and was attempting to buy a ticket from the automatic machine, but was unable to because I didn’t have exact change and the machine had no change. I didn’t care I need a damn ticket but it wouldn’t allow me to overpay for my ticket. I asked some young people what I was doing wrong and they had change and bought a ticket for me. They were so nice. They wouldn’t let me pay them back. I told them I was moving to Olowek and they said they were going that way as well. My stop was only two stops after theirs. Woohoo! Easy like I was told. We chat while on the train. They are students at another University, and they taught me a couple words of Polish and what foods I should try, which I promptly forgot. I got off at the second stop after they got off. I was not on Grunwaldzki, so I asked another person which way. They pointed and I went. I came to ul. Grunwaldzki and looked for number 30. “This neighborhood is really shitty,” I thought. I had been warned that the building was build in soviet style and was a bit run down, but this neighborhood was very dark and unwelcoming to say the least, and it certainly didn’t look like dorms. I arrived in the evening hours but I was told that there would be a reception to give me a key. When I found ul. Grunwaldzki 30 and went inside it was an apartment building with nobody in sight. I rang the first doorbell I came to, hoping that maybe this is how receptionists work in Poland, after all this country does things a bit differently, and in ways I don’t usually find agreeable. An old, angry voice barked through the door, “Slucham?” I know this is how to ask “what do you want?” I say in Polish that I don’t speak Polish, and then in English - I’m an exchange student wanting to move in. Silence…he just ignored me and went back to his business. Then the entrance from the street opens and a guy is dragging a supremely drunk guy into the building. They are both older, around 50 years. The drunken one can hardly stand up and they are yelling at each other. The sober-looking one starts pushing the drunk up the stairs, yells one last thing in his face and leaves. I also leave a quickly as possible. “Shit, what do I do? Where do I go? If I really do have to live here then I’m going to say fuck this I’m not going to study in Poland, I’m going home,” is what I mumbled to myself. I’ve got nobody to contact here. I consider consulting my guidebook to find a hostel for the night and sorting the rest out tomorrow. Again I’m cursing myself for not being more prepared for my inevitable tendency to get lost, especially for this dire case where I know nobody and have all my heavy possessions on my back. Well, I did see a big mall a couple blocks away. I could maybe find some internet there and I may find a phone number for somebody I can call for advice. I look for Wi-Fi in the mall by asking the young woman at information. She speaks no English…dammit Poland. She seems to understand ‘Wi-Fi internet’ though and says “Saturn.” I go to this electronics store and ask. They send me to the second level where I ask again, finally I found the person who speaks English. He tells me they don’t have internet, but the coffee shop across from the store does. I go there and find I have a contact from this university on Facebook. He’s been very friendly and gave his information and offered help to people coming, although he was away on vacation. I called him and told him what I was doing. He told me I had the wrong building, and I realized that I was looking on ulica Grunwaldzki 30 instead of plac Grunwaldzki 30. I had found that this asshole city had made the equivalent of an Elm Street and Elm Avenue right next to each other and I had confused the two. I sighed in relief and blushed with rage and embarrassment. I had to walk another half mile and was sweating, but finally made it to my building. It turns out I got off one stop too soon based on the advice from the strangers who bought me a tram ticket, then I had found the wrong street.
So when I got to the building I had more difficulty understanding what the receptionist was trying to tell me. It seemed important and I judged their message to be something like ‘I will stay in room 77 for one night and I will have to see building administration the next day before 5pm and they will make me move to another room.’ Whatever, they gave me a key and I finally had a bed to sleep on.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Complaints.
Yeah, I've got to do it. The pressure has been building. I need a good rant on everything in Poland that has been frustrating me.
Sometimes I wonder if the powers that be are conspiring against me. My watch battery died about 2 days after I arrived. Two years of faithful service and my watch dies just as I arrive in a place where I don't know the language and will have difficulty explaining my predicament. But it actually wasn’t so hard to find a new battery.
I bought some shoes a few months ago, and they are the only pair I brought because I like to pack light. I've been doing a lot of walking. On my right shoe, at the ball of my foot, the rubber cracked. The shoes were waterproof when I got them, but as you may expect a crack compromises this wonderful characteristic. It has been snowing every goddamn day for the past week. The snow is beautiful, but there is slush all over the sidewalks, and the crack slowly leaks water. I went to a big mall today to buy some new shoes, but was disappointed. I could not find an affordable pair of shoes that was comfortable and not for douche bags. I don't understand this place. There are many stores that have a wide variety of clothes for good prices. All the shoe stores stock only shoes that are too dressy, to douche baggy, useless for walking in snow, not my size, or less comfortable than walking barefoot. I wasted a couple hours checking a half dozen shoe stores. I don't like shopping. Today may be the first time I missed USA, where I can just go to Kohl's and buy a normal pair of comfortable, non-douche bag shoes.
A few nights ago I went out to a bar/club with friends, after we had the obligatory dorm pre-party. Like usual I had a few too many and forget bits and pieces of how the evening went. I do know that I had fun though, and I have seen my friends' photos to prove it. In the morning when I turned on my camera to see if I had captured any embarrassing photos of my friend Anders (we've got a blackmail photo contest), it made a strange grinding sound when the lens extended and then shut itself off after six seconds. This was about a week ago and I have yet to find a place to fix my camera. This is not an easy task. I've asked several places already and have been given business cards for other places that are difficult to find and calling them is useless because I don't speak Polish. Every day is a goddamn scavenger hunt for something.
