t r a v e l o g u e -- (newest entries shown at the top)
20: post-return
reflecting, i had a really amazing time over my two months in europe and can't wait to go back.
i'll be sure to write about my next trip. :)
19: 14. August 2008 farewell :(
so wednesday we had a little get together at michal's new apartment. it was a combo party for me leaving and his upcoming birthday. good times were had, even if i didn't fare as well as i normally do. (they were giving me way bigger shots!)
!
18: 13. August 2008 they have tabasco here
i had a really lovely pizza (it had egg on it..wtf) the other day at a little local place, and i noticed that they had tabasco on the table. they even had the green kind. i guess the reach of a little factory in avery island is farther than i thought. :)
i'm attempting to write a summary of my experiences for kikas. i still need to buy a few more things to take back with me. there's a party tonight for michu, since his birthday is friday. assuming i find my way there, it should be a fun time. ;)
looking back, it would have been helpful to have bought a little dslr (d40) from nikon and some better luggage (perhaps the kind that doesn't break instantly) before coming over here, but all in all, i'd say confidently that i've had a pretty successful summer. and certainly, point and shoot or not, i think i have some stupendous pictures to show for it.
so i have just 63 more hours to go here, and i guess i'm getting antsy. i'm at my limit for being almost entirely alone in a place where no one speaks my language. not to imply that anything has been particularly unpleasant (while certainly trying at times), but i'm of course eager to see my friends, family, and my home. well that, and i've got loads to do before school starts. phil said it took him a couple solid weeks just to catch up with everyone. hopefully i can go faster than that. only one week of lag time before semester begins, and i want a kitten.
i'm weird, i know, but i do still miss cupcakes.
17: 4. August 2008 oh la la
i spent my week off in paris and stayed with farid. we had a blast! i think i had a chance to see basically all the major stuff. paris is an incredible city, but i don't really feel like writing a multipage entry right now...and i still need to go through my pictures some more. however, i posted them to flickr already. :)
overview of the trip:
wednesday-
-overnight 14 hour train ride
thursday-
-arrival at gare du nord
-laundry time
-meeting up with jonathan
-chatillion to hang out with taylor and have some drinks
friday-
-exploring things along la seine by myself, lots of pictures
-notre dame
-kebab
-outdoor movie, more wine
saturday-
-versailles
-sacre coeur
-going up la tour eiffel
-more wine
sunday-
-walking around in le louvre
-pompidou (modern art museum)
-l'arc de triumph
-champs élysées
-la défense (modern architecture district of paris)
-authentic nutella crêpe
monday-
-departure at gare de l'est
16: 27. July 2008 ok poland, you win
so i just finished breaking my last (of 4 total) piece of luggage i brought with me. american tourister sucks. still no laundry. does everyone really dry clean everything? what am i missing here? i still want to go to paris to meet up with farid. that's going to cost me a thousand dollars easily unless i take the train...which is 14 hours. woohoo. :P it's easy to be down, lately.
15: 23. July 2008 kentucky fried chicken...from poland
so, yesterday right after someone asked me if i had experienced any problems with my macbook (to which i was able to honestly say that i hadn't), i looked down and noticed that the charge/charged indicator light on my power connector wasn't lit. awesome. the first thing i assumed was that it wasn't actually charging and that i had blown an adapter somehow, but when i got back to the hotel, my other adapter (packed for just such an emergency) did the exact same thing. alarming. the idea of potentially being stuck here for another month without a laptop was pretty frightening. anyway, i finally realized that it was actually charging fine, just the thing that controls whether the light is green or orange was freaked out. i was able to fix the problem after some nvram and pram resets and a hardware diagnostic. crisis averted. :) helix lives!
i had lunch today at the chinese place again with basically all the guys from work. there was actual english conversation. it was fun.
