Trip to Prague

I’ve just returned from a wonderful trip to Prague this past weekend.  My French companions and I filled our 2 days in the Czech Republic with taking a “free city tour” in which you simply tip the tour guide at the end, a museum about communism in the Czech Republic (in an ironic side note, the museum was located in between what may be the two greatest symbols of capitalism, McDonalds and a Casino), touring Prague Castle and visiting other major sites of the city.  We took what has become my favorite way of travelling, a bus company named PolskiBus and the trip is about 5 hours from Wrocłow.

The bath we went to in Budapest

Beautiful Budapest Castle at night

            This is coming a week after I arrived home from my Budapest trip, which I have concluded is my favorite city in Europe I have visited thus far.  In Budapest, we visited the castle, the parliament building, the national museum (which was hosting the World Press Photo for 2011), the Jewish quarter, one of Budapest's famous thermal spas, and some fantastic restaurants.  All in all, two great weekends with some more excitement planned for the future including a trip to Gdansk (Danzig) next weekend and a trip to Vienna and Bratislava during the first weekend in December to see Vienna’s famous winter market square.  I’m collecting refrigerator magnets from the cities that I visit and the refrigerator in my dorm room has slowly gotten more and more decorations.  So far I’ve been to Krakow, Warsaw, Auschwitz (no magnate here), Prague, and Budapest and I’m looking forward to more cities to come.

Trip to Budapest

I’ve started a long weekend in good fashion beginning with watching a rival football match that determined who will continue in the Belgian Cup with two of my Belgian friends last night.  The match was between Ghent and Bruges and it ended not only in overtime but in penalty kicks.  Needless to say, my friends from Ghent was all smiles and my friend from Bruges spent the rest of the evening sulking in his room.  I had fun introducing them to “American Football” and bragging about how well the wildcats are doing this year.  I think they still believe the sport is too slow and complicated to ever enjoy but I think all parties involved learned more about “football”

On top of that, the entire dormitory was awoken at 4:45 this morning in a fire alarm and I had the unique privilege of spending 30 minutes in the company of 300 tired, and cranky international students.  Turns out it was a drill and it makes me wonder how worried the administration is of a steel and concrete building burring down.

            I am currently with four German friends riding on a bus to Prague.  Our plan is to make it down to Budapest for our 6 day weekend and our first night will be spent in the in the Czech capital.  I’m looking forward making my first trip outside of Poland and I’m excited for some of the plans we’ve made so far like going to a well known Budapest restraunt and trying out one of the famous Budapest baths. 

The group I travelled with in front of the Budapest skyline.

            This trip comes thanks to what I am calling the Polish equivalent of a “fall break” because my usual 4 day weekends (I don’t have classes on Thursdays or Fridays) has been lengthened to a 6 day weekend due to the All Saints Day Holliday on November 1 in which most Polish students go back home to honor their loved ones who have died.  It would be a close to a two week holiday except for 2 classes that I have on Wednesday afternoon.  It’s probably good I’m forced to come back to Wrocłow for a day even though I’m in the process of planning another trip (possibly to Gdansk) for the following weekend just so I can recuperate and touch base with everybody (with hopefully another blog post).  I have a feeling, however, that I’m going to be using Wrocłow more as a gateway to other cities than my home in the next few weeks.

Thant’s all for now and I’ll let you know what Prague and Budapest are in a couple of days

My Classes this Semester

So I’m gearing up for another three day week of classes so I thought I’d go through the rundown of what I’m taking this semester in Wrocław:

Monday’s: I start out the day with my only history class of the semester called Alexander the Great and the Persan Empire.  I’ve only been to it once because it was canceled the first two weeks but I have a feeling I will enjoy it.  It’s taught by a Polish professor and I wish that would have been able to take a Polish history class while I’m hear but the only other class in English they were offering at the time was during my Polish language course.  Speaking of Polish language course, one of my other classes on Monday (with another class on Wednesday), is probably my hardest class, by which I mean the class I have to study the most for, but I’m learning a lot and enjoying it thoroughly.  The class I have in between the Alexander the Great course and the language course is a class entitled Law of International Organizations.  Again, I’ve only had this class once because it was cancelled twice before so I don’t really have a feel for it yet.

Tuesday:  On Tuesdays, I have to make a trek across town to the other campus of the university for my International Relations classes.  I start out the day with a class entitled Middle East and International Relations the a name that is pretty self-explanatory… I enjoy the class immensely and I’m learning a lot. I then go to my two favorite classes I’m taking this semester; first with Sports and International Relations followed by Global Human Rights Protection.  These are the highlights of my school week and I find myself looking forward Tuesday simply for these two classes.

