Erasmus in Warsaw

  So yesterday we woke up at our luxurious apartment with bittersweet feelings. It was sweet because we were happy to be there, however we were also sad because we knew if had to check out in a few hours — this was the bitter part. We quickly packed everything, cleaned the zillion dishes we used for our cooking trip. Meanwhile Sari wrote a message to the landlord whether we could leave the car in the garage for a few extra hours. And they said yes! Wow! I thought it was a really nice gesture, and I thought we would be rejected even though I knew allowing us wouldn’t have taken them any effort. But I was wrong; one point to humanity!  We spent the morning with exploring the city, we were walking down the main street, checking out the bazar and the Lublin Castle, and visiting a new café; I believe it name was Ambasador Cukiernia. Here they were using the famous Polish chocolate factory’s products for everything! They were selling E.Wedel chocolates, hot chocolates — dark-, milk-...

  Yesterday we celebrated! Because yesterday’s blog was the 100 th   blog I’ve ever written! How amazing is that?!     We’ve been thru a lot of days and trips together and I’d like to thank you for all the positive comments/feedbacks that basically kept the blog alive and gave me huge motivation to sit down and share my days with y’all. Thank you! How did we celebrate? Well I guess the traditional way to celebrate is to open a bottle of champagne or at least a bottle of wine and say cheers… However, we, we’ve chosen a different approach to the celebration. We cooked. Not that Breaking Bad kinda batches were made, but I bet the staff that we cooked is way better than the  blue . We cooked little chocorolls — kakaós csiga; if you have better translation feel free to share it — and we cooked some sorta hot dog as well.  kakaós csiga and us in the background  We’ve enjoyed the oven sooo much! We bought  factory-made  lasagne that we cooked in it,...

  After numerous police checkpoints, we eventually we did end up at the Bison Reservation where we were headed too.   The GPS said turn left when we got to a snowy forest road. We drove on it for a few kilometers when we finally reached our destination. There was a huge parking lot which was almost completely empty, first we thought it was just because it was -6°C. We parked and walked to the building where they were selling tickets. We paid 20 PLN for two student tickets and started exploring the park. First we found six bisons, they were incredibly big, and seemed like they had a disagreement because we saw some aggressive moves. They were tickling each other with their horns. Then we walked on, there were some deer, nice suspicious creatures, we carried on our walk till we got to the wolves. There were not any… The next animals we found were bisons again, a huge male and a quite big female. We were less then 2 meters from them. Looking at their eyes… We could almost feel th...

  Yesterday we broke the record of the number policeman we have met ever in a day. They were everywhere. However before getting in to that we started our day in Bialystok. Where it was -10°C in the morning! I got us some breakfast then till Sari packed our staff I went to get our car. While I was walking to it I checked all the cars on the street how icy were they trying to assume how thick ice cover did my car grow overnight. Luckily the car was only covered with some snowish loose staff that was easy to get rid off with a broom. However in the inside everything was frozen. The motor didn’t even start for the first time, then when it finally started it sounded like when you didn’t put the dishes properly in the washing machine and everything falls out, that was the exact same noise my motor was sounding. It was definitely not pleasant.  The temperature had risen to -8°C by the time we got to our first stop. It was the Church of Trezescinka: a beautiful huge wooden church with...

  So, yesterday we’ve arrived to a Bialystok; to a city we have never been to! The city is like 200 km from Warsaw, we could have arrived in two hours if we didn’t care about polar bears, but we did so it the drive took us around three hours. But it was completely okay, we stopped two times on our way at various places. First we stopped next to a small village — or actually between two villages — and it was winter wonderland at its best! I mean bestish haha. The scenery was amazing; all the fields were covered in snow, all every tree’s every branches were covered with snow, everything was covered with snow except the road. That was just a huge block of ice! It was literally all ice! But people were driving on it anyway! I mean they were doing 20 km/h and the road was completely flat, but still it was a strange thing. Then we stopped at a random place in the middle of winter wonderland. When we finally arrived to Bialystok the sun was still up — behind the clouds of course but you g...

  Yesterday two major things happened. Firstly I had a Christmas call with my family, secondly we went for a city-hike. In the early afternoon we had a whatsapp call with my family, all of the close family members were visiting my grandpa, so I had the chance to talk with everybody. While we were talking someone in the apartment above us did a huge jump and the earthquake-y shake that come from above let our light in the kitchen free. Just a little jump above us broke the lights… wtf?! After I checked and the light was not properly installed in the first place… They’ve only used one screw instead of the two that would have been necessary to prevent the lights fall of for example. I wrote to our landlord, she was super nice offered her help immediately and they’re fixing it in no time. And luckily we’ve just left for a few day, so the broken light doesn’t really affect us. The other major thing was our little in-city-hike. For some reason I was checking GoogleMaps and I accidentally...

  Yesterday was the first day of Christmas, and what better way to celebrate it than a nice Christmas-hike?! We planned a trip yesterday evening about going to the Kampinos National Park!  It has snowed all day the day before yesterday, however yesterday a strong cold front hit the Warsaw area which resulted a daily maximum temperature of -6°C — and that -6C’s real feel was less than -10°C! — however it also resulted a beautiful clear sky with a visibility of 13-ish km! So it was an incredibly nice day and we simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity to get out of our apartment and enjoy the sunshine! Finally! I started counting the day I saw the  blue  sky above the Platinum Towers and yesterday was the second day since November? Okay, maybe only since middle of November/early December, but I hope you are picking up what I’m putting down. We weren’t sure how long our trip was going to be — by this I mean I was wanting an all day trip, Sari was rather up to a 10 minute...