in other news, i finally went shopping at the gigantic nearby mall. there are loads of stores, but everything was pretty expensive...especially with the weak dollar. nearly the entire apple ipod line, for example was around double (sometimes more!) the cost it would be in america. what's that about? in general, there were way too many things that cost (equiv) >500us$, not the least of which, suitcases. macs seemed to cost about 400us$ more than they would in the states. i got some food at the food court...from kfc. seriously i doubt i'll ever understand this place. how american companies like kfc end up here is beyond me. :P
i found one cool clothing store, river island, that i liked. the fitting room guy, kuba (probably short for jakub), was really nice and happened to speak decent english. naturally, they didn't have my size for any of my first choice items (too short pants and whatnot), so after he found that out, he turned into a kind of personal shopper. convenient. we talked a good bit. anyway, i ended up buying a lightweight jacket and some pants for 409pln...gotta love 22% sales tax. and to make it better, the usd continues to weaken against the pln. heh, oh well.
14: 21. July 2008 my office used to be a gestapo prison during wwii
so i haven't been feeling like updating lately...i guess mostly because not much has been going on. i may do a backpost of my adventures in berlin with weekend before last...
i found out the other day that the building where the psnc offices are has had many uses over the years and is a historical protected building. apparently it was at one point used as a gestapo prison during wwii. crazy stuff.
in other news, i found out that i randomly have next week off. entirely. so i need to get busy making plans to maximize travel and minimize expenses, in a hurry. more to come, soon hopefully. :)
13: 11. Jul 2008 washing clothes in the sink
the exchange rate from usd to pln is dropping like a rock... and i washed a bunch of clothes by hand. i think that's the first time i've ever done that before. honestly it isn't the worst thing in the world, but getting them to dry quickly is a bit of a pain.
in other news, i finally made it to berlin. i think that i can easily say that this was the most ridiculous traveling i have done yet in my life. i don't think i've ever ridden a train before...except of course the monorails at disneyworld. it started out with me at the poznan glowny (main train station) which is a gigantic unairconditioned building packed with people, dogs, and pigeons. no one who works in the building has even a cursory knowledge of english, and the lines take longer than at an airport. i missed the direct train from poznan to berlin which would have only taken 3 hours because the line i was in closed before i made it to the front of it. instead i did a two train deal which ended up taking over 5 hours.
just making it on and off of the right trains at the right stops was extremely stressful, not speaking polish. the polish train was delayed by like 45 minutes for some reason, so i missed my connecting train. thankfully, by the time i got to frankfurt, i was reassured by everyone knowing at least german. thank you dr dinapoli. :) it felt good to order a replacement train ticket all auf deutsch. i got some food at a burger king (the first one i've seen yet) and took a picture of the sign. management quickly informed me that this was forbidden, though my german isn't quite good enough to make out what their reason was.
when i got on the german train from frankfurt to berlin, it was like i had gone to a different planet. by comparison, it made the unairconditioned, ancient, stinky, horribly loud, overpacked, trains feel like they were from an entirely different time. the german train was super modern, decked out with glass and other industrial design elements, nearly completely silent, and very fast. when i say they were quiet, i mean that literally the loudest thing on the train at top speed was the person's headphones a few rows down from me. i even got a 20 minute nap on it.
i was surprised when i arrived at ostbanhof berlin at how nice the place was. it's a really big train station, and there were lots of shops. unfortunately, that positivity was short lived. when i took out my phone, i realized that my polish sim would absolutely not work in germany...which really sucks. further complicating things is that you can't just take out an iphone sim. you have to have a paperclip. thankfully, i had my us sim on me, and i found some really friendly people at the subway sandwhiches store in the station who helped me to use an unbent staple to get my sim out of the phone. i love germans already. :) anyway, before i had succeeded in that, i had already tried calling phil from a payphone, failing several times before i got exactly the right amount of phone numbers for it to work. his phone isn't working, and i don't know what that's about. luckily, i had the address of the hostel written down in my bag, so i figured that was the next best thing to actually establishing contact with phil. i got some internets from a pay-per-use kiosk and jotted down some directions.
