Leaving

All my bags were packed, I was ready to go...standing there outside my door:

Sorry about that - I couldn't resist saying those lines after I went through my camera and saw this picture. In case you were wondering - yes, those are my bags, and yes, this was taken right before I rode the cab to the airport. The cheesiness is appropriate.

Here is what my street looks like at 4am in the morning - I took this short video just moments before boarding the taxi:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2340484869796767171

A quick disclaimer before I continue - yes, I am home - I've been here for 3 days, and I am writing this from my apartment in Manila. I will continue to update this space with some of the other stuff I saw while I was in Poland - haven't had time to write about everything yet. So keep checking back for updates.

Anyway, on with the post. My flight was an early one - departure was at 6:20am. It was freezing outside - 0 degrees C, with lots and lots of wind.

You couldn't exactly see the wind in the picture, but trust me, it was there. You can hear some of it in the video I posted above. When I saw this thermometer, I started debating in my mind whether to wear 5 layers of clothes (since it was so freaking cold), or only 3 layers (since I was headed to a place where it was 29 deg C). I wore 4 layers - hehehe.

Guess what I did the moment I landed in Manila?



I met up with Mr. Sisig and Mr. Lechon Kawali. Mr. San Mig Light was also very happy to join us. Sarap!

Sorry for turning this again into a food post at the very last minute - I guess its now clear why I gained 10 lbs in the last 30 days.

See you guys around!

Going home

Travel agent calls my cellphone at 8am today:

TA: "Sir Pope, I finally found you a flight after 2 weeks of looking!"
Me: "Wow thats great - kelan ang alis ko?"
TA: "Tomorrow."
Me: "Nyeh!"

See you guys in Manila - will be there Wednesday morning! Gimmick tayo!

Krakow Videos

I uploaded some videos I took in Krakow - the background music wasn't artificially inserted, there are musicians literally everywhere.

Here are the links:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5345911134007370

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-623559656019933488

Enjoy!

Krakow

Krakow is probably the most popular Polish city in the world for tourists - and for good reason. I mentioned in my previous post that we went there last weekend - since we were too cheap to spend the night (and thus pay extra for a hostel), we decided to turn it into a day trip.

We left Warsaw at 6:05am, it was a good 3 hours by train.



When we got there, guess what greeted us - SNOW!

There wasn't any falling from the sky, but there was a thin layer of the stuff everywhere. We are tropical people, and the sight of snow gets us excited very quickly hehehe.

Since we went on a Sunday, it meant that museum tickets were free (we were so cheap that we didn't even want to pay the 10 zloty - p180 - entrance fee). We decided to go straight to Wawel Castle, so that we'll be among the first el cheapos lining up in front of the ticket counter.

Wawel Castle was great - really really beautiful. Here are some pics to show you what I am talking about:

After going around and exhausting ourselves, we stopped for lunch at a local kebab place. And then started walking again.


We found ourselves at the Krakow Old Town - really really nice as well.





The best thing about Krakow is that all the interesting (i.e. "touristy") places are concentrated in one small area - and there are no cars/buses/trams - you really have to walk around a lot. A map is very useful here.


Next time I visit Krakow, I'll definitely stay longer. They say that there are 100 pubs per square km here - and that night is often more interesting than day.

Wine, cheese and sausage

There's nothing more European than wine, cheese and sausage. And there's nothing more Polish than warm wine, Kielbasa, and Oscypki.

We went to Krakow last Sunday, and we were blessed with very good weather. After the usual Wawel castle and Old Town tour (courtesy of my p72 Lonely Planet guidebook), we came across the city main square, which was absolutely filled with people:

Apparently, Poland had this championship volleyball game with Brazil, and the streets were packed with people watching it on a big screen they setup in the main square:

Unfortunately, Poland lost - by a big margin.

Anyway, after wandering around for a while, I noticed people lining up in front of this particular barrel-shaped stall:

I had no idea what they were buying, but having a long queue in front of some "mysterious" barrel-shaped shop is always a good sign in my book. I decided to line up - and after some sign language and lots of finger pointing, I finally ended up with a plastic cup full of warm wine.

It was very, very good - perfect for the not-so-cold (around 6 deg. C) weather. Alcohol content was quite high though - I am not sure if that is good or bad. Also, unlike "normal" wine, the buzz did not go away after my visit to the bathroom.

