Erasmus in Warsaw

  Halloween is up on us! – said by the great monitor Hubie Dubois – and it really was! The girls started the day with shopping, while I was catching up with my blog. In the afternoon we started creating our costumes. When I say costume, I mean paint job on our faces which I’m not quite sure if I consider as a costume but whatever… We started the night at a place – sorry but I have no idea about the address – and went to Niebo from there. It was something like a 5 min walk so the bar was really not that far away. When we got there, there was a massive line I believe it took us something like 30min just to get in. People were pushing each other and trying to get ahead of each other; it was not a particularly good experience. When we finally got to the security check the girls could enter, but I was stopped. A guy next to me stopped me, then asked me if I was with the girls when I said yes, he let me in before him. Such a nice action. The party was great in the beginning when it wa...

“It’s a new dawn, It’s a new day, It’s a new life” for Michael Bublé, but for us it’s a new visitor haha. Today Sari’s girlfriend has arrived! Before picking her up we had a nice long rest and cooked some lunch. We hardly got the lunch ready when we had to leave for the train. The day before yesterday’s train experience was so nice, I decided we should pick her up by train. It had ecological benefits, financial benefits, and we also would have had time to check out some planes take off, and land, if the train wasn’t late by 15 minutes! Man in know I wouldn’t wanted to be in those shoes who were trying to catch their flight. We did the touristy thing again, walked around the downtown, had some waffles and enjoyed the city. Although I don’t think we missed anything important we only walked 10km which is 2km less then our daily average was this week… interesting. In the evening we went to a bar for a drink and today somehow Warka felt so weird! I feel like I need a few days of recov...

  Today was the last day my brother is with us in Warsaw. His plane left in the afternoon, so we had to cross the last few points of his sightseeing list. One of them was the Palace of Culture and Sciences. As I told you earlier, I wasn’t impressed that much about the building… or the view from it. But this time… I think we spent 1.5 hour there just enjoying the scenery. In fact, we spent so much time there the next thing we knew was it’s time for him to get to the airport! So, we grabbed a sandwich really quick and went to the train that goes from the city center to the airport – the same train he took the other way around. I was curious how it worked, and I wanted to know he got there safe and sound, so I went on the train with him. It was a really nice experience I kinda forgot how awesome trains are! We might take one to Gdansk sometime soon! After he left, I met with Sara and helped her with the shopping. Tomorrow we are having a new guest!

  Yesterday we went building hunting! I’m not quite sure if it was a thing before, but it is now haha! My brother is really into architecture, he sent me all this crazy building that you can find in Warsaw on the first week Sara and I got here. It was obvious that some point of his stay we will hunt down all these buildings! And that day was yesterday. First, we checked out a brutalist building in Kozia street, then another in Górnoslaska steet. After this interesting program we met up with Sara and went to the Warsaw Uprise Museum. Wow. That place is a must watch! It is really shocking! I really hope no ideology will manage to get to these many fans as Nazism and Communism. The new ideology my afraid of is Liberalism. I’m terrified by Liberalism. Especially in Hungary and the EU. The argument between EU and Poland (or Hungary in fact) feels a repetition of the history! When a big ruler thinks something is good and the other is not and wants everyone to believe the same! In the ...

  It’s time to celebrate! Celebrate the blog, me, and you who’ve been with me for 30days now in a row! Thank you for reading!:) So, yesterday was the first sightseeing day with my brother! First we went to Praha, walked around and checked the Neon Museum! I’m safe to say it was one of the best museums I’ve ever been to! It was very educational, had loads of historical background, many-many neon signs – mostly from Poland and Hungary! The owner seemed to be a British guy and his Polish wife (or partner), and they were incredible! Extremely nice, very helpful, they love what they do, and you can notice that easily! Although it is allowed there to take pictures, I’m only showing you a few, because I want you to go there and see it yourself!   After the museum we went on a small walk, but I had to say goodbye to Sara and my brother pretty soon, because my class was about to start! After my class we went on a small walk in the evening Warsaw, we went to the downtown and t...