The post offices here are horrible. It takes an hour of standing in line, no matter which one you go to and no matter what time you go. Then you have to try to explain what you want...
My dormitory has 16 floors and around 450 residents (I'm guessing). It has four washing machines and zero dryers. You have to sign up to reserve a time slot to do your laundry...about two days in advance, but they are free. You have to plan your life around when you want to wash your clothes. Madness I tell you. The washing machines are difficult to use for the first time. The symbols on the knobs are written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I reserved 2 machines and when I got the key to the laundry room I found one of the machines was still in use. A few minutes later a German girl came and said she was confused. The front loading machine had stopped in mid-cycle and was full of soapy water. It had locked itself shut. I had already started my other machine and didn't put in shirts in that load. So I had my time slot and couldn't wash my shirts. DAMMIT, what a waste of my time. I wanted to curse the German girl up and down, but restrained myself.
There aren't American style Laundromats here. I found a laundry place and dropped off a few things there. It seemed really expensive. I found out when I picked the stuff up that it was only a dry cleaner. I found a polish Laundromat when I had to wash some more things and hadn't planned it two days before. At the Polish Laundromat there is a front desk with an attendant. You pay them directly and they give you a token that is inserted into the machine to start it. They will put it in the dryer for you, so I just come back 2-3 hours later to pick up my clothes. It isn't cheap. I cannot believe that in this country you can buy a decent meal for $3, a good bottle of vodka for $9, a normal wage for a part time job is around $3/hr (and possibly less), but to wash and dry one load of clothes is $8!
I ordered a cheeseburger at little take away window shop. It was miserable. It was some sort of a flatbread kebab type thing with a scrawny piece of thin processed dog meat, a sticky yellow plasticky thing that might be labeled cheese if you could find it in a store, loads of red and white cabbage, cold canned corn, and some other strange things I've intentionally forgotten. Never again ask for the cheeseburger, especially when the McDonalds is just 50 yards away.
This building I'm living in is nearly 100% foreign students. There is a reception at the front operated by old polish people who speak no English. Every person living here is required to leave the key at the 23-hour reception (it's closed between the hours of 2-3am). When you return you must show your dorm residence card with your room number to retrieve your key. There is only one key for each room. Yes, that's right. One key, two people, share. So what do you do if you’re leaving your room to go to a friend’s room within the building? Lock your room and take the key? Then you're roomie will be locked out if he returns. Leave it unlocked and hope nobody steals your stuff? Or go to the reception and drop off the key, go upstairs to say hi to your friend and then return to the reception before going back to your room? It is soo inconvenient. I'm going to smuggle my key out and make a copy. I mentioned the reception is closed from 2-3am. This is a very common hour to return home from a night out. That means there is no way to enter the building if you stumble home from the club at this time. It is damn cold outside too. However, there are two clubs across the street from our dorm. So if you come during this time the only choice is to hit up one last bar before calling it a night.
I've been a bit sick lately. Many people here have also been feeling under the weather. I've got a cough and sore throat all the time for almost a week now.
Well, this has been a long boring pessimistic entry....for that I'm sorry. I really do love Poland but sometimes I just want to punch somebody when shit keeps going wrong and when polish life is difficult.
The next posts I will tell about my difficulty in arriving here from Krakow. I will also begin sharing some of the running jokes my friends and I have. We're becoming well-known in the building for some of these inside jokes, and they are hilarious.
Sometimes I wonder if the powers that be are conspiring against me. My watch battery died about 2 days after I arrived. Two years of faithful service and my watch dies just as I arrive in a place where I don't know the language and will have difficulty explaining my predicament. But it actually wasn’t so hard to find a new battery.
I bought some shoes a few months ago, and they are the only pair I brought because I like to pack light. I've been doing a lot of walking. On my right shoe, at the ball of my foot, the rubber cracked. The shoes were waterproof when I got them, but as you may expect a crack compromises this wonderful characteristic. It has been snowing every goddamn day for the past week. The snow is beautiful, but there is slush all over the sidewalks, and the crack slowly leaks water. I went to a big mall today to buy some new shoes, but was disappointed. I could not find an affordable pair of shoes that was comfortable and not for douche bags. I don't understand this place. There are many stores that have a wide variety of clothes for good prices. All the shoe stores stock only shoes that are too dressy, to douche baggy, useless for walking in snow, not my size, or less comfortable than walking barefoot. I wasted a couple hours checking a half dozen shoe stores. I don't like shopping. Today may be the first time I missed USA, where I can just go to Kohl's and buy a normal pair of comfortable, non-douche bag shoes.
A few nights ago I went out to a bar/club with friends, after we had the obligatory dorm pre-party. Like usual I had a few too many and forget bits and pieces of how the evening went. I do know that I had fun though, and I have seen my friends' photos to prove it. In the morning when I turned on my camera to see if I had captured any embarrassing photos of my friend Anders (we've got a blackmail photo contest), it made a strange grinding sound when the lens extended and then shut itself off after six seconds. This was about a week ago and I have yet to find a place to fix my camera. This is not an easy task. I've asked several places already and have been given business cards for other places that are difficult to find and calling them is useless because I don't speak Polish. Every day is a goddamn scavenger hunt for something.
The post offices here are horrible. It takes an hour of standing in line, no matter which one you go to and no matter what time you go. Then you have to try to explain what you want...
