Leaving

"When will you be back?" asked one of my Polish colleagues from the office.

"Maybe next month, maybe never - who knows?" I replied.

When I arrived here 2 weeks ago, I realized that despite the cold weather and the language barrier, I really did miss this place. I went inside my old apartment last night - the one I stayed in for 10 months the last time - it was strange to me that it didn't smell like cigarettes and my stuff wasn't scattered all over the tables and chairs.

Days were filled with meetings and mind-numbing, work-related negotiations. Nights were filled with meetings as well - I met many old friends for a beer, and made quite a few new ones (also over some beers). I had a ton of work, but I had lots of fun as well.

Despite all this, I can't wait to get back home. I'm going to miss this place, though. A lot. Goodbye Warsaw, ciao everyone! Until we meet again!

Standing on a train for 3 hours, building a snowman in Zakopane

Since it was our last weekend in Poland, we decided to go up to the Polish mountains last weekend. Our destination: a small town in the Tatras called "Zakopane." Since we wanted to get there early, we took a midnight train from the Warsaw Central station to Zakopane.

Unfortunately, since this was a night train, what would normally take 6 hours took more than 10 hours. The train passed by several other cities (Czestochowa, Katowice, Krakow, and a bunch of other smaller towns). Rowdy groups of men drank, smoked, and sang (it was actually more like "shouted") all night. Occasionally, they would also approach you and ask for beer money (in English - surprising!). Because we didn't have seat reservations (one of our companions insisted that it was not necessary), I spent the first 3 hours or so in the train seated in the hallway (my lucky trip buddies managed to get "proper" seats). As you can see below, Polish trains have very narrow hallways - I had to stand up whenever these rowdy men wanted to go to the bathroom (which happened every 5 mins or so).


As people slowly got off the trian after each stop, I was finally able to get a seat. However, as it turned out, these "proper" seats were not that much more comfortable than those hallway seats. Oh well, at least I didn't have to get up whenever someone passed by.


Zakopane is supposed to be a lot colder than Warsaw (on the average, about 6-7 degrees C colder) - something like Baguio is to Manila back in the Philippines. It certainly looks very cold in the pictures. Surprisingly though, even if the temperature was indeed lower when we visited, it didn't feel any colder there than in Warsaw. In fact, we even thought that the weather Warsaw felt a lot colder than Zakopane - something we attributed to more "wind chill" in the capital. Zakopane was cold - there was snow everywhere - but the wind wasn't constantly trying to freeze your nose off.

Filipinos would go up to Baguio to ride horses, eat Strawberries, and shop for souvenirs. Warszawians would go up to Zakopane to ski, eat Oscypek, and shop for souvenirs. Since skiing down a mountain to break some bones didn't really appeal that much to us, we decided to build a snowman instead.

Back at home when you go for a trip to the beach, building a big, nice looking sandcastle seemed like a piece of cake - I mean how hard could it be? Just stack up some sand and mud, use your Havaianas to round out and shape the edges - and BAM - you have a sandcastle. I figured the same should be true with snowmen (minus the Havaianas) - I mean how hard could it be, right? You just need to create 3 snowballs of different sizes, put them on top of each other, and BAM - you have a snowman.

Like building sandcastles, building snowmen was not as easy as it looked. Snow was hard to handle - primarily because it was heavy and cold. It was also hard to shape - it would turn rock solid quickly if you squeezed it too much. Our first attempt at building a snowman was pathetic. Really, really pathetic.

Then, we had a breakthrough. In cartoons, to create a big snowball (to presumably crush the kalaban), you first need to start with a small ball of snow. They would then push this ball down a slope, and it would gradually get bigger, and bigger, and bigger as it gathers more snow from the ground.

We tried this "cartoon theory" out in practice, and it worked! Snowballs really do grow like in the cartoons! As you can see below, we managed to create something that resembled a snowman (he looks like he got punched in the jaw by Manny Pacquiao). Success! Sort of, at least.

People who walked by took pictures of us building this thing ("Look at those silly Asians, trying to build a snowman in the park! There is dog shit everywhere! Ewww!").