  Yesterday was a full-on packed day! First, we walk Sári to the bus stop because she had classes in the morning, then I went souvenir shopping with her parents, then I drove them to the airport, then I picked Sári up at the uni and drove home. You thought this was it? Nope. After getting home I had to go to a washing place – could be called laundry room maybe? Where I had to clean nearly 3.9 tons of bed sheet. The shop was full of huge and incredibly difficult to operate machines. Unfortunately, I have never studied atom-physics at Harvard, but luckily there was a cleaning lady who was able to create connection between me and machines. She even wanted to help me with the folding of the bed sheets. She spoke really little English, but she was so helpful! I hope God will serve her with this positive energy for a long time! After this completely strange, but amazing experience I headed home to pick up Sara and the car because we were headed to the airport again! This time we were g...

This was officially the last they of Sári’s parents’ stay. So, we decided to cross the ‘t’ with a good old Sunday market! We took the subway to Bazar Olimpia everything went well until we ran into the subway control or whatever they are called. It turned out the Hungarian student card is NOT valid in Poland! Not at the public transport department for sure… We got fined! Sári’s brother is a high school student, with valid student card, so it seemed obvious that he is allegeable for the discount. But nope. In this great country they only accept the ISEC(?) or the Polish student card! What the heck?! The best thing is the machine where you can buy these tickets doesn’t say anything like this! It says you have to have a valid student card FROM ANY NATION and be under 26 years old… But the jerk – from now on the controller guy will be called something like this because he pisses me off even when I’m just thinking about him – said that the webpage says only ISEC and Polish card is acceptab...

  Yesterday I went to the Jazz Jamboree! It was an amazing experience! I was told the day before yesterday was more of an American style jazz night – which sounds excellent, but I guess the most convenient way to hear some jazz like that is having a trip to New Orleans this summer! Yesterday it was more European jazz, funky style maybe? I was really trying to concentrate on the different instrumentals, but I heard nothing, so instead of trying to do something I can’t, I did something that I definitely can do very well, so I sat back and chilled out to enjoy the music. Unfortunately, it was the shortest day of the festival, I could’ve just sat and listen for 7-8 more hours! This, the 63rd was my first Jamboree, but if my calculations are right, I will be able to see the 100th as well! I think if you are in Warsaw around October, coming to the festival is a must do! Here are some pictures I can show you.       

  Yesterday Sari’s parents arrived! First task was to work out how the airport’s system works, especially the airport’s parking system! There were basically two options of picking them up; a) stop at the A1 parking lot and pay 15zloty fee for an hour, or choose the ‘kiss and go’ option, where we had only 7min to leave the area, without being charged something like 30zloty. Although we love playing safe and sound, this time we were ballsy, and went to the kiss and go. Not like just driving there, but we stopped somewhere 5min far from the airport, and waited till her parents got to the ‘departure’ or ‘kiss and go’ spot and then we continued our commute there. We got to the place, waited a few minutes when a policeman started coming toward us. I put my hand on the steering wheel, waiting him to stop at the window, but then he saw the Hungarian license plate and turned his back on us and checked someone else in a Polish car. After, getting back to our home we headed downtown, s...

  Yesterday I had the first Geography class that I found particularly interesting! I think all my subjects here are quite interesting, but this lecture was something totally different! The class was Poland’s Natural Geography, and it was specialized in the evolution of Poland basically. The geomorphology of Earth concentrating on Poland. Geomorphology is extremely difficult anyway, but in English it is a next level! It gonna suck learning all the information. But on the other hand, I had the opportunity to learn about the formation of the regions we have driven thru on the way here! It was truly fascinating I’ll tell you about it later! After and honestly before class we were preparing for the huge family meeting! Cleaned the house, and well that was all we did, but it killed all our free time. We were really excited to have some guest over here! I’ll tell you tomorrow how it all went down! See you tomorrow! Almos

  Yesterday I had maybe my first in-person class and it was great! Not so much the class itself, but the environment, the vibe of being surrounded by people, paying attention to a person rather than a screen, and etc. It was a truly missed experience. At my class I met a guy from Georgia – the country not the state – and had a beer with him after class, but we couldn’t stay long because me and Sari were planning to have dinner with Ola and her other mentee. Her other mentee was a Hungarian girl who studies Polish! It was kinda funny, we asked Ola previously why she studies Hungarian, now we could ask the other side the same question. After dinner we went to an old bar which allegedly used to be a nice bar full of students, but than they changed to a gaming place and this model change seemed to work extremely bad, because no one was in there except us. By the end of the night the Georgian guy and Ola’s friends joined us, so we had the opportunity to meet some new people which was...