My dormitory has 16 floors and around 450 residents (I'm guessing). It has four washing machines and zero dryers. You have to sign up to reserve a time slot to do your laundry...about two days in advance, but they are free. You have to plan your life around when you want to wash your clothes. Madness I tell you. The washing machines are difficult to use for the first time. The symbols on the knobs are written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I reserved 2 machines and when I got the key to the laundry room I found one of the machines was still in use. A few minutes later a German girl came and said she was confused. The front loading machine had stopped in mid-cycle and was full of soapy water. It had locked itself shut. I had already started my other machine and didn't put in shirts in that load. So I had my time slot and couldn't wash my shirts. DAMMIT, what a waste of my time. I wanted to curse the German girl up and down, but restrained myself.
There aren't American style Laundromats here. I found a laundry place and dropped off a few things there. It seemed really expensive. I found out when I picked the stuff up that it was only a dry cleaner. I found a polish Laundromat when I had to wash some more things and hadn't planned it two days before. At the Polish Laundromat there is a front desk with an attendant. You pay them directly and they give you a token that is inserted into the machine to start it. They will put it in the dryer for you, so I just come back 2-3 hours later to pick up my clothes. It isn't cheap. I cannot believe that in this country you can buy a decent meal for $3, a good bottle of vodka for $9, a normal wage for a part time job is around $3/hr (and possibly less), but to wash and dry one load of clothes is $8!
I ordered a cheeseburger at little take away window shop. It was miserable. It was some sort of a flatbread kebab type thing with a scrawny piece of thin processed dog meat, a sticky yellow plasticky thing that might be labeled cheese if you could find it in a store, loads of red and white cabbage, cold canned corn, and some other strange things I've intentionally forgotten. Never again ask for the cheeseburger, especially when the McDonalds is just 50 yards away.
This building I'm living in is nearly 100% foreign students. There is a reception at the front operated by old polish people who speak no English. Every person living here is required to leave the key at the 23-hour reception (it's closed between the hours of 2-3am). When you return you must show your dorm residence card with your room number to retrieve your key. There is only one key for each room. Yes, that's right. One key, two people, share. So what do you do if you’re leaving your room to go to a friend’s room within the building? Lock your room and take the key? Then you're roomie will be locked out if he returns. Leave it unlocked and hope nobody steals your stuff? Or go to the reception and drop off the key, go upstairs to say hi to your friend and then return to the reception before going back to your room? It is soo inconvenient. I'm going to smuggle my key out and make a copy. I mentioned the reception is closed from 2-3am. This is a very common hour to return home from a night out. That means there is no way to enter the building if you stumble home from the club at this time. It is damn cold outside too. However, there are two clubs across the street from our dorm. So if you come during this time the only choice is to hit up one last bar before calling it a night.
I've been a bit sick lately. Many people here have also been feeling under the weather. I've got a cough and sore throat all the time for almost a week now.
Well, this has been a long boring pessimistic entry....for that I'm sorry. I really do love Poland but sometimes I just want to punch somebody when shit keeps going wrong and when polish life is difficult.
The next posts I will tell about my difficulty in arriving here from Krakow. I will also begin sharing some of the running jokes my friends and I have. We're becoming well-known in the building for some of these inside jokes, and they are hilarious.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
difficulty with photos
I have some decent photos that will add nicely to this blog, but I'm having problems getting them to work. I'm starving now so I'll get to it later. Until then you can check out my flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/birthdaybeard
http://flickr.com/photos/birthdaybeard
We like to party
Vienna has museums everywhere, and most of them sound really interesting. I scrawled down my shortlist on my pocket notepad and asked the hostel receptionist to circle them on my map. I know that reading about somebody visiting museums is ridiculously boring, but I must oblige myself for as briefly as possible. If you’re not interested skip down a few paragraphs and the party will start.
So, my memory is really foggy from all the…stimulus overload…and the drinking, but mostly the latter. One day I went to the modern art museum something at an art school. It usually has two rotating exhibits. I visited it, but I’m not exactly sure if it was actually the museum I was trying to find. It cost about $10 admission to see one exhibit called “shooting into the corner” and another about stolen stuff from the Jews. I walked in and saw a huge air cannon pointed into the corner of a big white room. The corner is smeared with a crimson, greasy, chunky substance oozing down to a massive pile of sludge at the bottom. I’m reading about it, it shoots 20 lb wax plugs into the corner, and was made my Anish Kapoor, who also made the famous shiny Chicago jellybean in Millennium Park. Then a guy starts walking around in the exhibit near the cannon, moving some cardboard shells. Then he turns on an air compressor and loads the cannon……..BOOM!!splat. This is the only sound that, aside from the humming compressor, has disturbed the still air. My jaw drops. “haaaaa Holy shit” I say to myself. That was well worth the price of admission, and thankfully, because the Jew stuff upstairs was incredibly boring.
I also found a small museum of medical history. It was hidden in a university med school. It had great stuff, bloodletting instruments, early prosthesis’s (I’m not sure how to say the plural of prosthesis. It rarely comes up, and only in very sad stories I imagine.), super detailed and old wax models used for teaching doctors, and the original hand washing stations used by Semmelweis, who discovered that hand washing in the hospital delivery room decreased infections and infant mortality. OK, so I may be the only nerd who likes this. It was tricky to find and nobody else was there. It was badass though.