as i'm orienting myself and figuring out which streets are which, i realize that my rolley bag has broken a wheel. awesome. so now 2 of my 3 pieces of luggage that i brought with me are significantly damaged. well made, i say! anyway, i finally navigated my way there, dragging my luggage behind me. i even met someone staying at the same hostel as me on the street. kelly from georgia studying spanish had just come from barcelona to stay in berlin for a couple days. i think she was happy to see someone who wasn't speaking german, and we located the hostel together. the hostel has a very friendly front desk service capable of speaking good english. that was a nice surprise.
i have two finnish people and two french canadians in my room. they're interesting people, too.
first impressions of berlin: you never have to wait long on the crosswalk to change, the streets are usually clearly labeled, the people actually know how to dress.
right now i'm waiting on philip to make it to the hostel. he's supposed to know berlin very well, but apparently i won today. :D in the meantime, i feel victorious for having found the hostel but am completely and totally worn out. hopefully my att bill won't be insanely high when i get back home...
philip just arrived after a train adventure of his own. :P
12: 8. Jul 2008 the fungus that killed a guy
so i've been feeling sick since i moved into the hotel. because of that, i stayed in all weekend and kept getting worse, but when i went out for more sprite, i noticed that upon walking outside, i felt much better straight away. this made me wonder what the cause exactly could be and had me consider the possibility that it wasn't some bug i'd picked up (from too much handshaking?). maybe an allergy to something, maybe a gas leak, maybe mold? who knows. all i know is that now i keep the window all the way open, and i'm feeling quite a bit better.
so today, over lunch, michu mentioned that a while ago, someone died because of a "fungus" from my hotel. comforting.
anyhow, i got my iPhone reloaded, so i should be set for a while longer. still planning on meeting phil in berlin this weekend. :D
11: 4. Jul 2008 room 108
well that was a fast change. i swtiched rooms because, naturally, the hotel isn't airconditioned, and my previous room's window faced the west. that made my room incredibly hot. like, the window got too hot to touch in the evening. anyway, grabarz asked me about my new room, and i casually mentioned the heat, assuming nothing could be done, and he contacted the hotel to have my room changed. what a pleasant and helpful surprise. :) perhaps i'll sleep better now.
so it's independence day, but they're'll be no fireworks for me this year. :P i could really go for some bbq right now, though.
for whatever reason, i spent quite a lot of time reworking things on my website over the past couple days. it's not gorgeous, but it's done entirely by hand, and i think it's sufficient. it's also a work in progress. ;) i just switched hosting from my house to a "real" host. after switching a ton of dns entries and doing a good bit of prep, i even set up apache on the home server in such a way that my old ugly links (which were necessary at the time) will be transmorgified into the fresh, clean links as if by magic (using the automagical apache module of course, haha). so if you have anything bookmarked, update them for marginally faster performance. i am still getting the blog squared away, so the address for that may change depending on what i decide. that's enough about that.
10: 3. Jul 2008 room 301
again, it's been a bit since the last update. i moved yesterday from the villa to the main hotel. it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to coordinate since the guy at the main desk (whom i've met several times before) understands no english at all. i ended up having to use a combination of german and a notepad of written phrases from translate.google.com to get the point across. after that, he was much more accommodating. phew.
my new room has a lot more tv channels. most of them are in german (thankfully!). i saw the funniest commercial for world of warcraft with mister t in it except it was dubbed over in german with some german guy trying really hard to sound like mister t. incredible stuff. :D
psnc has some really crazy network policies, and with the new wireless connection in the hotel, i ran into another one of them. AIM is blocked. wtf?! who blocks AIM, seriously? so now, if i want to get on aim, i either have to set up a proxy every time i connect my laptop or use a web client. convenient. oh, i did find out some great news though. originally i thought that wall-e wasn't going to be released to poland at all, but the other day i saw and ad for the movie. it's coming out 11 July (along with iPhone 3g). :D
last saturday, jarek had his going away party (since he is working for cct now instead of psnc). it was at a local bar called zak. free alcohol and about 50 people from psnc made it quite an interesting time. i talked with a whole lot of people from work, met a few girlfriends, and enjoyed myself pretty thoroughly. i hung out with michal for most of the night. being one of the youngest people here (closest to my age) and most friendly, it's easy to talk with him so he already knows me pretty well. he definitely gives me some insight about polish culture. i'm sure the same goes in reverse, since as far as i know, he has only really talked to one american other than me.