After walking around a bit more, I came across this:

Initially I thought they were grilling sharksfin siomai - the kind we get at the local Hen Lin stall back at home. There was also a fair-sized queue, and since I was feeling a bit adventurous after drinking some of the warm wine, I decided to line up again.

It turned out to be grilled cheese - called Oscypki - a specialty of the mountain towns south of Poland. They were very good, and also very salty. A perfect snack, reminded me of the grilled cheese sandwiches (made of Ques-O) I used to eat back home.

Now this next picture needs no explanation:

Foot-long Kielbasa!!! Ang sarap!!!

Communist times

I attended our company party last night - the theme was "Poland 20 years ago." It was interesting, since Poland during the 80s was behind the so-called "Iron Curtain."


Despite the controversial theme and some pretty controversial events (which I will not mention here), we had lots of fun. We were given "tickets" (shown above) which we could use to purchase drinks. During the communist regime, each person received similar tickets every month - one coupon was for a 1/2 kg of sugar, another one for a loaf of bread, etc.


The tables were strange though - this was apparently what they looked like back then. You cannot see it in the picture, but the bowls were actually bolted to the table. Apparently this was done to prevent people from taking the utensils and bowls home.


I'd love to see airlines implement something similar, especially in Manila-bound flights hehehe.

This is what a typical communist store looked like. The purple stuff is denatured alchohol - used to light candles and remove tough stains from dirty clothes. A friend was telling me that during communist times, they would actually drink this stuff. They would have to filter it first though - to do this, they would cut a loaf of bread in half and pour the alchohol through it. This would apparently be enough to filter out all the bad chemicals.


My question is: "can't they use socks instead?"


I couldn't really "get" all the communist jokes during the party - there were lots of things going on at the same time. The most interesting thing about this whole event is that it's poking fun at a very painful past event.



They say Filipinos forget events like these rather quickly, that we tend to put the past behind us rapidly. I disagree - nobody would dare throw a "Martial Law" themed-party and poke fun at this event back in Manila.



A Polish friend said that they can throw parties like this because they're just "so glad that the whole thing is over." Amen to that.

Best Kebab in Warsaw

There is a kebab place in almost every street corner and Subway/Tram stop, and here in Warsaw. However, there is also almost common consensus as to which one serves the best tasting kebab. For those staying in Warsaw, its at the corner of Marzalkowska and Swietokrzyska street - right outside the Swierokrzyska subway station. A friend told me that you will instantly recognize this place by the long line that forms in front of it at almost any hour:

When I heard this, I just had to visit. I just love kebabs. In fact, I ate at a popular kebab joint in Manila for 2 consecutive days before I left - just to make sure I won't miss it too much. Big mistake, I should've taken Sinigang instead.

I had 2 kebab sandwiches (one with cheese, one without), and they were absolutely wonderful. Waiting in line in this cold weather was well worth it!

Basia, basia, basia

In case you were wondering about the title - let me start by saying that I am not talking about Basia Trzetrzelewska - that Polish singer my father likes so much (Papa, bet you didn't know she was Polish, noh?). Incidentally, "Basia" is actually short for "Barbara" - however, this topic is for another day.

The "Basia" I am talking about can be seen in the picture below:

I am not sure if you can clearly see, but that is actually a squirrel - eating a walnut I think. Since it was such a nice day, we spent a couple of hours walking around Lazienki park - it was just a short bus ride away.

The polish word for "squirrel" is "WIEWIÓRKA." However, for some reason, all squirrels here in Poland are called "Basia" - apparently all of them have the same name. That's why while we were walking around, we could hear kids (and some adults) calling these furry animals by whistling "Basia, Basia, Basia."

They were surprisingly friendly, and will gladly come close if you can offer them something to eat. Unfortunately, we didn't have any walnuts with us - so initially they didn't pay attention to our "Basia, Basia, Basia" calls. I then picked up a small stone, this was enough to fool some of them to come close and stay long enough for a photo op.

Hehehe - sucker!

Plans for the weekend?

Someone asked me this question yesterday: "what are your plans for the weekend?"
To answer this, I have 2 pictures:

Zubrowska Vodka with Apple juice - they say its the traditional way of drinking it. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Reminders of home

Here are some things that I saw today that reminded me of home:

It was raining very hard today in the morning - and its going to rain some more this week, according to the forecast. No floods and traffic jams though - that I don't miss.