At my hostel I met a girl named Anna from South Dakota who teaches English in Cairo (so strange I know, because I didn’t realize people came from South Dakota). Together we went ice skating in a park. It was in two outdoor rinks with a path connecting them. On one side of the park was a massive and beautiful gothic building called Rathaus, on another was the Austrian Parliament. This was so perfect. I think it will long be one of my fondest memories of Europe. Afterward we went to a huge art museum full of Flemish and Italian paintings, mostly scenes of religious stuff and Greek mythology. There was some Egyptian stuff that was really cool, the best being a mummified crocodile!!! The fusion of two of the most badass things, crocodiles and mummies, really made that museum almost worth the 3 hours of wandering through works that all looked similar to me. I enjoyed Anna’s company more than I enjoyed most of the art. Apparently I’m an uncultured stupid American. Oh well. Let’s party.
We rounded up whoever we could at the hostel, played some cards and drank some beer while deciding how the evening should proceed. An Australian guy said he thought he knew a place nearby. I waited in the lobby while a couple people had to go get ready. I saw a Japanese guy (named Masa) quietly reading in the corner occasionally rolling another cig with American Spirit tobacco. He had already been doing this for two days straight, so I was determined he must join us. I thought it was odd to see a Japanese guy smoking a cheap, American hipster brand of tobacco. It turns out it was the cheapest stuff he could find in Germany.
We set out with a party of about 10 or more. It was snowing as it had been doing continuously for at least 3 days now. Of course a snowball fight erupted in the street. I hung back with the Masa. His quiet confidence and long hair gave me the impression he had something interesting to tell, and of course he did. He had worked himself to death in Japan for a couple years saving money for a 15 month voyage to everywhere (in Asia, Africa, and Europe at least). He was on month number 13 and had just come from Germany, where he missed his bus and hitchhiked, alone in the freezing cold with his own thumb. Damn. I had hitchhiked the easy way. I commended him doubly. I was even more amazed that he managed to get around so well because his English was really poor.
We made it to the place and it wasn’t what we expected. It was an empty pub. So somebody else said maybe they knew a place. Let’s take the train. So along the way somewhere, and this is where my memory begins to degrade, one of the French guys in our posse overhears some young Swiss guys speaking French. He quickly befriends them and asks where the party is. They say they were on their way there “just follow us!” So it takes at least 45 minutes on the train, that’s far and I don’t know where we are or where we’re going (this will be important later). There are more young people on this train drinking beer and laughing. Everybody gets off at the same stop. It seems we have found the right party. It turns out to be a club in a basement in some random building. The entrance is in the courtyard and it is packed with people trying to get in. We go to a grubby little pub nearby to have a drink while we wait for the queue to thin out a little. Eventually a couple of the girls with us get antsy and go on a recon mission to see if they can get in and find out if it’s good. Their simple instructions are “if we don’t come back then the club is good.”
A half hour or so later without hearing back we decide to go for it. There is still a crowd trying to get in so it takes a while. I enter, pay the cover of 6 Euro and have a look around. Then join the queue for coat check with my Japanese pal. It takes ages. While we’re waiting in the disgusting stairwell to get to the coat check upstairs a girl behind us starts dancing and singing to her friend in English “we like to party, yeah we like to party.” I start talking to her and we hit it off. She’s an Austrian student name Aoifa. We finally dump our coat and make our way to the packed bar. I ask what they like and her friend says tequila shots. “They do like to party” I think to myself. We have shots and a beer and I’m off dancing with Aoifa for a couple hours (maybe more, as I said my memory is a bit foggy). So, eventually 3 or 4 am rolls around and we must get going. But after glancing around it seems my group had ditched me. I couldn’t find anyone that looked familiar. I went to retrieve my coat and hope for a brilliant idea, because I had no idea where I was after all.
“Ahhhh, thank goodness!” I saw a Canadian girl that had come with us. She had also budded up with a person she met in the club and lost our group. We agreed to try to make it back to the hostel. After we walked about 2 blocks back toward a train stop we realized that we didn’t know where to go and the trains don’t start again until 5am anyway. We’re on an empty street, tired and intoxicated, holding up our map against a road sign when two young guys approach. One looks very familiar. “Yes, he is the one who struck up a conversation about Barack Obama with me in the restroom,” I think to myself.
He tells us where to go, but reminds us that we have some time to kill before the trains run. He coaxes us to join him and his friend in their flat across the street to have a beer while we wait. It seemed a little sketchy and was probably not a wise decision, but whatever. I’m in Europe.
I make sure he knows we can’t stay long, only one beer. We talk about music and he blasts some 90’s brit pop loud enough that we have to shout to converse and the neighbors came to tell him to turn it down. We talked about traveling. He spent a considerable amount of time in Africa and had written a book about it, which he showed us. Unfortunately, it was in German and therefore useless to me. The Canadian girl gave me look so I knew she wanted to go. She went to the restroom to pour out her beer while I chugged mine so we could be on our way. We stopped by a street meat vendor on the way to the train and had a raucous fun time with some young people, joking about the quality of the food and Borat while the vendor cooked up some sausages. Mine wasn’t fully cooked and I choked down half of it as a hangover prevention technique. I was wobbly and covered in bread crumbs while eating on the train. The man across from me was wearing a suit and reading a paper.
We made it to the hostel by 7am and I showered and checked out because I had to do it before 10. Then I lied down with my pack on a couch in the common room and did my best passed out wookie impression until noon.
