I’m dearly sorry, dear reader. First, I haven’t written in a bit. Second, I went ahead and trained to Gdansk last week but forgot to tell you all about it. Well, if you thought I was going to tell you about it here, you’ve got another thing coming. The good news is, though, that you can find at least a bazillion photos from my little excursion on my Facebook album here (actual number of photos may vary).

Seriously, I have meant to do a lot more posts. In fact, I have a little text file staring at me from my Desktop, full of post topics and sentence fragments. Really, it’d only take the crumbiest bit of brainpower to string those fragments into blog posts (especially given what passes for journalistic content these days), but I haven’t been able to muster it.

It’s just that I’ve been so busy, doing all sorts of, you know, work and stuff. Actually, I have been getting to a lot of the tourist sites I’ve been putting off until the last minute, like the super-awesome Wilanów Poster Museum (my photos here). Oh, and the Siberian Cat Story has struck again with a super stressful sequel that I and my unfortunate mentorka Kasia have had to deal with.

Though I’m a worthless good-for-nothing, I promise you I will post at least one more story on this blogamajigger to bring closure to my study abroad experience (right) or at least to puke out (in five-word fragments) some of the adventures I’ve been withholding.

Look forward to that mess either on Saturday if I’m seriously bored (depending on the outcome of the big game), or after I get home on Sunday (fat chance). No, really, I owe you one more post. And maybe it’ll even include the awesome word my German friend Dorothee made up.

By the way, the photo in this post is neither from Gdansk nor Malbork. Take that.

In less than two weeks, I’ll be back home. And I can’t wait.

I guess I’m weird. Supposedly when people study abroad, they’re supposed to fall in love with where they are and all their fun and exciting study abroad friends… and they’re supposed to never want to leave. In their last weeks, they’re supposed to be so motivated to make the most of their last days, and on they’re last day, they’re supposed to be bawling.

Yeah, that’s not going to happen to me.

It’s not that I don’t like it here; I do. Like the country that is. And I really like a few of the people here. The problem is everyone else. But most of all, I’m getting dead-tired of my living situation here. Won’t say anything else about that because who know’s who’s reading this, but let it suffice to say that I really, desperately want to run Repair Disk on my hard drive but I forgot to bring my OS X install disk to Poland.

Another root of my, uh, discomfort may lie in the true reason I came to Poland: to finish my novel. I didn’t come here to make great friends that I’d never see again or to booze every night because you don’t have to be 21 to drink. I didn’t come here for the time of my life. I really did come here for a quiet place to write my book—and learn a lot about a new culture and do some traveling in the meantime (okay, okay, and make a few—FEW— real friends)… but now that the book’s done, there’s no gold-leaf covering the rat’s nest, as it were.

And then there’s the whole issue that I have no money. Why am I always thinking about money? I guess I’m just really insecure. Anyway, I’ve literally spent the whole semester spending money without any way to make money, and I’m at the end of my rope here. I just keep thinking about how I’m going to have to find a job when I get home and dig myself out of debt and blah blah blah, which has kind of put a damper on my spirits. So that’s why I’m reading Harry Potter.

Oh, and I’m also getting too stoked to launch my career as a fine artist and illustrator. Brace yourselves; I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve…

Despite all this stuff, though, I’m not quite ready to go home. I still have to see the fabled Wilanów Palace and the Poster Museum. I’m also gonna visit the Royal Castle again to see a collection of art that’s on loan here from Cracow (including the da Vinci piece). I’m also working on a little art project of the Old Town Market Square. I want to do another photo walk or two to see some parts of the city I somehow still haven’t gotten to… So all that’s gonna take some time.

Oh, and I’m going to Gdansk tomorrow. Later.

I just found out I had some notes for this in a long-forgotten draft. Seeing as I haven’t posted in a while, I thought now’s as good a time as any.

Perhaps the most fantastic part of any travel experience is trying new food. As you’d duh, I’ve never hesitated to try something I’ve never heard of here, and I consider myself all the more enriched for it. In fact, I can’t remember the names of most things I’ve tried, but nonetheless I feel qualified to make a few mopping generalizations about Polish cuisine.

1. The Polish love cabbage

There’s something sketchy about cabbage that makes it different from normal lettuce, and I suspect that it’s this exact quality that Poles love. You can find cabbage in many traditional dishes here. Two name two spectacular ones: gołąbki (cabbage rolls) and bigos (a sort of stew). Read about ‘em, find some recipes and make ‘em today.