A view of the University of Wrocław from the street,

Wednesday:  I round out the week with my South-Asia and International Relations class, followed by my European Union Law class and my Language class.  All and all, I am enjoying all of these classes immensely and it feels nice being able to get into a rhythm again with school.  I don’t feel like the difficulty here is up to the same standards at KSU (usually a couple of pages worth of reading per week with each class) but I assure you I’m not complaining.  In fact, I would say with confidence that most of what I have learned so far this semester has not been in the classroom.  It’s been talking with new friends that I have met from throughout Europe that I have learned the most about the world, and not-surprisingly, about the U.S.  I’ve found that nothing makes you appreciate the United States more than living abroad for a length of time.  And although I was expecting this, it’s still nice to have found a new appreciation for my home.

A Night at the Opera and a Day at a Football Match

Just finishing up a wonderful weekend highlighted by seeing Joanna D'arc (Joan of Arc) at the Wroclaw Opera and Slask Wroclaw "football" team beat Polonia Warszawa (one of the Warsaw teams) 4-0.  Both events were learning experiences as they were the first time I had been to an opera and European football match.  I was pretty clueless for most of the opera performance with the singing in Italian and subtitles on a screen above the stage in Polish.  However, by the end of the football match, I had most of the chants (which a Polish friend told me were pretty profane) down and I could sing the team songs with the best of them.  Tomorrow, we have out morning classes cancelled so we can attend an assembly celebrating the 200th birthday of the University but I'm looking forward for an exiting second week of classes.

Wearing the team scarf at the football match

Planes, Trains, and Other Polish Transportation

So my friends and I have decided that we can add to the Benjamin Franklin adage so the quip now reads, “there are three things in life that are inevitable: death, taxes, and your train in Poland will always be late.”  I have yet to have a travelling experience in which everything has gone right (either the train was late, my international student ID card didn’t satisfy the ticket puncher, or we got on the wrong train and were kicked off at the next train stop).  It is a learning experience and I’ve found myself taking the, in the end, things will always sort themselves out approach to living in Poland.  I feel like I’ve being winging it since I left home almost three weeks ago.  When dealing with trains, Polish bureaucracy or lack of any organization, I find myself simply thinking, “well… this is Poland.”

            If I’ve learned anything in the three weeks I’ve been here, it’s that you shouldn’t plan more than 45 minutes into the future because beyond this window, you’re setting yourself up for either frustration or disappointment.  On the train to Krakow this past weekend, another American that I was travelling with and I were planning what cities we would like to visit in the coming weekends.  When we got three weekends out, we realized that we were getting rather ahead of ourselves considering we didn’t even know what hostel we were going to stay at that night.  In the end, like they always have, things worked themselves out and my friends and I found a great hostel right in the city square and I consider the weekend to be a great success.  We visited the major tourist sites like Wawel Hill, the old Jewish Quarter, and a few museums and churches.

            I think this was a good, “first trip” in Europe because Krakow is a touristy enough of a city for 6 foreigners who don’t speak any Polish to get around quite easily.  I felt like everybody knew English and was amazed by how many Americans I saw/heard.  And I look forward to more travelling as well.  The university has planned a trip to Śniężka and Karpacz to go hiking next weekend and then some friends and I have planned a trip to Prague for the weekend after that.  I have a bet with another American who is studying here concerning how many times we have to ride a train in Poland before he have a, “perfect train-ride” (a train-ride in which everything happens as scheduled) and my bet is mid-November so I’ll probably have more stories for you in the upcoming posts.

Until then, do widzenia 

Two Cultures Meet...

Wroclaw is quickly growing on me.  As I now approach my one-week anniversary in the city, I have begun to understand the complexity and nuance that makes the city unique.  It is very clearly an Eastern European city that has an exotic feel to a Westerner but it is also a city that is in quick pursuit of the future.  The mall across the street from my dorm really could very easily be switched with Oak Park Mall at home.  The Polish that I’ve seen are very conscientious about their clothes and I see movie posters for American movies like Harry Potter and Columbiana at the movie theater across the street. 

There does seem, however, to be a part of the city (and maybe all of Poland for that matter) that is stuck in the past.  Apparently, the schools here require the students to study English in an attempt to prepare them for a future in which they will almost inevitably be require to use the language.  In fact, when I look for restaurants to eat at and stores to buy things, I look for the stores with young (under 27 or so) people working at them because there is a much better chance that they know English.  It is very apparent that the city used to be under the soviet bloc with its socialist style apartment complexes right out my window (see picture) and the always-evident poverty of the city that seems to indicate growing pains from communism to capitalism.  This said, homelessness that I see involves a crowd over 50 years old and the young seems to be anxious to move and out of any ways of life of Poland’s recent past.