So, my memory is really foggy from all the…stimulus overload…and the drinking, but mostly the latter. One day I went to the modern art museum something at an art school. It usually has two rotating exhibits. I visited it, but I’m not exactly sure if it was actually the museum I was trying to find. It cost about $10 admission to see one exhibit called “shooting into the corner” and another about stolen stuff from the Jews. I walked in and saw a huge air cannon pointed into the corner of a big white room. The corner is smeared with a crimson, greasy, chunky substance oozing down to a massive pile of sludge at the bottom. I’m reading about it, it shoots 20 lb wax plugs into the corner, and was made my Anish Kapoor, who also made the famous shiny Chicago jellybean in Millennium Park. Then a guy starts walking around in the exhibit near the cannon, moving some cardboard shells. Then he turns on an air compressor and loads the cannon……..BOOM!!splat. This is the only sound that, aside from the humming compressor, has disturbed the still air. My jaw drops. “haaaaa Holy shit” I say to myself. That was well worth the price of admission, and thankfully, because the Jew stuff upstairs was incredibly boring.
I also found a small museum of medical history. It was hidden in a university med school. It had great stuff, bloodletting instruments, early prosthesis’s (I’m not sure how to say the plural of prosthesis. It rarely comes up, and only in very sad stories I imagine.), super detailed and old wax models used for teaching doctors, and the original hand washing stations used by Semmelweis, who discovered that hand washing in the hospital delivery room decreased infections and infant mortality. OK, so I may be the only nerd who likes this. It was tricky to find and nobody else was there. It was badass though.
At my hostel I met a girl named Anna from South Dakota who teaches English in Cairo (so strange I know, because I didn’t realize people came from South Dakota). Together we went ice skating in a park. It was in two outdoor rinks with a path connecting them. On one side of the park was a massive and beautiful gothic building called Rathaus, on another was the Austrian Parliament. This was so perfect. I think it will long be one of my fondest memories of Europe. Afterward we went to a huge art museum full of Flemish and Italian paintings, mostly scenes of religious stuff and Greek mythology. There was some Egyptian stuff that was really cool, the best being a mummified crocodile!!! The fusion of two of the most badass things, crocodiles and mummies, really made that museum almost worth the 3 hours of wandering through works that all looked similar to me. I enjoyed Anna’s company more than I enjoyed most of the art. Apparently I’m an uncultured stupid American. Oh well. Let’s party.
We rounded up whoever we could at the hostel, played some cards and drank some beer while deciding how the evening should proceed. An Australian guy said he thought he knew a place nearby. I waited in the lobby while a couple people had to go get ready. I saw a Japanese guy (named Masa) quietly reading in the corner occasionally rolling another cig with American Spirit tobacco. He had already been doing this for two days straight, so I was determined he must join us. I thought it was odd to see a Japanese guy smoking a cheap, American hipster brand of tobacco. It turns out it was the cheapest stuff he could find in Germany.
We set out with a party of about 10 or more. It was snowing as it had been doing continuously for at least 3 days now. Of course a snowball fight erupted in the street. I hung back with the Masa. His quiet confidence and long hair gave me the impression he had something interesting to tell, and of course he did. He had worked himself to death in Japan for a couple years saving money for a 15 month voyage to everywhere (in Asia, Africa, and Europe at least). He was on month number 13 and had just come from Germany, where he missed his bus and hitchhiked, alone in the freezing cold with his own thumb. Damn. I had hitchhiked the easy way. I commended him doubly. I was even more amazed that he managed to get around so well because his English was really poor.
We made it to the place and it wasn’t what we expected. It was an empty pub. So somebody else said maybe they knew a place. Let’s take the train. So along the way somewhere, and this is where my memory begins to degrade, one of the French guys in our posse overhears some young Swiss guys speaking French. He quickly befriends them and asks where the party is. They say they were on their way there “just follow us!” So it takes at least 45 minutes on the train, that’s far and I don’t know where we are or where we’re going (this will be important later). There are more young people on this train drinking beer and laughing. Everybody gets off at the same stop. It seems we have found the right party. It turns out to be a club in a basement in some random building. The entrance is in the courtyard and it is packed with people trying to get in. We go to a grubby little pub nearby to have a drink while we wait for the queue to thin out a little. Eventually a couple of the girls with us get antsy and go on a recon mission to see if they can get in and find out if it’s good. Their simple instructions are “if we don’t come back then the club is good.”
A half hour or so later without hearing back we decide to go for it. There is still a crowd trying to get in so it takes a while. I enter, pay the cover of 6 Euro and have a look around. Then join the queue for coat check with my Japanese pal. It takes ages. While we’re waiting in the disgusting stairwell to get to the coat check upstairs a girl behind us starts dancing and singing to her friend in English “we like to party, yeah we like to party.” I start talking to her and we hit it off. She’s an Austrian student name Aoifa. We finally dump our coat and make our way to the packed bar. I ask what they like and her friend says tequila shots. “They do like to party” I think to myself. We have shots and a beer and I’m off dancing with Aoifa for a couple hours (maybe more, as I said my memory is a bit foggy). So, eventually 3 or 4 am rolls around and we must get going. But after glancing around it seems my group had ditched me. I couldn’t find anyone that looked familiar. I went to retrieve my coat and hope for a brilliant idea, because I had no idea where I was after all.