  Yesterday after my class we went grocery shopping because we are about to have many-many guests! From this Friday for almost 2 weeks, we gonna have continuous guest. First ones will be Sári’s parents and brother they are arriving on Friday and leaving on Monday. Then my brother is coming, he is coming on Monday and staying till Thursday, aand on Friday Sári’s friend is landing and staying till Monday! So, it is only 1.5 weeks, but much-more intense than I thought it’s gonna be! So far, we have always gone to the Auchan in Wola Park, but it has an open-air parking lot, which will be less ideal when the weather will be worse, so I’m looking for another huge shop that has an underground parking lot – I’ll update you when I find one. And an update on the organization of the shopping: I’ve created a google sheet where I can write all the necessary information, like what we bought, how much it cost, the amount of the item and etc. I still have to organize the sheet, but I think it ...

  Yesterday we met the Hungarian speaking Polish girls again. They invited us to meet them in Nora which is one of the best bars I have ever been to! These girls know what kills a fly – I love using mirror translated Hungarian sayings especially when they don’t make any sense in English, but you have to wait for those. So, Nora. It’s a smallish underground bar, near the university, but the most special thing about it is the karaoke! Every night people go there and sing random songs – mostly English or Polish songs. We really enjoyed watching people sing, that made Sara and the girls wanna have a bash. Unfortunately, when it was their turn I was waiting in the line for the bathroom. And when I say I was waiting in line I mean I ask a guy whether we are waiting for our go, and he said yes, and immediately asked where I’m coming from. When he learnt I’m Hungarian he let everyone in front of us because we were talking… haha. He told me he has been to Hungary several times; he knew the...

  Yesterday we went to the Sunday Market. Or actually we went to a Sunday market – I suppose there are several Sunday markets all over Warsaw. The one we went to is called Gielda Staroci na Kole. Although it wasn’t as big as the Sunday market in Pécs, I still wouldn’t call it small. As we saw they mostly sell porcelains, old coins, tools, and similar useful goods. Visiting this market was quite an experience! The market itself takes place at a closed garden, but the garden seems to be not big enough for all the sellers, some of them sell their staff on the street right next to the market! First, we didn’t even know what’s up with that place. We didn’t see the conception. It took some time and some walking for us to comprehend what’s going on. I might’ve told you earlier, my plan was to buy a bike, so I could ride it to the uni, so one of the reasons we went to the market to see if they have bikes, if they have how much they cost, and what they look like. Well unfortunately they ...

Yesterday we did some city exploring. You know there is a river somewhere near the middle of the city of Warsaw called the Vistula. Just like Budapest was divided by the Danube to Buda and Pest in the older days the Vistula divided Warsaw in to two as well. But unlike Budapest where the river is basically the center of the city, here the center of the city is west from the river and on the east bank the apartment blocks are more for just living – as I saw it. So, we explored some of the districts of the eastern part of the city especially the district called Praha! For unknown reasons to science they named a district of an existing city -- that's actually not that far away from here. Anyways it is a really nice place; it looks more like a European city than the Warsaw that we have seen so far. There are lot of old houses, nice dusty bars it felt much more comfortable or home-y than the new some could say sterile glass houses in the new Warsaw. We had a medium good beer there and...

  Yesterday was extremely chill for me. I had a nice little workout in the morning, then I did almost an hour of yoga. While I was in the island of calmness Sári was writing her papers! She already has 3-4(?) papers to do for her classes! That is insane! Just simply out of solidarity I spent the whole day watching the Grand Tour with Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. It was very educational. Sidenote: Just to be fair you can learn many-many things from a show like that! If you pay just a little attention you can learn of a buncha geographical topics! For instance, there is an episode from Namibia. Namibia is famous for diamonds, and poaching, and the desert. In this Grand Tour episode, they tell you about the poaching problem, and how the cold current in the ocean affects, and basically creates the famous Namibian Fog Desert! Of course, none of them 3 presenters work for the Nature Magazine, nor have articles on Google Scholar, so don’t consider them as 100% legit...