today someone brought some cake and beverage to celebrate his 'name day'. i'm still not entirely sure how these holidays work, but i think it has to do with feasting on the day of the saint who you are named after. somewhat peculiar. :) anyway, we went upstairs to the room with like 20 people, and still, everyone shakes everyone else's hands in the whole room. that's like 200 handshakes! anyway, so i had some cake and talked to a few people, but it's so socially awkward when everyone is carrying on in polish. i was just kind of standing there. oh well, it wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last time. i'm glad these kind of situations don't seem to phase me. :P
here, i spend a huge amount of my time just researching things so i can have a better understanding of the culture and all. in looking up how these 'name days' work, i found out that poland actually has laws governing what names can be given to children! apparently, france and germany also have such laws. maybe this is part of why it seems that everyone and their momma is named piotr...
tomorrow is independence day, but i doubt fireworks are legal here. ;) in other news, i just read that louisiana has locked in its title of 4th fattest state in the nation. nearly 1/3 of the state is obese, and 2/3 of the state is overweight. congrats.
today michal asked me, essentially, if i was named after alexis colby from the show dynasty. that made me laugh. :)
9: 26. Jun 2008 purple soup
so it’s been a little bit since the last writing, but honestly, it doesn’t feel like so much has happened. i’m putting off writing about trends that i’ve noticed with people and on the street for a bit longer, but i think it’s some interesting stuff that i’ll write down at some point.
[hey mom, skip this paragraph. :)]
tuesday (24.Jun) night i spent the evening with michal and dziubecki. we watched a polish movie at michal’s, drank a lot, and went to a couple bars near the city centre. there was quite a lot of alcohol involved, to be sure, and i really like the polish vodkas i’ve been trying. however, i was prepared to think that poles were something like russians, having unnaturally high tolerances for alcohol...as it turned out, i was more than able to keep up--even with the tequila(!). i should have a picture of our little shot-glass pyramid on flickr up soon. anyway, i guess it was one of those wake up still-a-little-drunk the next day things for me, but i certainly wasn’t feeling badly, unlike dziubeck who didn’t look so great at work wednesday. :P all in all, i got to see a local polish film, how the trams work, the other side of town, and some local young-people bars/pubs, and i got to try some more local alcohol--i even had some carbonated cider stuff which is usually way too much like beer for me to try. it was quite an adventure, for sure.
i’ve been doing my best to try random food here, and while most things don’t seem so exotic, i came across some soups that definitely are different from anything i’ve seen before. there’s this local student-cafeteria place that we go about half the time for lunch. the food isn’t great, but it’s incredibly cheap. today i spent (equiv) 3.84usd (!) for lunch. obviously not everything is this cheap. :P anyway, there are soups that vary day-to-day there, and a couple days ago they had some that was purple, cold, and had jello randomly in it. i tried it, and as to be expected, i didn’t care for it. thankfully, there’s a local pizza place that’s rather good. :)
i’m learning more about my colleagues here, which is certainly interesting. because their english isn’t the most natural thing in the world for them, they talk with each other almost exclusively in polish. so, my conversations with them have tended to be more individual. i’ve also started to find out the random common interests that i share with a few of them, which always helps to keep conversations going. i’ve been talking cars with grabarz, who is i guess the oldest guy in the group. it is positively insane how much cars cost in poland. a decent new audi could be (equiv) over 100,000usd. that’s nuts! gas is something like (equiv) 8.36usd/gallon, too. i’m not really sure how anyone affords a car at all. also, talking about politics, law, and those kind of things has been pretty interesting.