Kare Kare! I so miss that. This place sells lamps though, not the peanut-flavored dish we Pinoys love. A friend of mine used to say "mahirap lang kami pare, ulam namin bagoong lang. Pero sawsawan namin Kare-Kare..." Hehehe corny.

Some people jaywalking - notice the red pedestrian light. I pass through this corner every day - and I see people doing this all the time - just like at home. I guess the red light is just a suggestion.

Its a Honda Civic! Hondas are pretty rare here by the way - when I was driving a Polish colleague around Manila in my Civic a couple of months back, he was amazed. Aparently, these cars are very expensive here. Notice the plates - they are just like mine - 777!

Receipts and Expense Reports

I should do this everyday - I know - but then again I have other things to do (like updating my blog hehehe). Now I just spent 2 hours figuring out how much I spent and where. Check out the receipts below:

Add this to the fact that everything is in Polish, and some of my receipts obviously have the wrong date (one was dated 2005, another one just didn't reconcile correctly with my expense excel sheet - which I update every 2 days).
Oh well, I am waiting for the laundry to finish anyway - it takes about 1 1/2 hours to finish one cycle. I have time to kill...and more Tanduay to drink. =)

Royale with Cheese

I went to Mcdonald's today for lunch. The instant I stepped in, I remembered this memorable exchange from Pulp Fiction:

Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the f*ck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a Royale with cheese.















I'm not exactly in Paris, and its not a "Royale with Cheese" here. As you can see from the picture, its called "McRoyal" - I'm not sure where they got the "royal" bit, but I suppose it sounds a lot better than ".113 kg with Cheese."
Strange though - when I mentioned this observation to an Italian friend afterwards, he asked me what system we used in the Philippines. I said we used both, and it actually depends on what we were measuring:

Weight (or Mass, if you want to be all technical) - we use Metric (Kg) for stuff like meat, veggies, etc. and English (Pounds) for a person's weight, or the weights in the gym.
Distance/Length - we use Metric (Meters/Kilometers/Km per Hr/Square Meter) for speed/distance/area, and English (Feet/Inches) for a person's height. We likewise use English for various other things, like if you wanted to buy a piece of cloth (Yards), or in Golf, if you wanted to measure the distance from the tee box to the pin (likewise in Yards).
Temperature - we use metric (Celsius).

I'm not sure how we ended up like this - I guess like a lot of things in the Philippines, when we were shifting to Metric a couple of years back, the shift wasn't as thorough as it was supposed to.
Just remember, when you hear someone say that he's "almost 2 meters tall," that means he must be very very tall indeed.

Manny Poohcquiao

I know that everyone's talking about the Pacquiao-Morales match yesterday. Here's something I found while searching youtube for some match videos - this is really really funny!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-eU0EDERzI

Gayang gaya niya si Pacquiao. Enjoy!

English Mass and Dinuguan

It isn't difficult to find a Catholic church here in Warsaw - Polish people are predominantly Catholic. The problem is that, like almost everything here - the language used is almost exclusively Polish. In fact, when we went to mass in Gdansk last week, it reminded me of the Capampangan Sunday mass back at home - I couldn't understand a word.

Fortunately, we were able to find an English mass in a chapel near where I live. It was a bit out of the way though, but the taxi driver didn't have any problems finding it.

The nice thing about attending an English language mass in a foreign country is that it is the best place to meet your kababayans. I had the same experience when I spent some time in Kobe and Tokyo - English language Sunday Catholic mass is a good way to get in touch with the local Pinoy community. And the good thing is, Filipinos abroad are usually very very friendly. In fact, to illustrate this, right after mass, we started getting into a car - and were on our way to a Filipino party.

There aren't too many Filipinos in Poland - less than 100 in the whole country.

The good thing is that the moment we stepped into the house, there was this distinct smell of Filipino food in the air. "Pare naamoy mo yon?" Dinuguan, laing, puto, chopsuey, pan de sal:















It was the best meal I had all week - the Pinoys here are great! I absolutely loved it!