  Yesterday we had a nice date-night. We checked out a really nice café where we had a nice cake with lemonade and coffee. We’ve been here for really close to a month now and when we left the house we never headed south at least no on foot. But yesterday we did, and it was quite interesting. Not like it was some sorta no-go zone just simply because we never thought about what could be there. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about! I bet there are also a few streets/districts where you have never been in your city! Am I right? I think the message of this blog is to be opened for new places in your city, because not just inter-city, or inter-country traveling can be exciting! I hope I could say something useful or at least not terribly stupid, take care of yourselves and see you tomorrow! Almos

  Okay, so I told you last week my class on Wednesday might be in-person form next (this) week. As it turned out it was! It was in-person class for the others… I was home waiting for the email of the lecturer whether the lecture will be online or offline… You might think I’m stupid because I missed the class before of that, but I think it is not my fault. The teacher sent us an email last week (45mins before the start of the class) and she told us she will let us know if her child has Covid or not because obviously that will affect the class. But I never saw any message of her, and I even tried using her link to the online meeting from last week expecting she will notice that something is wrong… I really hope this won’t affect my studies in a bad way. But the event that made my day big time! We went out to have some dinner – we ended up in McDonald’s which might seem like a stupid decision, but we wanted a burger bad. After our lovely dinner we headed to the downtown which was a ...

  I think it is safe to say I had my first class yesterday where I understood what my lecturer was saying! I felt amazing! The lecture was about poaching, and dehorning rhinos which is interesting in many ways, but very sad at the same time. Did you know people in Asia think that you can cure hangover by drinking rhino horn? How stupid is that! I bet those people never knew rhino horns and our nails are the same material!... After the class we would have had our Polish language course, which we skipped… again. So that means we cannot skip any other class, or we won’t get the subject. I don’ know if that’s a problem we don’t even have it in our learning agreement we just took it because learning new language is always a good idea. But from this point I honestly don’t know what to do. There will be 60 classes thru the semester, 2 classes a week, one of the classes are at the same time as one of my other classes… I think the main reason why I’m so demotivated on learning Polish is ...

    I write all the blogs in the evening or in the morning, so that was how I started my day yesterday. Then I realized, I hardly took any pictures of the Saxon Garden, so I had to go back to take some pictures. It’ been always a dream of mine to do a vlog. I tried to share my experience in the USA in 2019, but I quickly ran into a problem – that I only realized later – that my phone only had 32GBs. Today 32GBs sound terribly small, but when I bought my phone in early 2018 it was okayish. Then I wanted to capture our trip to the Balkan, but then we were talking in Hungarian which made working on that series kinda pointless – as I think I told you earlier the whole point of me writing and talking in English on social media is I have many international friends, who speak no Hungarian, but what I also have is Hungarian friends, but they do speak at least some English. I also made lot of videos about our trip to the Baltic states, that was in English, so I think I will make a ni...

  Okay, so first I think this is the very first time when I actually gonna publish my blog in the time period that I intended to! It’s probably not a big deal for you, but it kinda is for me! So, let’s get on the blog shell we? Yesterday was a pretty chilled day, with our weekly hike, and shopping done the day before yesterday we really could just chill and get ready for the next week. Although I said we were chilling, we didn’t just sit at home, we went on a walk at the nearby park called Saxon Garden, which was a part of a fortification built in the 17 th century. It was destroyed at the World War 2 – just as the whole city basically – and rebuilt later. One of the main things, that should be mentioned about the park is that it was opened for public in 1727 which means it is one of the first parks that were opened to the public! It is still very popular today many people come and see the place, it is always packed with tourists, retired folks, and people who are walking th...

I think we are getting the hang of this big city life. Maybe Warsaw is not the biggest city in the world – actually definitely not – but the point is, after first arriving in the city nearly a month ago I think we started feeling and acting like locals. For instance, yesterday I’ve honked my horn for the very first time in Poland! Taxi drivers here are… wow. They are so bad at driving in this city, I am always amazed by watching them trying to maneuver thru Texas-sized turns acting like they were on the smallest Italian roads. Back to our day. We noticed last time – before the blog has started in Kampinos National Park – that people are trying to escape from the city on weekends, especially on Sundays – here shops are closed on Sundays so that could be a reason. So, instead of going on a hike on Sunday we went yesterday – on Saturday. We went to Jezioro Zegrzyńskie, which is less than an hour drive from Warsaw. It is a quite nice waterbody that looks like a lake, but it is actually a ...

  Last ESN event, nice. But, why? It’s simply because the ESN here doesn’t seem to be that passionate about organizing colorful, quality events as we do in ESN Pécs. Yesterday we attended one of their events called Sunset at the Palace of Culture and Sciences – they changed the name later for “night” something. This event sounds great, doesn’t it? We thought so too. So, we registered at ESN UW for the event that started at 7pm. We set off around 6.30pm when I saw the sun was already setting. That was the point when I started questioning the concept of the whole event, but I though I’m on Erasmus, so I have to go to that ESN event to be with Erasmus people. So, continued our commute to the place, the event said ESN members are waiting for us at the main entrance, but when we got there at 7.02pm no one was anywhere, so when we entered the building, we saw some people who were definitely not locals – after spending some time around Erasmus students you will simply know if someone is...

