No More Łódź

Dear Nathan,

This morning we checked out of the dorm and took a train to Warsaw. We did not do much sightseeing, however. We visited Warsaw before, a few weeks ago, and we are getting ready to be home (at least I am).

I spent the afternoon wandering the region near the hotel we are staying in. For dinner I got one last shaorma at Sphinx at the mall. You may remember this mall. I mentioned it in my post about Warsaw.



I was alone at dinner, since Philip and I made separate plans. However, it rained downporiously for my entire stay on the top floor of the mall. It was a nice show during dinner.

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Tomorrow around noon we fly out. If you weren't in Budapest for the next four months, I would see you soon.

I can slice a tomato with a fork.

It didn't turn out pretty, but the sandwich needed a tomato and our knives are gone.

Dear Katie,

Right now I am sitting in the room with Philip enjoying a room-temperature slice of pineapple-banana-cinnamon pizza. I just returned from Project Salsa, where I had my last class tonight. This morning Thomas and Nathan checked out and got on a train for Budapest. Last night we returned our borrowed dishes and silverware to Kasia, and as a result ate out instead of having Wine Wednesday. Yesterday morning we had our last meeting with Professor Wilczynski. He gave us some final feedback on our papers. We will work on them with Professor Humke when we return, though we will continue to be in contact with Professor Wilczynski.

Yesterday I also got a haircut in anticipation for the heat that is much more present in Minnesota than it is here.

This morning I packed almost everything up. I have enough clothing to keep me decent for the next several days before we leave, and my laptop is not stashed... but that's about it. I feel like I am about done here. It's exciting because I am ready to go. Our projects are as done as they will become in Poland and I miss a lot of things about home. Most importantly, various people and a strong presence of English literacy.

But I am also a little sad to go. I don't think leaving the math department will be that big of a deal, but I am sad to leave Project Salsa. For the last month I have done something like ten hours a week of salsa dancing. I went out dancing most evenings, as a result of the other guys' hesitance to leave the dorm. I have as a result spent a lot of time befriending the salsa dancing community here, particularly Ania and Gosia, my instructors. I may see people tomorrow night if Mojito has a salsa party, but typically Saturdays are the nights for that. And on Saturday night I will be in Warsaw, sleeping in a hotel in preparation for flying out Sunday morning.

Sunday night (to the extent that the term applies on the day I will gain 7 hours), however, I will hopefully land in time to see Joey's circus show. Shortly afterward I will be back on the cell phone grid for the first time since early June. And in the days and weeks following that I will be excited to see everyone, including you, again. As you have pointed out to me, this has been the longest time we have gone without seeing each other since we met.

Lunchtime!

Dear Dad,

I'm sure you are wondering, with posts only about dinner, what I eat for lunch here.



Of course that doesn't all go on one roll (I use at least two), but that's all that would fit on the plate.

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On Friday Professor Wilczynski took us on an excursion. We went to Łowicz and saw a museum. Then we stopped at a very old building. I'm not sure what to call it... it's not a castle but the word mansion does not do it justice. It is very well preserved and has itself been turned into a museum. We had been planning on going to see the Chopin museum at his birthplace but were prevented from doing so by several factors. The traffic to get there was insurmountable, and we found that they have concerts only on Sundays.

At the first museum, photos were not allowed. They would not have been so interesting anyway, I think; pictures of old stuff are just not as exciting as seeing the old stuff in person. Most impressively, I think, was the weapon room. They had swords about as tall as I am, as well as a cabinet of very old guns (which were so large and decorated I would be surprised if anyone could carry them).

I did take some pictures at the second destination.



The structure from the front. It was so surrounded by trees that it proved impossible to see the whole building from any angle.



Tons and tons of old furniture.



There were several rooms with just one color. This olive green one was less impressive than the red room, which was quite overwhelming.



The main (maybe) staircase had walls covered in these pretty blue on white tiles. Each tile is unique.



In the back yard there were some gardens. They served as a buffer, I guess, between the house and the park that filled the rest of the grounds.



Oh, and did I mention that this place has some canals? You could make some excellent solitons in them.

Just Saw Dark Knight

Or, as it is known here, Mroczny Rycerz.

It was intense. Very good. Holy cow.

Wine Wednesday Numer Osiem

Dear Grandma and Grandpa,

Last night was our eighth Wine Wednesday. We did not have one the first week we were here, which means that there is only one more (nine in ten weeks). I did not post right afterward because I headed off to the Dublin Pub again for salsa dancing. I was struck by irony while there; now that I am 21, and staying in Europe, I go to bars and order apple juice. This may be a special case, I suppose, since I go there to dance with my Project Salsa friends and not to drink.

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For dinner tonight I made something that I had not made before, although it was not really new and exciting. We had spaghetti with chicken. The first change is the chicken, which I had not done with pasta yet. The second change was that we used long noodles. In the past we have used shells, spirals, wiggles, and all sorts of other shapes based on availability.



We had a white Chilean wine. This week we chose the wine based on the bottle that looked good since we had nothing in mind when we went out to get it. The same was true last week, though I hope we come up with something exciting for our last Wine Wednesday next week. The wine was pretty good. It had an interesting taste to it in addition to the sweetness. Since the label said "Sweet Boa," we decided that the taste was probably a result of the wine being made of snakes.