i wish i could say that my polish was coming along, but really, it isn’t. it’s of course rather isolating, but generally, people do try to understand--and it seems like most of the time there is someone (sometimes a random person) there to translate for me when i really need it. still, jarek was a bit misleading when he told me that language wouldn’t be an issue, since i’m told that maybe 1% of polish people actually know english. at this point, i know a few basic words and just a couple phrases, but my understanding of their grammar/pronunciation is still null. oh yeah, i know plenty of the swear words--those aren’t hard to pick up. :P it doesn’t help that i definitely learn best visually and this is a very auditory-type environment. i find it hard to remember the words because they’re just sounds for me until i know how they’re spelled. i’ve gotten very good at saying ’thanks’, so i do that a lot.
so, how’s work going? well, it’s picking up with me just getting initiated with some really huge projects with huge directory structures of packages that make it hard to comprehend. (gridsphere/vine) i’m focusing on getting my feet wet with adobe flex, a cross-platform set of development tools that allow for making interfaces and applications that run using the near-universal flash player. i’m supposed to be making a batch supercomputing job submission interface portlet. we’ll see how that goes.
oh yeah, jarek randomly popped into the office today. they’re having a going away party for him (from PSNC to CCT) saturday. originally i was supposed to meet up with phil this weekend in berlin, but he’s busy with his school stuff, so we postponed it. alex is in london this weekend, so i wanted to visit him, but the plane flights are not cheap flying from here, and jarek’s thing is this weekend, so i don’t know. flying to london for two days may not be the best use of money at this point.
8: 21. Jun 2008 things have started to slow down
i had some more money changed the other day. the shady looking guy at a kantor had better rates than the banks, and it turns out that it was better than the standard current rate (according to google). grabarz explained to me that in communist times, these same guys operated on the streets exchanging money illegally. interesting. i’m finally starting to get used to having lunch later...like around 14 or so.
yesterday (friday), i noticed a big difference in the way that the young people are dressed on the streets. it’s a lot less boring and uniform than before. maybe it’s that they’re dressing up for the weekend or something. i'm glad the young people won't be deprived of iphone for too much longer here. i also walked around and found this gigantic mall, called stary browar (old brewery). it’s huge, awesome, and super industrially styled. i was surprised at how many american companies are actually international. apparently they think that pizza hut is good pizza (!) here. i haven’t really bought anything yet, but i’m sure i will before i leave. i almost got lost walking around that area of town, but i didn’t, so i still need to get lost before i leave. :P oh, i found this gigantic memorial that is kind of hidden in this park. it’s really close; i don’t know how i haven’t seen it before. it apparently represents some of the violent oppositions to the communist system when lots of people ended up getting killed.
i came home somewhat early and got a lot of rest. i feel like i’m finally caught up on sleep, even though my bed positively sucks--i think the floor would be superior. i went exploring some more today, and found another mcdonald’s--close to where i’m staying. they’re so popular here. there is always a line at them. i’ve made a map of all the places i’ve been in poznan so i can keep track and see as much as possible while i’m here. it made me realize how much i’m walking and explains why i have \"disney-world-feet\" lately.
i found a place called millennium pizza not far, so i’m going to try that out today or tomorrow. i need to get some groceries soon because i think almost everything closes on sundays...or at least a lot earlier. it’s still a big pain to get out of the complex fence on the weekends, especially not knowing polish, but i’m managing. i don’t know what i’d do if they didn’t have sprite here, but thankfully, it’s very easy to find. i’m looking for a bakery (preferably one with cupcakes :), but stores don’t have huge signs like in the states, and if they do, naturally, they’re in polish.
be sure to check out my flickr photostream to see pictures of all these things; i’m keeping it up to date. :)
7: 18. Jun 2008 mcdonald\'s getting harassed by the policja
last night was interesting. after i got home from work and lounged around for a while, i went out to see some more of the city and get food. on the way, i crossed a street that had a crosswalk sign still on, not seeing any cars, or people for that matter, in the area. well, some cops popped out of nowhere and harassed me for a few minutes, asking for my \"papers\". they didn’t speak any english, of course. they let me go with a warning, but i have no idea what the alternative would be for such a flagrant violation! ;) anyway, i went on to walk around for a while, and enjoyed myself.
