Erasmus in Warsaw

  Our last day in Warsaw… When we got up the whole apartment was basically completely empty. Nothing was left, but a few backpacks, the food in the fridge, and the clothes we were about to put on. It was really sad. To start the morning exciting, and cheer ourselves up a bit we started our day in Costa Café or the Nero café — I honestly have no idea — where instead of coffee we drank chai latte. Sari did made me chai latte before, but since we don’t have either a printer nor the balls to print money we used cheep coffee and cheep chai thingy, which meant I was almost drinking something completely different. I absolutely loved the chai latte they gave me, so did Sari. Bummer, I wish I knew about this earlier. After our coffee break we packed everything and headed for the last shopping, we bought the little things that were absolutely needed for our successful trip home: bread, doughnuts, and the missing kinda beers. It was a successful trip. Then we drove home, prepared our meals for th

  So, today/yesterday is/was our last day in Warsaw… There are a lot of emotions going on right now, as I’m laying in the bed staring at the empty wall that used to have pictures of us till the apartment was ours — actually I don’t know till when it is ours… Our contract ends on the 11 th   so does our Erasmus, but I don’t know if that means we could sleep here on the 11 th   or it’s like a hotel, where you have to leave the place by 1000 on the 11 th . This last one sounds the most realistic. Anyways onwards with the blog: the day before yesterday we’ve put a lot of stuff into the car, so the apartment was already emptier than it used to be. While Sari was packing our stuff I went to the national bank, because we have ripped a paper zloty, and allegedly the national bank could it change it only. The bank was around a 30 minutes walk, which was no biggie, however the same couldn’t be said of the line that was waiting to enter the bank. I was waiting in the line for 30 minutes when some

  So, yesterday we continued our packing program, however before we got it done we had a little walk in the downtown — damn we really did that yesterday, I thought that happened the day before yesterday. So, as it turned out yesterday we had a pretty long day, haha. We started our day in the downtown, for a last big walk in the city. We walked pass the Saxon Garden, had our last walk at the university — which probably had more meaning to me since I was attending to classes at the main campus, then from there we went on a little souvenir shopping, then tried to return a ripped money, however they closed the bank right in front of us, so that’s still something we have to deal with. And they didn’t speak any English, only a dude helped us who was also waiting in the line. He was one of the greatest disappointments of yesterday. Dude was dressed as B-Rabbit from 8 mile road, acted like that too, but he also turned out to be one of the nicest dudes every, and he was a great helper to us and

  Yesterday was quite an eventful day. We’ve been to many places, we’ve been through many emotions. When we got up, that was exactly when the suffering started. We started packing all our thing into the suitcases we brought with us. It goes without saying that this was  not  our favorite thing to do. But we kept doing it till we didn’t got terribly sic and tried of it, so we had to stop. We got enough of packing just after 1400, which probably was the most convenient time for us to try the Etno Café right across the street — the street, a grassy area and another street, but you know what I meant, right? The place was pretty weird, they didn’t had the coffee which we ‘usually drink — yeah that’s how little I know and care about coffee, I don’t even know what we usually drink — however they had something similar which had a completely different name, it was like we would’ve asked for a banana, but they would’ve told us they didn’t have banana, but they do have cherries, and then they wou

  After we got up in Riga we drove out of the city on some unusable roads which were two lane roads, then turned into four lane roads without changing size. It was pretty hectic, but we survived.  We continued our trip South till we reached Lithuania again. It was also great and sad to be back. It was great because we knew we had the option to eat something delicious, but it was sad because we knew our trip was about to end. In Lithuanian we drove to the Hill of Crosses memorial, which was two smallish hills absolutely covered with crosses. Allegedly it was a memorial for Polish and Lithuanian soldiers. It was really interesting, and a great experience , however they made us pay for parking in the middle of nowhere, and after we paid for parking at the emptiest part of the country we weren’t even allowed to use the bathroom for free. When I asked the boss-ish like lady if we could use the bathroom she said yes, for 50 Euro cent. She asked something like if I wanted to use the bathroom

  After that bittersweet experience at the border we were on our way to the capital city of Latvia; Riga. The drive was pretty uneventful, although we were driving on the coastal highway, it wasn’t the like the Californian highway 1 or highway 101, mostly because we were in Latvia, and also because the Californian road runs on solid rocks, however the East coast of the Baltic Sea is sandy, and this sandy coast continuously forms as the different currents moves them, hence they couldn’t route a highway right on the coast. Thankfully we did get some glimpses of the sea on our journey. It was almost three in the afternoon when we reached Riga, which was only problematic, because our accommodation didn’t have private parking and the later it got the less parking spaces were left. Our host was an old lady, thankfully she was one of the kinder ones, she was very welcoming, and extremely stressed about the parking, she was worried we were gonna get a fine. How nice of her?! Unfortunately she

  So, yesterday was Sari’s last exam, which means the studying part of our Erasmus has came to an end, unfortunately not only the studying part is over, the whole Erasmus program is about to end! We even started packing yesterday… Sari’s exam was at noon, which is possibly the worst time to write a test, because you can’t even eat before the test which means your brain doesn’t necessarily have enough sugar to work. We were hungry and had no motivation to cook, and we were planning to go to IKEA anyways, so we decided to beat the traffic instead and have some good old IKEA vegetarian hotdogs. It was totally worth, we payed 14 zlotyi for a two meals. That simply doesn’t happen anywhere else. Then we walked around in IKEA God and Sari only knows what we were looking for, but we only found something I wanted for a long time. A doormat with ‘Dzien dobry’ sign on it.  mint isn’t it? When we got out of the store I hoped we were out of the woods, but then it turned out we still have to buy som