2. They don’t know sweets like Americans

Let me first say that I’ve had some great cakes and other sweets here in Poland. Wawel-brand Krówki are simply unparalleled (not even the Latin American dulce de leche stands a chance), and Kasia’s mom made me this admittedly strange—but delicious—casserole of plain pasta, cooked strawberries and sweet cheese (just put them together and mix it all up. I don’t know what it’s called and I can only guess how to make it, but it seems simple enough).

But anyway, I’ve found that, in the grocery store, baked sweets are to be avoided. Simple reason: They look good (sometimes), but they’re never half as good as they ought to be (or would be, were we in America). I bought pączki from the grocery store once—mistake. I bought some little cakes from the grocery store once—kind of awful, and it was even thoughtful enough to coat my mouth in wax. I bought some delicious-looking pastries from the grocery store once—gross.

So maybe the verdict is that I just need to find a new grocery store.

Or get an oven. That’d be nice. (High on my list of things I miss about home…)

But even so, there’s nothing in Poland that’s quite like a Cinnabon. So take heart, America, even when Hong Kong and India are threatening to steal our King of the World crown, we’ve still got something unequaled.

3. Pierogi are fantastic

You probably know about pierogi—almost everyone seems to have known about them (they even mentioned them in an episode of 30 Rock)—but I never heard of them till I came to Poland. In case you don’t know, let me explain: They’re dumplings filled with anything you want. Just little tender treasure chests of boiled dough.

What’s inside? Sometimes it’ll be sweet, creamy cheese (like a cross between cottage cheese and cream cheese). Sometimes it’s just meat (type unspecified… yes, sketchy). Sometimes it’s spinach. Or mushrooms. Or a mix of random. There are also sweet ones: Blueberries and strawberries are popular fillings. The best part is you can even invent your own… like a Build-a-Bear.

Anyhow, the wonder of pierogi is that they’re just plain old peasant food, but they’re so delicious and filling. And here’s a not-so-secret (but heretical) thing I like to do: brown them a bit on the frying pan before eating ‘em (as in my photo). It makes them a bit more delicious, but demotes their status from Polish traditional dish to American bastardization (although I’d like to point out that a fair number of Poles brown their pierogi, too).

4. Home cooking is the best

Well, duh.

5. I LOVE HORTEX

Hortex makes really, really fantastic juices. They have a product line called Vitaminka that I buy religiously… Vitaminka juices come in a number of flavor combinations; they all have apple and carrot (sounds weird, I know, but it’s good) and the third ingredient can be strawberry, raspberry, banana, pineapple, peach… Please, God, tell me they have similar juice in the States, because I’ll really miss this. (Well, I guess I could get a juicer and make it myself…)

Okay, that’s all. Now let me get back to my strict diet of buckwheat and lentils….

So I wish I could tell you more about my latest escapades, about how I got into a fight with some Polish hoods in a streetcar or about the time I almost got arrested for jaywalking but out jayran the cops. Or about when I met a nice old Chinese woman when I was practicing Tai Chi in the park. Or about that time the bouncer didn’t want to let us in the club but I convinced him that I was an American celebrity and I was coming in with my entourage whether he liked it our not. Or even about the time Dorothee and I were this close to stealing—no, rescuing—the chameleon from the Warsaw Zoo. I’d tell you more about all those things if it weren’t for the fact that none of those things actually happened.

Anyway, everything here is świetnie. Or, fine at least. Except for the fact that I’m in the monetary red zone—well, far past it. But much like you can drive 10 miles past the E, the human body can survive up to a month without any food (or so I hear), so I’m not really worried about dying.

I finished class yesterday, and now I’m on summer vacation. As if I weren’t on vacation before. Really, not having class is only going to give me an extra 10 or so hours a week. Ha… I totally stormed my Polish class, by the way, and I’m facing a difficult crossroads in my life right now: I’m trying to decide whether to throw all this Polish grammar out the airplane window or continue studying it at home for novelty purposes. Help me decide.

Besides that, I’ve really been up to absolutely nothing. Watching TV shows, doing more paintings, working my second novel (Oh, you haven’t read my first one yet?) and drinking tea. Sorry, I wish I could be more entertaining for you.

After promising myself I wouldn’t do it again, I took another dip in the Eurozone this weekend on a trip to Berlin. (Reason being, the trip was too good a value to pass up.) Of course I expected to see at least one museum, the Berlin wall and the other obvious sights, but little did I know the trip would be super alternative, and we’d see Berlin in a pretty atypical way.