some local young people came up to me, asking something in polish. when i said i didn’t understand, she spoke perfect english. i guess i don’t look like too much of an american. :)
there is a mcdonald’s which was much nicer than the majority of the ones in the us--lots of big tvs and modern lighting and all that. it was only a bit more expensive than in the us, but that’s probably due mostly to how much or dollar sucks right now. sprite definitely tastes different here, but it’s not a bad taste. i think i’m losing weight from all of this walking, but my feet are starting to be less sore already.
today grabarz is in and out doing a presentation all day. still no concrete projects have been given to me, but i expect that to change soon. i also need to start making some basic plans for travel. :) i think phil is leaving germany early.
also, i upgraded my flickr account so now i have unlimited uploads and such. this means i will be uploading a lot more pictures. there’s a link at the top (in a blink tag...haha). poznan really is a beautiful city.
6: 17. Jun 2008 seminar and day two at work
last night ariel invited a guest from australia and me to go with him and ania to dinner and then to a nice little bar called barcode to watch poland v croatia futbol/piłkarstwo. the town center is really awesome, and i took lots of pictures. as for the game, poland lost, but i did get to have some very good polish vodka--can’t remember the name though. i’ll have to ask ariel. anthony is staying at the main hotel where i am, so we walked back together.
this morning i attended a talk done by anthony about grid resource allocation. interesting stuff. on the walk to the office, i got a polish prepaid sim for my phone so people won’t have to call an international number to reach me, and i can stop charging super expensive calls. it was super easy to get a sim here; they even let me pick the number. only about 60zł for a sim and some minutes. since i had already unlocked my iphone, it worked straight away, but it stopped syncing with itunes until i used ziphone again to get it (h)ac(k)tivated. now it works great again, though i haven’t tried data. i’m not sure how many minutes/data/texts i have and all that since the pamphlet is completely in polish.
afterward, i went to the office for a while and then to have lunch (which is later than what i would expect--around 14.00) at an asian place with two of my colleagues who have been rather friendly so far. i think our version of asian food is probably a bit better in america, but it was fine. i still need to change some currency, but living is cheaper than i expected it to be. the language issue is quite a big deal still, but thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of translators to randomly help me out. :) making friends doesn’t seem to be so hard. i’m headed home for the day--who knows for tonight.
sidenote: there is a ridiculous amount of hand shaking in general. i wonder what that’s about.
5: 16. Jun 2008 in the PSNC office for the first time
last night i decided to go exploring for a couple of hours to keep myself awake for longer. i didn’t really see that much of the city, but i did get to see some of the architecture styles and start to see a lot of native people. for whatever reason, i see metal plaques on nearly every building. that’s a bit odd. also, the people seem to stare a lot. either i’m peculiar or, unlike in the us, staring isn’t a thing to avoid. it also seems like nearly everyone’s phone is a nokia, and for some reason, i keep hearing really old american music in different places. the weather is so much better than back home. i don’t even think the villa is air conditioned, but it doesn’t matter. :) i finally got some internet, but it’s not in my room in the villa; it’s at the nearby main hotel lobby. a nice guy named martin who works at the biochem center (and speaks english) helped me to get a wireless key to use it. i’m still not sure what the issue is with dhcp for the wired connection in my room, but if my workplace is any indication, maybe they don’t use dhcp servers at all and everything has to be set up manually. hopefully this will be resolved today. when i got back to my room, i found ugly betty on tv with polish overdubbing. that was some pretty amusing stuff.
so today is my first day at workplace at PSNC. it is about 1km from where i’m staying, so the walk isn’t too bad. i met maybe 10 people so far, and everyone, of course, is very nice and friendly. the good thing is the everyone here does know how to speak english, at least at a basic level. the bad thing is that they don’t unless they’re talking directly to me. it’s a bit isolating. i think i’m going to get some pimsleur audio for learning polish...we’ll see how long that takes me. hah. we’re going to lunch at some kind of student place that is cheap around 14.30. piotr found me a pralnia (laundry) place that isn’t too far, so i’ll have to check it out soon.
being 5271 miles from home is pretty exciting.