  After walking around in Ämari, we were headed South, first in two weeks! It sounds exciting doesn’t it? In the past two weeks we were only driving North! I think that sounds very cool.  However, we weren’t driving straight to Riga, we were driving to the border of Estonia and Latvia, because there was something we needed to check out, and the mysterious thing was a pier, build out of rocks, and as far as I understood it was famous for being absolutely useless. We were driving into a small town where the border of the two countries ran literally between two houses! Right there was a medium sized parking lot, where we left our car, and started our walk on catwalks, then it turned into a dirt path, and  then  we eventually ended up on the pier, which as I told you earlier was built out of rocks, however those rocks were size of a watermelon without anything between them, so I can hardly believe they used that thing for any commercial purpose. Although it didn’t seemed too useful in the

  Yesterday things started as usual. Except everything started much earlier. I got up around five, because some imbecile with a Latvian license plated Mercedes was revving his motor like a madman. The whole car looks like it was imported from Butcher Town, the whole car looks like a boi-racer and it sounds like a 1998 1.2 Fiat Punto with a broken exhaust system. The whole car was just pathetic, so was the driver, he looked like some new rich with old poor taste. The car had a zillion fake scups, disgusting wheels, lowered to the ground. It looks just stupid. There  are  fast Mercedeses, that came from a  factories  and are  designed  to go fast and look  good , whereas this shit-box came from a small garage, been designed by blind cows, and hoped that all the items screwed on the frame would stay on. Sorry this block got a few lines longer than I was planning it to be, but that maniacal pisses me off every time I think about him. Seriously what kind of a moron starts revving his engine

  The next morning we were ready to leave Tallinn, however we were  not  ready to leave Estonia! For my biggest surprise when we entered the first shop in Estonia, I made a strange discovery; I found an instant meal, or spaghetti sauce, that had  Hungarian  sentences on it! I shared a picture of it as an Instagram story, and one of my lovely followers — who happened to be Estonian — has written me a welcoming text and she suggested me different local products, which were must tries. Hence we started our last day in Estonia in a grocery store, looking for particular items like: Kohuke chocolate glazed quark snack — which was a cottage cheese finger covered with chocolate, if you are familiar with the Hungarian cuisine we had the same idea, same snack  Túró rudi , but they have slightly different taste. I couldn’t tell you which one was better to be honest. We also bought some dessert called Black Bread Dessert, now that was nothing similar to anything I’ve tried before, it had an intere

  So, yesterday was spent basically like the day before yesterday… Studying. Not too ideal for closing this chapter of our lives, but Sari’s teacher clearly didn’t thought about Erasmus students — just to be fair I’m not even surprised, she teaches a class that’s not your typical Erasmus class. While she was studying I/we started cooking; Chinese veggies with pasta and soy sauce was the menu, I’d say it turned out pretty great, Sari thought I’ve put way to much cayenne pepper in it… But we need it for it’s positive effects.  After lunch she studied an extra hour and so, however she eventually needed to have a break, so we went to a café, to chill a bit. The original plan was to go to  the  Etno café that’s right in front of us — which is not quite true, but we do see that place from our window. Although it seemed like it was empty from our apartment, it turned out to be PACKED, it was full of people. In case you would think ‘oh, no that’s not safe at Corona-time,’ don’t you worry, ther

  After lunch we walked around the city, admired the old architectures, and felt sick of the communist-styled concrete ‘buildings.’ Till we ended up in the artist district of the city near the train station. There we found beautiful street art strange, and hostels. One of the hostels we made out of shipping containers! Damn, if we knew about them we would’ve slept in those! As we wandered on we realized Tallinn had something that I absolutely love, and miss from Pécs, which was a harbor! Tallinn had a huge harbor, with even bigger cruise-ships. Usually I hate cruise ships, mostly because their negative effects on the environment, on the places they show up, but here I was just amazed by their size, by their look, and mostly by their size. Unfortunately I can’t help it I love ships and harbor, I would love to work on a huge thanker for a year someday. Although I was living it near the cruise ships, Sari didn’t had the time of her life, so we had to get moving.  As we were walking in the

  So, in yesterday’s blog we did arrive to Tallinn I just didn’t tell you how was it. I’m changing that right now: It was already getting very dark by the time we arrived, however the street lights were strong enough to light the walls of the houses, which are happened to be typical northern-styled houses, build of wood. We didn’t go exploring that night, mainly because we knew we were going to walk a lot the next day.   We started our day in the old town, to get there we walked pass some of the most beautiful parks we have ever seen, then we checked out the Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, from there we walked to the Town Hall Square, where we checked out the Tallinn Town Hall. It was a beautiful city, with beautiful architecture, and most importantly most of the historic sights had Estonian and English signs, so we had the opportunity to learn about the history of this magnificent country. Seems like Estonians and Hungarians have been thru a very similar history, and I felt like the