“Ahhhh, thank goodness!” I saw a Canadian girl that had come with us. She had also budded up with a person she met in the club and lost our group. We agreed to try to make it back to the hostel. After we walked about 2 blocks back toward a train stop we realized that we didn’t know where to go and the trains don’t start again until 5am anyway. We’re on an empty street, tired and intoxicated, holding up our map against a road sign when two young guys approach. One looks very familiar. “Yes, he is the one who struck up a conversation about Barack Obama with me in the restroom,” I think to myself.
He tells us where to go, but reminds us that we have some time to kill before the trains run. He coaxes us to join him and his friend in their flat across the street to have a beer while we wait. It seemed a little sketchy and was probably not a wise decision, but whatever. I’m in Europe.
I make sure he knows we can’t stay long, only one beer. We talk about music and he blasts some 90’s brit pop loud enough that we have to shout to converse and the neighbors came to tell him to turn it down. We talked about traveling. He spent a considerable amount of time in Africa and had written a book about it, which he showed us. Unfortunately, it was in German and therefore useless to me. The Canadian girl gave me look so I knew she wanted to go. She went to the restroom to pour out her beer while I chugged mine so we could be on our way. We stopped by a street meat vendor on the way to the train and had a raucous fun time with some young people, joking about the quality of the food and Borat while the vendor cooked up some sausages. Mine wasn’t fully cooked and I choked down half of it as a hangover prevention technique. I was wobbly and covered in bread crumbs while eating on the train. The man across from me was wearing a suit and reading a paper.
We made it to the hostel by 7am and I showered and checked out because I had to do it before 10. Then I lied down with my pack on a couch in the common room and did my best passed out wookie impression until noon.
To Vienna!
I found this website called Ride4cents. It’s a rideshare thing where you find a carpool on long drives. So I was hanging out in Krakow for a while with no particular place to go and I saw a ride to Vienna for 15 euros! I’m there! I signed up and sent the email and in 2 days I was waiting for Maciek by some bus stop on a cold morning. Obviously I didn’t know what to expect and was a little...well I was doubting the sanity of my judgment. Maciek was a really cool guy. He had finished school recently and was going to Vienna for a 3rd round job interview with an engineering firm. I had a super cheap and comfortable ride with an English speaking guide and chauffeur. I really like this digital hitchhiking thing. So after about 5 or 6 hours of pleasant conversation he tells me that maybe this would be the best place for me to get out. He said the city center was that way, and pointed to his left. I set out on a walk. Then I thought, “oh shit. I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here.” Some of you who know me well enough already know that I am usually in this sort of situation where I am clueless, but this time I was worried that it was too much. I was really cursing myself pretty harshly with that voice in my head that’s always running. I found a bus stop and was looking for that location on my map. But, as I found out a couple days later, I was looking on my map for the word “bus stop” instead of the name of the actual stop. In addition, I was not even close enough to the city center to be on the map of Vienna that I had in my guidebook. To be completely honest and to further embarrass myself, I didn’t even know what language they spoke in Vienna. Yeah, I’m the stupid American.
I walked for ages, and the city just kept getting more beautiful. I went the direction that had the most people and eventually, I knew I had hit pay dirt when I could turn a circle in one place and see three McDonalds restaurants. I was certain I had triangulated the exact center of the city, and quite possibly the center of Europe. God bless American cultural imperialism. Now I could find myself on my useless little map and walk for a few more miles to a hostel that sounded good as described in my guidebook. Once I had the burden off my shoulders of not being totally lost I strolled along down a pedestrian shopping street. I was sure that this must be the most beautiful city with the most beautiful people in the world. I felt unfit to walk this cobbled street. Even the few beggars there were wearing nicer clothes than my slacks and sweater!
I walked for ages, and the city just kept getting more beautiful. I went the direction that had the most people and eventually, I knew I had hit pay dirt when I could turn a circle in one place and see three McDonalds restaurants. I was certain I had triangulated the exact center of the city, and quite possibly the center of Europe. God bless American cultural imperialism. Now I could find myself on my useless little map and walk for a few more miles to a hostel that sounded good as described in my guidebook. Once I had the burden off my shoulders of not being totally lost I strolled along down a pedestrian shopping street. I was sure that this must be the most beautiful city with the most beautiful people in the world. I felt unfit to walk this cobbled street. Even the few beggars there were wearing nicer clothes than my slacks and sweater!
Blog title
In case you're wondering about the title of this blog, and you should, there is a little story behind it.
At a welcome party at No Name Club I met a cool girl named Regan from North Carolina who studied here last semester. In our first conversation in between Mad Dog shots (rasberry syrup, Tobasco, vodka, 5 zlotych or <$2, their cheapest shot), we discussed the difficulties of getting settled in Poland and the constant frusterations inherent in every small task that make this place so much fun. An excerpt went roughly like this:
"So you must have something you always say when you get frusterated and just want to give up while at the post office or shopping," I asked.
"Yeah, I often find myself saying 'Dammit Poland'." She replied.
"Oh really, how do you say it in Polish?"
"No I just say in English, Dammit Poland!"
"haha that's good. I think I'm going to get a lot of use out of that."
At a welcome party at No Name Club I met a cool girl named Regan from North Carolina who studied here last semester. In our first conversation in between Mad Dog shots (rasberry syrup, Tobasco, vodka, 5 zlotych or <$2, their cheapest shot), we discussed the difficulties of getting settled in Poland and the constant frusterations inherent in every small task that make this place so much fun. An excerpt went roughly like this:
"So you must have something you always say when you get frusterated and just want to give up while at the post office or shopping," I asked.
"Yeah, I often find myself saying 'Dammit Poland'." She replied.
"Oh really, how do you say it in Polish?"
"No I just say in English, Dammit Poland!"
"haha that's good. I think I'm going to get a lot of use out of that."
Saturday, February 14, 2009
phrasebook
It had been about two years since I’d been outside the U.S. before I came to Poland and I had forgotten that feeling of being surrounded in a language that I can’t understand. I had forgotten how intimidating it can be just to do simple things. The truth is that English is understood and spoken at a pretty good level in general. I think especially so in Cracow because of the large numbers of tourists. Nevertheless, the first words spoken to me are always in Polish, which I take to be a complement that I could be mistaken for a Pol. Naturally, since I plan to be in Poland for about 6 months I want to learn the language the best I can no matter how useless it will probably end up being to me in the future. I have been studying Polish (lazily for about 3 weeks) from a lesson book my friend Patrick, oddly enough, had lying around. I immediately found that of the several dozen of words I could read, I could speak or understand none of them when spoken. Teaching myself a language from a book wasn’t good enough, but I was in Poland so I feel like if I can just get my foot in the door with a few phrases I can pick up a bit as I go along. But my book was not really designed to be of use as a phrase book so I set out to find one in Cracow.
I want to take this opportunity to say what great people there are working at this hostel. If a person makes and attempt to be friendly with the staff here at the Mosquito Hostel, I’m sure they will find nobody friendlier in all of Poland. Also, they are helpful when looking for various things not typically searched for by the two day tourist. I was able to find a battery for my watch (baterie do zegarka), the post office (poczte), stores to compare the price of mobile phones (komorka), a weekend flea market, and quiet Polish restaurants. They are also happy to teach me a few words of Polish everyday and are patient in assisting my pronunciation.
Back to my search for the phrasebook. I went to a bookstore in a big mall and they didn’t have an English to Polish phrasebook, then I went to a smaller English book store called American Bookstore. They also lacked phrase books. I headed for another English bookstore that was listed in my guidebook. I searched and then asked an employee. He checked the shelf where the 3 copies listed in the digital inventory were supposed to be located, but none were there. At this point I was thinking there are two possibilities why it is so damn hard to find a Polish phrasebook. Either nobody thinks Polish is worth knowing unless you are born in Poland, or Cracow is suffering from a shortage of phrasebooks of massive proportions. I asked the employee if he could think of any place that may have such books and was drawn into conversation with an old Englishman. He’d been in Cracow over 10 years teaching at a University, and was happy to tell me all about Poland and good places to see. We bought some beers and started walking around drinking…
I eventually just gave up and got a Polish-English phrasebook. It’s difficult to use because it is…for Polish.
I want to take this opportunity to say what great people there are working at this hostel. If a person makes and attempt to be friendly with the staff here at the Mosquito Hostel, I’m sure they will find nobody friendlier in all of Poland. Also, they are helpful when looking for various things not typically searched for by the two day tourist. I was able to find a battery for my watch (baterie do zegarka), the post office (poczte), stores to compare the price of mobile phones (komorka), a weekend flea market, and quiet Polish restaurants. They are also happy to teach me a few words of Polish everyday and are patient in assisting my pronunciation.
Back to my search for the phrasebook. I went to a bookstore in a big mall and they didn’t have an English to Polish phrasebook, then I went to a smaller English book store called American Bookstore. They also lacked phrase books. I headed for another English bookstore that was listed in my guidebook. I searched and then asked an employee. He checked the shelf where the 3 copies listed in the digital inventory were supposed to be located, but none were there. At this point I was thinking there are two possibilities why it is so damn hard to find a Polish phrasebook. Either nobody thinks Polish is worth knowing unless you are born in Poland, or Cracow is suffering from a shortage of phrasebooks of massive proportions. I asked the employee if he could think of any place that may have such books and was drawn into conversation with an old Englishman. He’d been in Cracow over 10 years teaching at a University, and was happy to tell me all about Poland and good places to see. We bought some beers and started walking around drinking…
I eventually just gave up and got a Polish-English phrasebook. It’s difficult to use because it is…for Polish.
arrival
I should begin this with a disclaimer: I don’t like when travel logs begin with details of the flight/train/bus there. I typically find it tedious, pointless and boring. That being said, I think for my journey here it was a bit different, which may be the trap that causes so many boring travel stories. I feel that my first impression of Poland was shaped a bit by my journey here so I will discuss it anyway.
So to begin, en route to Krakow I stopped in Munich, which is only an hour and a half away by air. So the weather in Krakow was bad, foggy and snowy, but I didn’t know about it and apparently the pilot didn’t either because we still went for it. When the announcement to secure your tray tables for descent came over the speaker in German, Polish, and then a shorter version in English, it was also mentioned that maybe we couldn’t land but we will circle for one attempt in any case. “Ahh shit” I sighed to the woman next to me who I had exchanged a few words of broken English with earlier. “Yes, shit” she replied.
So we took a few hard right turns, hit some harsh turbulence here and there, then dropped like a rock for a very long second and a half. After slowing the descent a bit the plane’s gear drops and we eventually get low enough I can see the ground. It is so foggy I can barely see the wing tips, so we are damn close to touchdown, then we just blast off back into the thick white clouds. A moment later the pilot announces in that permanently calm and confident, matter-of-factly pilot’s voice something like “the weather conditions are not good. we will land in Warsaw in about an hour. I don’t know what we will do with you but we will make some calls, maybe we can get you on a bus to Krakow.”