On Friday, for instance, we went to this art gallery, where we saw perhaps the most pretentious art exhibition in Berlin: a sound installation. We sat in a dark room (only populated by a few spotlit rocking horses on a square of fake grass) and listened to a girl reading parts of a German poem in freaky voices for 20 minutes.

The entire idea was almost too much for me, and I wanted to hate it just out of principle. Should this gallery really make money by charging people to sit in a room? Does sound art belong in gallery space—a channel traditionally reserved for visual arts? When I found myself thinking these things, I decided that I couldn’t condemn the installation; it made me think in a way that “normal” exhibitions often don’t.

Moreover, when our Berliner friend explained the poem to us afterward, I found I could really appreciate the artist’s work in itself. The poem is “Erlkönig” by Goethe, a cool story about a father trying to save his dying and delusional son; it’s well-known by all Germans (they read it in gradeschool), and the author’s interpretation of the poem would obviously engage German listeners.

Fast forward to dinner on Friday night, when we went to a place that “doesn’t really have food.” Apparently someone just buys a bunch of vegan-whatever-they-want every day, cooks it up, and then charges the magnetized locals a few euros for all they can eat. Picture that all the non-us people in the dark place are wearing things like slim-cut leather and zebra-print leggings (men, that is) with spoony haircuts. Now imagine this set to a screamo death metal playlist and couple this with the fact that we were forbidden to take photos inside the building and the testimony of my friend that she saw someone cutting lines of cocaine in the bathroom, and you’ll have a picture of what this place is like.

Anyway, the food was really good. Really, really good, actually, but it lacked protein of any sort, and none of us were really satisfied afterward, unfortunately. I could have been really disappointed by this, but I was grateful for the really—err—rich experience.

After dinner, I saw a woman riding a unicycle while pushing her baby in a stroller. True story. I tried to take a picture, but I was a little slow with the camera.

The next day we saw some other parts of Berlin. (That’s a really interesting thing about the city; each district is so distinct.) We took a tour at the awesome Berlin Underground Museum (highly recommended) and I had some currywurst (yum). Later, we took a stroll through the annual Carnival of Cultures, which was just okay in my book. I would have thought it was way cooler if I didn’t live in a city that had such festivals more or less every weekend all summer long.

On Sunday, we spent most of the day at a really cool park/flea market where they sold everything from fine art to garage sale–certified garbage (like Smurf McDonalds toys, for instance). I picked up a few books and had a crepe with Nutella, like you should every day for optimal health.

For lunch/dinner—our last meal in Berlin—we ate at what was supposed to be an Indian-Palestinian restaurant but actually turned out to be a Sri Lankan restaurant. Again, the food was good, but it was lacking in certain (and by “certain” I mean “any”) animal products that would have made it excellent.

Anyhow, Berlin’s a fantastic city, and I’m glad I had the opp to go.

See more pictures in my Facebuch album.

Oh, and in case you haven’t heard, this entire country got flooded this weekend. Looks like some tragedy happens every time I leave Poland…

I was really worried about going to Cracow. But not because I thought I’d get kidnapped in a taxi and wake up with both-kidneys-a-lung-and-my-liver removed (that’s a fear I reserve only for Latin America). No, I was deeply afraid that I’d be instantly captivated by Cracow—and that I’d wish I spent my semester there instead of dreary old Warsaw.

Talking to other people, the unanimous opinion emerged that Cracow is vastly superior—culturally, architecturally and interestingly—to Warsaw. With that in mind, I prepared for the worst.

Well, Wawel was very cool and I’m so glad that I was fortunate enough to see it (and on Night of the Museums, no less—we got in for free). And I don’t yet know how influential the Marcin Maciejowski exhibition in Cracow’s National Museum will have been for me. (You’ll see.) If you’re so inclined, check out his work; he’s good.

But, overall, I am proud to report that Cracow isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and my happiness with fortune for tossing me in Warsaw has at least doubled. (So glad I didn’t intend that to be a pun; I’d be ashamed of myself.) Cracow’s a lot smaller and a lot older. It has some really nice architecture and gardens, but all the modern-looking signs and posters take away from their integrity. Sure, Warsaw has its modern-looking signs and posters, but at least here they fit better.

Cracow itself feels cramped. Moreover, the streets are tiny and full full full of tourists bobbling here and there (even British ones in king crab Halloween costumes making lots of noise while sitting in cafes).

So anyway, Cracow is nice to visit, but I’m glad I’m living in Warsaw.