  Yesterday was productiveish I guess. Let me walk you thru it. Yesterday was productive in the way I had an online class, I made some notes, and I also took the time to think about things that interests me. For instance, I like writing my blog, but I wanna take a step forward and do video-blogs or vlogs. But I don’t just wanna produce uninteresting content I wanna show my viewers some quite exciting things about this whole Erasmus thing, about Warsaw, and about Poland. So, I started collecting places, districts, cities, national parks that I wanna show you. It wasn’t a productive day in the sense of we didn’t go anywhere, we would have had the Polish languages course, but we couldn’t make it which I think means the end of your Polish studies. This makes me sad and I wanna keep studying Polish, we will see what our options are. So, I guess this was our Thursday, sorry for being boring, tomorrow will be much more exciting! Be safe, thanks for reading and see you tomorrow Al...

  Yesterday I got up very excite because I was supposed to have Geography class at the university! I had a nice breakfast, got dressed, set off at just the right time to catch the bus, I was at the elevator when I realized I forgot to bring my mask, so I had to travel up again from the first floor to the 9 th then back down to the first floor which was annoying because I wasted time and energy just to get back where I started. When I left the building, I had 4mins to cover the 5min walk which is definitely doable, but it was a bit stressing. I was almost at the bus stop when I received an email from my teacher… her child got sick so she couldn’t go to the uni, instead we were gonna have the class online. Bummer. So, I got dressed, traveled up and down a million times with the elevator just to sit in front of my laptop. Unlucky. But on the upside, I probably wouldn’t have caught the bus because I spent quite a long time at the bus stop trying to process what happened. The class was...

  Soo, I know I already wrote a blog with this title, but that day (the day before yesterday?) I only had an online class which does not qualify as a normal in-person class! It simply does not. My first class was an online class, at 4pm – which is always fun – after it was my second class that was at the university! What a relief to have a class where I can see other people, and the lecturer doesn’t have terrible audio! What was not that good about it is it was freaking hard! I wasn’t expecting a Polish language class to be easy but wow! It is the next level of randomly placed letters in a word. And the fact that the class starts at 6.30pm does not help us. It seems like usually we are allowed to miss two classes, which is less – by one – than we can in Pécs, but here at the language course we have two classes per week and also two opportunities to miss class which honesty sucks… I do want to learn a Slavic language to be able to communicate in the Balkan, or catch some word whe...

This morning we got up rather nervous. I say rather because that is an average feeling between Sara and me. I was extremely nervous she was not at all. After a quick breakfast we went a bus stop where we had to work out Warsaw’s complicated ticket machines which didn’t quite work out, because we wanted to buy two tickets, we paid 6.80 zlotyi for two tickets and the machine only gave us one ticket… Thanks God no one checked us. We got to Sara’s class where I left her and went for a long walk in the city. It was a 5minute walk where I saw a few interesting buildings lemme show them.   Then we had a celebration for Sara’s first day at Efes Kebab place which turned out to be one of the most beautiful restaurants I have ever seen! The food was great the waitress was nice, and the prices were reasonable. I had some Turkish pizza, and it was amazing! I’ll show the pictures of it too.   Then we walked back to our apartment and waited till 4.45pm when my first class started. An...

 Okay so now it’s getting clear that I’m not able to hit my goal of publishing my Sunday until Monday 11am. But I am trying my best here so please do excuse me. So let’s start shall I? Yesterday we went hiking — it’s sorta a starting tradition for us. We were looking for a place which is close to Warsaw, but not as close asKampinos National Park where we and the whole Polish nation spent their last week Sunday. Somehow it is a bit difficult to find a good place to hike and I think the reason is because there are so many places you could go. Back at home it’s much easier, I believe it’s because we leave in the basin of a mountain/hill — depends on your standers haha — and if you wanna go hiking that’s the place you go the end. But here you travel 20mins to get outta the city and then you have to find a forest which is nice and which has parking lot as well. Parking is a huge concern for me because I don’t want to risk getting my car towed away or get it damaged by some angry farmers...