A picture of my apartment

Here is a picture of my apartment here in Warsaw, courtesy of Google Earth:

See - its in the middle of town (or at least its in the middle of the screen)! I can walk to all of the good restaurants and gimmick places, there is also a mall nearby. The Metro station, as well as a bunch of tram and bus stations are also less than 5 mins away.
The office, however, is on the other side of town. Getting there is very easy though - only a 10-15 min Metro ride away.

Smoker's Windows

Here's something interesting I discovered recently:

This picture shows the window beside my living room. As you can see, the window opens normally, as we would expect.

If you twist the handle so that it points up, look what happens:

It opens up vertically! WOW!


















I know, thats lame. But it solved a big problem - how to let the cigarette smoke out without turning my apartment into a freezer. Now all my windows are opened like this. I didn't do this to my bathroom windows though - I prefer my toilet seats warm, not ice cold.

Washing Machine

I read somewhere that in New York, a sure sign that you are moving up in the world is if you have a washing machine and a dryer in your flat. I am not in New York, but I DO have a washing machine here in my apartment. No dryer though - my dryer is a bunch of hangers in the bathroom.

My problem is that I don't know how to use this machine.

This is partly because I never did the laundry back at home. A washing machine for me is my laundry bag. I put my dirty clothes in it, and the clothes magically appear in my closet all clean and pressed.

But the major reason can be seen in the picture above. If someone can translate it for me, please send me an email. I also have a swedish and finnish version. Wala bang Tagalog version?

In any case, we figured it out. My other Pinoy colleague from work experimented with it - using HIS clothes. Hehehe.

But we do save a lot of money by doing our laundry this way - the hotel laundry service cost them about 200 zloty for a couple of shirts (thats about p3,600). I hope my boss is reading this - we saved money for the company by experimenting with our clothes! Hehehe...

Warsaw - the hottest capital in Europe

Ok, ok. I know, Paris and Munich are hotter by a couple of degrees. But you get the idea.

Yesterday it was about 12-13 degrees - thats very warm for this time of the year. When a couple of my officemates went to Warsaw last year, it was negative 28. Negative freakin' 28! Ice cubes would have problems with that weather!

Its so warm here that I only wear 2 layers of clothes under my coat. I leave my gloves and "hat" at home, and last night I was wearing only a t-shirt and a very light jacket - the kind you'd wear in Baguio. I was walking to the office yesterday and I discovered 2 drops of sweat in my brow - ang INIT exagge! Hehehe - yabang ba?

I tell the folks here that in Manila 2 months ago, the temperature dropped from 33 deg to 27 deg. I was walking down Ayala Ave and I could see lots of people were wearing jackets. Their jaws drop whenever I say that hehehe.

But seriously, we do have great weather here now - perfect for walking around. Days are short though, at 4pm its totally dark.

Will probably walk around a bit later. Still nursing my hangover. =)

Don't declare any more holidays!

This is how much lead time I need in order to apply for the following things:

• a Polish multiple entry business visa - 14 working days, plus about 2 days for transit to and from Bangkok (there is no Polish embassy in Manila)
• a Schengen multiple entry tourist visa - 14 calendar days
• a Czech republic single entry tourist visa - 5 working days

I checked my calendar, assuming I apply for a Visa as soon as I get home on Dec 21 - earliest departure date will be around the week of Feb 5. If more holidays are declared, this could be pushed back even further. So GMA, if you're reading this - stop declaring holidays! Hehehe.

We have a company-sponsored skiing trip on Jan. 20 - I'll probably miss that one. I will also arrive in Poland at the coldest part of the year - that'll be about a 30+ degree drop in temperature, not an experience I am looking forward to.

Its amazing that Filipinos need to wait at least 1/2 a month to get a Visa. I remember applying for a business Visa to Japan a year ago - that was tough as well. They have some crazy requirements - like an invitation letter signed by the president of the company (in Japanese), a company profile (again in Japanese), a daily schedule of all your meetings during your whole stay (again in Japanese), etc.

Oh well, things can be worse I suppose.

Welcome!

Hello there. Welcome to my blog. Just a brief background - I am Filipino, and I am located in Warsaw, Poland. I am going to stay here for about a year, but I will come back to Manila every 2-3 months or so. Not sure where the title came from though - I've only been here for a week, surely thats not enough time to fall in love with a place.

In any case, I'll be updating this space regularly, so check back often!