The Soviet style apartment complex outside my window

One of my favorite activities this past week has been to simply walk around the city.  I like to get the feel of the city and the people and I feel as if I can almost blend in perfectly with the city and the people surrounding me.  I like to simply walk because it allows me to keep my mouth shut and I feel everyone around me takes me as one of their own; as if there is no difference between them and me.  At the “milk bars” that many of the students buy their lunch, I really do feel somewhat Polish… that is, until, I get up to the front and order and my foreignness becomes apparent.   But for the most part, Poles are very welcoming to strangers and foreigners.  It is not hard to make friends at restaurants, in the halls of the university, or even at the laundromat (details to come probably in the next post) and I have found that a little Polish, along with a little English from the other party, can go a long way.  In the end, this past week has not been about two cultures clashing but two cultures meeting, not without a few bumps here and there but relatively peacefully and quietly.  I feel blessed by the experiences I have had this past week while I look forward to the future because like the young Polish I have seen this past week, I am optimistic about the things to come.

The First Few Days...

Phew… I am now sitting here my Ladka XX (the temporary dorm facility the university is housing all of the international students in) room at 8:15 on Monday night and I looking back, I have realized that I have not had a single moment to sit and update this blog since the last Thursday evening. I have to keep reminding myself that I have only been here a few days because it feels like an entire week has gone by rather than just a weekend.  Let’s start at the very beginning of the trip and I’ll take you up until 8:15 on Monday night where you could find me sitting on my bed and opening up my computer.

Woke up early on Friday morning to see Lauren off to school and finish my last-minute packing and if memory serves correctly, Dad, Mom, Claire, and I were out the door by 7:45 or so.  We spent a couple of hours waiting for my plane in the Kansas City Airport and my plane departed on time (I might ad that all of my flights were on time) at 10:40 to Chicago.  It felt like the plane landed as soon as it got in the air because an hour and a half later, I was standing in O’hare airport.  But I really only had time to get a quick lunch in Chicago before my long flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany took off.

I found myself easily entertained on this flight watching free episodes of the TV show Scrubs and the movies, Midnight in Paris and Kung Fu Panda 2 on the small screen in front of my seat.   They turned off the lights in the plane and made all of us close our windows but, as one who cannot take naps during the day, I wasn’t able to fall asleep.  At 10:00 Central (Kansas) time, and 5:00 Europe time, we landed in Frankfurt.  I had a five hour layover in Frankfurt which I mostly spent reading in the terminal I would be flying out of.  In Frankfurt I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Germans that spoke English who I could ask directions on how to get to the right terminal.  Frankfurt seemed to be a popular European crossroads and I could hear quite a few different European languages just from my seat.  Most signs were written in both German and English and I did not feel out of place at all sitting in the terminal and watching others walk by.

The last leg of my trip (from Frankfurt to Wroclaw) was a different matter entirely.  At 10:50 Europe Time (3:50 AM in Kansas) the polish airlines (called LOT) had us walk up stairs, down stairs, through part of the airport, across a small runway, and take a short bus ride to the little plane that would take me to Poland.  It was here that I began to understand that Poland (and probably most of Eastern Europe) would not be like Western Europe and the Frankfurt Airport.  I easily could see that I was the only American on the flight and all the others spoke fluent Polish.  A flight attendant walked by and started talking to me in what I presume to be Polish (although it could have been any language because I didn’t understand any of it) and it was here that began using what has become my number one tactic for these types of situations; wiping the blank stare off my face, smiling, and nodding my head.  When the flight attendant remained standing there after I did this, it became apparent that she wanted something else.  I handed her my boarding pass, she looked at it, and this seemed to do the trick.

We landed at 12:40 PM and my Polish “buddy,” Kamil was waiting for me at the small airport in Wroclaw.  All of my traveling took a total of 22 hours plus the four hours I had already been up which made for a total of 26 hours without sleep.  But my day was for from over.  Kamil took my to Ladka XX where I met one of my new roommates, Laurens, from Gent, Belgium.  After we had a quick lunch in the mall across the street, we met our other roommate, Julian (sp??) from Luxembourg.  The rest of the day was filled with figuring out the tram system, meeting more international students including three Frenchmen named Axel, Eryk, and Medhi, who have become three of my closest friends here in Wroclaw, and eating dinner at a wonderful restaurant in the town rynek (central square, pictures to come).  When I crawled into my (two feet too short) bed that evening, I had been awake for a total of 34 hours and I had absolutely no trouble falling asleep.

The next morning was filled with walking to the main building of the University, eating a wonderful Polish breakfast food, beginning the first day of my Polish language class and meeting more fun and interesting friends from all over Europe.  I have found it rather hard to write all of this down because the past 72 hours really have been quite a blur and now as I finish writing this post (On Wednesday afternoon… two days after I started), it is hard to believe that I’m approaching the one week mark on my trip.  Well… I’ll be off but expect another post within the next couple of days.

As I learned today in my Polish class, Do widzenia (bye bye).

Editorial Correction:  In the first post I said that Wroclaw is pronounced Vrawklawf.  I have come to learn that all C’s in Polish are pronounced with the soft C sound so Wroclaw is pronounced Vraw-slawf.