The trip back to Warsaw was much faster - we decided to take a bus to Krakow (took 2 hours), and the express train to Warsaw (2 hours and 40 mins). This time, we made sure we had seats reserved. :)

I don't feel like going out today

That's right - its snowing heavily here right now. Fortunately, I am working from home today and tomorrow, since everybody in our office went to the lakes for their annual offsite.

Anyway, we had a great time last weekend in Zakopane and Krakow - my next post will be about that. Hope everybody back home is safe - I heard there were a couple of storms headed our way.

Santa

Alright, alright - before you hit the comment button, let me say a few words about the picture above.

An officemate of mine here in Warsaw was compiling a list of Christmas traditions from all over the world - these traditions will be published in our local, in-company magazine. She asked me about how Christmas was like in the Philippines and I gladly told her about hearing Christmas Carols over the radio as early as September, about our penchant for going to mass early in the morning ("Simbang Gabi") every day for last 9 days before Christmas, and how we eat food with Spanish names (Jamon, Queso de bola, Paella, Lechon de Leche) on Christmas eve. I also mentioned that although pine trees do not grow naturally back at home, we make do with decorating plastic versions of these trees in our houses.

She then wanted to take a picture of me to publish in the magazine, and I gladly obliged. They did some photoshop "magic," and this is how it turned out. I have no problems with it, though - it looks fine. Really, it does.

I think I should mention at this point that the lady who took my picture and did the photo-editing is the Country VP of our company here in Poland. :)

Here is another picture of Santa that Mav asked me to put here - she somehow thinks that it is related to this blog entry:


See the resemblance? Hehehe...advanced Merry Christmas everyone!

It's 4am, and may kwento ako

One word will sum up why this blog was updated frequently the last time I was in Warsaw: jetlag. Despite traveling back and forth numerous times over the past year across several time zones, my body still thinks its 11:00am, when in fact it's 4am.



My antidote: coffee, an ipod with a wifi connection, and lots of cigarettes. A couple of beers last night also helped. There is now a permanent haze of smoke in my apartment (it has been there since last night) - it's similar to the smog over Makati on a clear day. I would open the windows to let the smoke out, but its so cold outside that I'd rather die from suffocation.

The past 48 hours have been interesting. I was able to get a good seat on the plane to Amsterdam - I had an aisle seat, good legroom (no seat in front of me), plus no one was sitting beside me. It was like being in business class (not!) - the food was terrible though, but that's expected. Also, as you can see from my last post, I originally thought that my flight was on the 15th. When I re-checked my ticket, I discovered that I was actually flying on the 14th - this stressed out Mav a lot (she's still stressed out, I think), and I suddenly had a ton of things to finish.

Warsaw didn't change much since my last visit. We had dinner at a new restaurant last night (called Papaya) which had raving reviews ("Must visit!") - it was pretty good. As expected, the "spicy" pork dish I ordered was not spicy at all, but that's OK. The beer still tastes great, and I'm looking forward to stuffing myself silly with Keilbasa later tonight.

I'm going with some Pinoys from the office to Krakow tomorrow. we'll stay there overnight, and then take a bus to Zakopane - a small ski town up in the Polish mountains. There should be lots of snow, and I am not looking forward to that.

Anyway, that's it for me. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Leaving again

Hey everyone! I haven't been updating this space for a while now - a lot of exciting things have happened recently. I "bought" an ipod touch (emphasis on the word "bought" hehehe) and "upgraded" my car stereo (2 pre-outs! Aux-in!) so that I could plug my ipod to my system. I can now practically live in my car, as long as there is a toilet and a Mcdonald's drive-through nearby.

The "issue" is that I work from home twice a week (Thursdays and Fridays), and my new office is only a 15 min walk from my apartment. End result: my car is now officially a "garage queen" (minus the garage, hehe). That thing hasn't moved in days, and a full tank of gas lasts forever!

If you need tips on how to spend money on items you won't actually use, contact me.

The most relevant item for this blog is that I finally got (after 1 month of waiting) my Polish visa! I'm going to be in Warsaw from Nov. 15 to Dec. 1! To my friends in Poland, LET'S DRINK!!!