  So I’m not sure if you’ve noticed it but yesterday was Christmas Eve!     So, I guess Merry Christmas y’alll!   We started our day with cleaning… Lame. But the baby Jesus was surely not coming to a dirty house. Or in our case I would rather room, haha. Anyway after we got everything shiny and ready we started preparing our special Christmas Dinner. Although we loved the Polish Christmas Dish we tried at Ola’s place we opted for a more Hungarian type of food; chicken paprika. None of us really had a solid picture of cooking chicken paprika, so we looked for a recipe on the  internet  which is on Sari’s telephone. The recipe said we had to fry the onions, then we added the nicely chopped paprika, tomato, and the meat. After we mixed all that, we poured just enough water to almost cover the whole  thing  and we left it boiling for the next 15 minutes. Then we took out the chicken and mixed the veggies with a blander, then cooked it again for some t...

  So, yesterday was the last big present-hunt and the start of the Christmas break at the university. I got up bright and early so I could start my trip as early as possible. The mall I was going to was 50 minutes by public transport, so there was no time to be waisted. — yes at that point I didn’t know the break has already started — I had a few options of public transportation to chose from, however I knew I didn’t want to go by subway, soI was looking for a convenient bus. The trip to the mall really did take 50 minutes, but I enjoyed the trip a lot! I saw some nice buildings, interesting faces, and a few  heartwarming smiles. Who could ask for more? When I entered the mall I immediately found some nice exhibited cars. There was a new Honda NSX, Ford Mustang, and a Dodge Charger as well. So, I’ve found these magnificent pieces of engineering, however I didn’t found the  book  I was looking for… There were at least four bookstores in the mall, of course they d...

  Yesterday was cultural day. In the end of the day. However it didn’t start like that in the morning. When I got up I went to  a  mall — in the past few days I’ve been to so many malls I can’t even recall its name or even where it was… I was looking for two particular items however to make life easier they were in completely different kinda shops. Although I walked around all the flights at least twice I could not find what I was looking for. — it’s kinda funny because so many things happened to me thru my shopping trip I would love to tell you, but I’m afraid Sari might read my blog and I would get busted — When I finally gave up it was already dark, and I’ve received a warning message from Sari that we have to be at the theater by 1745. So, I was in a rush to get home. I mean I didn’t even had anything in my stomach, so I had to have lunch/dinner I don’t know what to call a meal at 1645. We’ve put on our nice clothes; the theater appropriate clothes — yes you don’t go ...

So yesterday we went ice-skating! Sorry I got it wrong. Yesterday we went to an ice-skating ring! Haha close enough, eh? The plan was to meet up with Ola and hit the ice, however non of us really felt that dedicated to fall, so we agreed on we should rather have a walk with a nice warm drink. We went to our new-old place right next to the Palace of Culture and Sciences called Pijana Wiśnia. That place’s best seller — or actually I believe the only thing they sell — is an Ukrainian liquourish thing that contains significantly less alcohol than pálinka, but it can kick in in a Mike Tyson kinda way. The  drink  has two settings, one is the summer mode, when you drink it cold, and the other is the  winter  mode which means you get the drink hot — similar to hot wine I guess. Although the temperature gauge showed -4°C the weather forecast thingy on my phone told us it felt like -9°C, and I believe it was right. It was pretty damn cold. So it was no question we bought the ...

  Yesterday was a shopping day. Again. However this time it wasn’t just the weekly grocery shopping! Now we’ve started preparing for Christmas!   In the morning we went to our usual store or actually mall and while Sari was doing the grocery shopping I was searching for something, something that I don’t really wanna write down because Sari might read this. Although I walked 3 km in the mall, unfortunately I couldn’t find what I was looking for… So I joined Sari and helped with the shopping. Although we thought there would be no one in the grocery store at 1000 we seemed to be wrong. The whole store was packed with people, significant amount of old people were doing their grocery shopping which was quite surprising to me. Not the fact that old people buy food, but amount of them concentrated at the shop! Where’ve all these people been before? Or maybe older people only eat at holidays?  Buying things in the store wasn’t easy because of the crowd however leaving the store w...

  Today we’ve hit a new milestone another nice round number; today’s blog is the 90 th   blog I’ve written! The next round number will be   100 th   blog! Amazing! Knowing yesterday that today’s blog was going to be a nice round number we’ve decided to plan another trip! This time to  Eastern Poland ! There are two major cities we will visit and a national park. Or national parks not quite sure yet, the weather could have a huge effect on our plans.  So what exactly our plan is? Well the plan is to drive East to Bialystok spend an afternoon walking around the city doing all the touristy things than the next morning we would visit one or two national parks then we would spend two nights in Lublin and the next morning we will drive back to Warsaw. On our way we will stop at small yet fascinating villages everyone and then.  What national park are we planning to visit? The mighty Bialowieza Nation Park! It’s one of the last untouched places in Europe and ...

  In my last blog we explored the Christmas Market in Wroclaw, then we got back to our accommodation. The bed was so comfortable, the bedsheets we so soft… ahw I already miss that bed! We slept like a baby.   The next morning we packed everything into the car and walked back to the old town. It was just as beautiful as if was the previous day, except now we saw a bit more of the buildings. As we were walking towards the old townI remembered Julia told us about the elves in Wroclaw. Allegedly there are 300 elves located completely randomly in the city. As we were walking down the streets we started hunting them and counting them. Although we walked 15 km in the city we  only  found 56 elf. That’s almost 20% which is a medium good result I guess. We were happy with the ones we found, almost everyone of them was great! Apart from a few mediocre elves most of them were really funny and outstanding. Here are my favorites: *as soon as my phone’s willing to cooperate I’ll u...