4: 15. Jun 2008 in poznan
i’ve never ridden on prop plane before today on my way to poz. almost scary since for me the idea conjures images of a trashcan flying using box fans or something...turbojet please. :) so i’ve now gotten into my room in the villa, and the accomodations are very nice, anddddd my power adaptors work. piotr got me from the airport and spent a good bit of time giving me tips. he says that it could be a major problem that i don’t know polish since most people don’t know english. that’s a bit scary. i can only learn a slavic language so fast... oh, one of my bags was temporarily lost, but i got it without major issue fairly quickly; unfortunately, the trolley handle doesn’t work anymore. i feel like exploring the city now, but i’m exhausted...i spent 24 consecutive hours in transit. i’m feeling a little uncomfortable, which is probably because i’m all by myself, but i’m not freaking out so that’s good. piotr spent a few minutes talking about the potential for crime, so i guess i’ll be carrying my taser. i’m going to at least get working internet before i go to sleep tonight since i’d love some google maps right now and so i can stop making 3$/minute phone calls. i switched to ’plus’ for a bit, and now i’m using ’orange PL’... i have a little tv, and these polish game shows are cracking me up.
3: 15. Jun 2008 in münchen
check in at msy took 30 minutes at the ticket desk. charlotte was only slightly better organized, but i still didn’t get a boarding pass until after the flight was supposed to have departed and ended up not getting a window seat (so no pictures). it was delayed by about one hour. the flight was lovely, though. lufthansa is easily the best airline i have ever flown with. the crew was incredibly friendly in their various color coordinated lufthansa uniforms. the airbus a360-600 was huge, very quiet, and flew at 620mph at least once. unfortunately my touch screen thing stopped working about halfway through. met some ef tours highschool students. german airport security is pretty rude, but i did get to see some real goths. :P the hour delay caused me to miss my flight out of münchen to poznan, but lufthansa was fairly quick to resolve the situation...they said something about us airways doing something wrong with my tickets/check luggage. i really hope it gets there. luckily, there is a flight out of MUC only an hour later than my original, so i should be set. couldn’t find free wifi at this airport, but it’s positively humongous. just texted piotr to let him know of the delay. hopefully that works since i’m using some mobile provider called e-plus right now, according to my iphone. i swear everyone in europe automatically wears cuter clothes.
2: 14. Jun 2008 (in the early hours of the morning) going to sleep for a few hours
thanks guys for coming to see me off; i really enjoyed it. mario kart for wii is awesome...even if we had to use gamecube controllers in the end.
i’m finally totally packed, and i still feel like i have too much luggage. incredibly nervous and exactly the same amount excited, which makes for a confusing emotional state. this is going to be an interesting experience. father is bringing me to the airport tomorrow morning, and nathan’s taking care of things at the condo for me. should work out. more to come. :D
1: 13. Jun 2008 excited, nervous
So my flight out of New Orleans is tomorrow morning, and I’m still packing. I have so much to do before I leave, but I’m doing my best to not be stressed out. At this point, the important thing is that I have everything I need. I would have liked to get a new laptop bag (STM small alley), but the Apple store didn’t have any when I went yesterday.
Oh yeah, there’s also supposed to be a send-off party tonight, and even though I’ve already invited all my friends to come, there are no sort of arrangements for it yet. Typical. :P
I hope I get to see Alex and Phil while I’m over there at some point. I don’t have any concrete plans at all for travel, but I really want to visit a lot of cities, even though I’m told that Poznan is great.
0: 13. Jun 2008 start log
'Codzienny dziennik' apparently means something like daily journal in Polish.
Anyway, here's my account of my summer in Poland and other parts of Europe.
.svn: