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.