Our frying pan is just about destroyed. It was low quality to begin with, and has seen almost two months of nightly use. It's to the point where I really don't want to use it anymore. Luckily, I only need to make about 4 more dinners in it. Sundays the groceries are closed so we eat out due to not having a fridge. Mondays and Thursdays I have salsa dancing during the dinner hour so the other guys fend for themselves. And next Friday Thomas and Nathan get on a train for Budapest to start their Hungarian language class. Philip and I will be here for another few days, we leave next Sunday, but I don't want to plan on the pan surviving for that long.

Wine Wednesday.

Yes I know it's Thursday now. I went dancing right after dinner last night.

Dear Mom,

Bragging time! One of the instructors at my salsa dancing class this afternoon did not believe that I speak no Polish. The movements tend to be explained (in Polish) then demonstrated once. However, as a result of having danced before, I am able to duplicate them reliably.

Tomorrow we will not be going to Zakopane as we had planned. This is for several reasons. Most importantly, we have not heard back from the hostel we wanted to stay at (with the alternative, according to the online reviewers, having mob connections). Also, we are eating lunch with Professor Hejduk tomorrow. Considering that Zakopane is an hour past Krakow, which itself is a 7 hour train ride, we would not be able to get there before 7am preceding a day of hiking. Sadly it's looking like we may miss the place that is supposed to be most scenic in all of Poland.

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Yesterday was Wine Wednesday. However, I was not feeling particularly creative. This meal probably looks familiar.



The only change was that I used more than the usual amount of black pepper. However, purely by luck, that ended up going very well with the wine. (I'm uploading pictures on Blogger now. My St Olaf webspace is just about full. I'm a little obsessive-compulsive about consistency, though, so I may go through the old posts and do the same thing and clear out my space.)



Our choice of wine was pretty arbitrary. We have wanted to try a Bulgarian wine (since that is supposed to be a main place to get it from other than Hungary). We did not know how to tell if a wine is Bulgarian from the label (in fact, to be honest, I'm not even sure if we would need to look for Roman or Cyrillic alphabet). The wines are all behind the counter so we more or less pointed at one that looked acceptable. Isabelle ended up being Hungarian. It really lit up the black pepper.

After dinner I went to the Dublin Pub, which has salsa nights every Wednesday. Weird, right? That's not even the worst of it. They are located on the second floor of a supermarket. The night started off with everyone being corralled onto the dance floor and taught a short disco dancing sequence. From there we had some heavily beated salsa music. One half of the dance floor looked like a (crowded) salsa event. The other half was packed with people who just came to club.

The floor was very small. It was not ideal for dancing. There were people there from Project Salsa, so we will see if I make it back. So far Mojito has been the best place to dance by far (other than the classes themselves at PS). I guess Mojito, the bar across the hall from Project Salsa, has only been open for a few weeks. They are fairly connected so I see a lot of people I know there.

My classes end on Monday at PS. There is a class meant to be a continuation which will inhabit the same slots of the week. The same people will take this class. I have not yet looked into whether I can sign up for just half; I will be gone before it ends.

The weather seems to like it when we stay in Łódź

We have left the city 4 times: to Torun, Gdansk, Krakow and now Warsaw. Those four days have included three of the hottest from our entire trip. In Gdansk it was nice and cool because of the rainstorms. The weather in Łódź is almost always comfortable.

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Last things first, I suppose. Tonight was sort of exciting as dinner went. The decision was made that there would be stir fry. However, there was no chicken at the grocery store. It seemed like sausage would not mix well with soy sauce, so I went for a veggie stir fry. However, they were also out of broccoli. In fact, they were out of quite a few things and what they had looked quite picked over.

I ended up grabbing some carrots (thank goodness), onions, peppers and beans. We went heavy garlic again because we still have lots. I used some more lemons because I like them, though it turns out they really need the broccoli to soak them up. And I threw in some honey at the end (why not?), though I did not use enough to be detectable.



I am determined to try honey again though, because it seems like honey and lemon just belong together. Lemon and black pepper also seem to belong together. Next time we will see if the relation is transitive.

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The battery in my camera did not last the whole trip to Warsaw. Additionally, it was only a day trip. In an afternoon we just did not do that much.

First, we arrived. Upon getting out of the train station, we saw the palace of arts and sciences. It is the tallest building in Poland, or so I am told. We saw an exhibit there about Einstein. We also got to enjoy the view, since the exhibit was on the 30th floor (pretty close to the top). We could see a long ways in every direction, though there really wasn't much to see.

This is probably because there isn't much left of Old Warsaw. We made a stop at the history museum. The old things were really interesting. The newer history is very depressing. Long story short, 85% of Warsaw was destroyed during World War 2. We stopped at a big old church. It was very nice. At this point my camera was dying so the pictures are pretty limited. This other church looked scenic. We did not go inside. We passed it while trying to find the Marie Curie Museum which, as far as we could tell, does not exist.

There was a mall, which we stopped inside of briefly. Thomas and Philip wanted some coffee so they stopped at a place called Wayne's Coffee. All of the barristas were female, so we assumed none of them were Wayne. I was pretty impressed by the roof of the mall. It's sort of like a Bucky Ball! We went to the Warsaw University Library. It's huge. In front of it are giant plaques full of knowledge. There were some with music and language. This one has a bell curve, pi, some molecules and Maxwell's Equations. Awesome. The roof of the library holds a botanical garden.

Hooray!



Something not quite right happened with the lighting here. You can't really read the plaques. Trust me though: knowledge.



Big building. Garden on top. Cranes? Reminds me of the new science center!



That's all for now. I have a meeting with Professor Hejduk in the morning.