We land in Warsaw and are told to retrieve our baggage and they will send a bus for us. Great! Simple! I follow the crowd and wait around in an empty baggage claim area for 30 minutes. Then the conveyer starts, people snatch their things and start booking it for who knows where. I do as they do. Most of them speak Polish and have been asking questions to people in uniforms. So we headed to the street-side arrivals doors and see a mob of people waiting at the cold, cold bus stop. I think my flight wasn’t the only one diverted here. I ask a person or two from our flight what the hell is going on and determine we are clueless all around. A Polish news crew tried to interview me because I must have been the most desperate looking person of the whole lot. She rattled of something fast and confusing in Polish to which I interrupted with an “ehhhhh I don’t know.” She left quickly. We will not know which bus is for us but we get a guy at the information desk inside to make a call for us and he says wait with the angry mob in the cold…
Every bus that pulls in gets swarmed. People push to get their bag in the cargo box and squeeze onto the bus. I have 6 months worth of stuff, a big 45 pound pack and a smaller backpack. I haven’t slept in at least 26 hours so I’m cranky and I cannot bring myself to brave the mob to get on a bus that may not even take me to the right place. After waiting for maybe an hour, the crowd was a bit smaller, and then two buses came in at once. Covertly, I sneaked to the second to stow my things and board. Nobody said a word to me or asks for a ticket so I think I’m good to go. Not many are on this bus yet except for some rowdy Pols passing a bottle of vodka around laughing. I wish I could join in but I don’t speak Polish (yet) and it seemed like the longest day of my life. So I asked if this bus went to Krakow. “Yes, this Krakow bus,” one man said after refilling his girlfriends plastic cup with coke and vodka. Five uncomfortable hours later we pulled into the Krakow airport. The information desk receptionist told me there was a free shuttle to the city center just down the street. I found the stop, but after a half hour of hanging around in the cold trying to get on buses I gave up and followed a group of people to the train stop.
So far I had such difficulty in getting to Krakow, and the day was so long for me that I was in a pretty pissy mood. As soon as I walked out of the train station in Krakow toward my hostel near the city center I saw the streets in the quiet of night and snow and quickly forgot any ill feelings toward my new home of Poland.
So to begin, en route to Krakow I stopped in Munich, which is only an hour and a half away by air. So the weather in Krakow was bad, foggy and snowy, but I didn’t know about it and apparently the pilot didn’t either because we still went for it. When the announcement to secure your tray tables for descent came over the speaker in German, Polish, and then a shorter version in English, it was also mentioned that maybe we couldn’t land but we will circle for one attempt in any case. “Ahh shit” I sighed to the woman next to me who I had exchanged a few words of broken English with earlier. “Yes, shit” she replied.
So we took a few hard right turns, hit some harsh turbulence here and there, then dropped like a rock for a very long second and a half. After slowing the descent a bit the plane’s gear drops and we eventually get low enough I can see the ground. It is so foggy I can barely see the wing tips, so we are damn close to touchdown, then we just blast off back into the thick white clouds. A moment later the pilot announces in that permanently calm and confident, matter-of-factly pilot’s voice something like “the weather conditions are not good. we will land in Warsaw in about an hour. I don’t know what we will do with you but we will make some calls, maybe we can get you on a bus to Krakow.”
We land in Warsaw and are told to retrieve our baggage and they will send a bus for us. Great! Simple! I follow the crowd and wait around in an empty baggage claim area for 30 minutes. Then the conveyer starts, people snatch their things and start booking it for who knows where. I do as they do. Most of them speak Polish and have been asking questions to people in uniforms. So we headed to the street-side arrivals doors and see a mob of people waiting at the cold, cold bus stop. I think my flight wasn’t the only one diverted here. I ask a person or two from our flight what the hell is going on and determine we are clueless all around. A Polish news crew tried to interview me because I must have been the most desperate looking person of the whole lot. She rattled of something fast and confusing in Polish to which I interrupted with an “ehhhhh I don’t know.” She left quickly. We will not know which bus is for us but we get a guy at the information desk inside to make a call for us and he says wait with the angry mob in the cold…
Every bus that pulls in gets swarmed. People push to get their bag in the cargo box and squeeze onto the bus. I have 6 months worth of stuff, a big 45 pound pack and a smaller backpack. I haven’t slept in at least 26 hours so I’m cranky and I cannot bring myself to brave the mob to get on a bus that may not even take me to the right place. After waiting for maybe an hour, the crowd was a bit smaller, and then two buses came in at once. Covertly, I sneaked to the second to stow my things and board. Nobody said a word to me or asks for a ticket so I think I’m good to go. Not many are on this bus yet except for some rowdy Pols passing a bottle of vodka around laughing. I wish I could join in but I don’t speak Polish (yet) and it seemed like the longest day of my life. So I asked if this bus went to Krakow. “Yes, this Krakow bus,” one man said after refilling his girlfriends plastic cup with coke and vodka. Five uncomfortable hours later we pulled into the Krakow airport. The information desk receptionist told me there was a free shuttle to the city center just down the street. I found the stop, but after a half hour of hanging around in the cold trying to get on buses I gave up and followed a group of people to the train stop.
So far I had such difficulty in getting to Krakow, and the day was so long for me that I was in a pretty pissy mood. As soon as I walked out of the train station in Krakow toward my hostel near the city center I saw the streets in the quiet of night and snow and quickly forgot any ill feelings toward my new home of Poland.
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