Oh, also visited Auschwitz… It is, as you might expect, a very terrible place.

To cheer you up, I’ll leave you with this:

Just thought you might like to know that I was invited to a wedding last night.

Yeah, some random Polish girl was going around the dorm asking everyone to accompany her to her roommate’s wedding on May 22. (Apparently that’s a very Polish thing to do.) I was just wondering how it’s possible that she, a girl from Warsaw, has nobody else in her life who’d go to a wedding with her. In any case, neither Fabio nor I had to make up an excuse, though; Fabio has a concert that night, and I’ll be in Berlin for the whole weekend.

Speaking of not having to make up excuses, I also recently lucked out in another area. My Spanish teachers here wanted me to participate in this weird bicentennial event celebrating the independence of the various Latin American countries (all around 1810). I never really wanted to do this, but I agreed because I figured it couldn’t be that bad, and all I’d have to do is read a simple poem.

But then I found out Angela (who’s studying in France this semester) is coming to visit me and Warsaw on that day and I didn’t really want to spend 2 to 3 hours holed up with a bunch of Spanish-speaking expats and goggling Polish kids.

Anyway, I started wishing I’d thought of a good excuse to get me off the boat—and then it happened: I found out the event was a black-tie gala, meaning I’d have to wear a suit. Well, seeing as I don’t even own a suit at home, I don’t have one here. And my dwindling Food & Rent Fund has long since crunched beyond what most would consider a comfortable budget. So, niestety, I had no choice but to resign from the centennial. Qué lástima.

(I have decided, though, that maybe I should get a suit when I get home.)

And now that I think about it, what would I have worn to that wedding?

Today I found the coolest store that I’ll probably never buy anything from (well, if I can help myself), not because they don’t have good stuff—quite the opposite, in fact—but because it’s terribly expensive.

If you couldn’t tell by the name, it’s a shop that sells food items from all over the world. Unfortunately, these things cost a bit more than they do in their home countries… Anyway, it’s a pretty awesome idea for a store (I believe there’s one in most big cities, so I guess it’s really nothing so special).

So in case you’re wondering, here’s some stuff I found in there:

Dr Pepper — 4zl ($1.24) per can

Guaraná (my favorite soda from Brazil) — 5.50zl ($1.70) per can

Pop Tarts — 29zl ($8.96) per box

Valentina (Mexican hot sauce) — 13.50zl ($4.17) per bottle

Squeeze Cheese (same brand you’d find in a dollar store at home) — 15zl ($4.64) per bottle

Nice!

By the way, the photo in this post comes from Zlote Tarasy’s Web site because I didn’t have the presence of mind to take my own picture when I was there today (even though I had my camera).

By the way, I finished my novel not too long ago. I’m sure it’ll change a bit more before it finds its way into the world, but if you’d like to start reading it, you can find the first two chapters right here. (No, I won’t tell you anything else about it. Just read it… It’s short.)

My second novel (but not a sequel) is already in the planning stages. So many stories to tell, so little time.

We left Warsaw at 10 p.m. on Thursday—the bus ride would take all night. At first I had two seats to myself, but then a conniving girl convinced me and the guy across the aisle from me—who also had two seats to himself—to sit together so she could sit by her friend.

Though I was understandably miffed for a while, that’s how I met Konrad, a nice German fellow who turned out to be my roommate and companion throughout the weekend.

Even though it was a night bus and we were presumedly all going to sleep the whole way so we’d be properly awake in the morning, the Spaniards would have none of that. Somehow they stayed up all night drinking and singing songs, and the rest of the bus therefore rested very poorly.

Among the highlights of the to-trip was our first pit stop, in which we parked at a gas station for 15 minutes so everyone could go to the bathroom. Well, it just so happened that this gas station was taking its daily 15-minute closing (so they could count the drawers) exactly as we arrived. After a terrible few minutes, they quit their shenanigans and decided to open up the bathroom for us.

Somehow crossing the border into Ukraine took 4 or more hours. Jeez. In any case, we all were accepted into the country, as if this were some sort of privilege, and wow—if you thought roads in Poland were bad, you’ll find Ukrainian roads are in a category all on their own. I suspect, in fact, that they might be better off without any roads at all.

So we finally arrived in Lviv around 10 a.m., and we unloaded our junk into Hotel Lviv, which proved to be a fitting receptacle for junk. Supposedly it was a 5-star hotel in the Soviet times, but even that I find hard to believe. I’ll let the photos of my room below speak for themselves. There were also rumors of bedbugs…

Anyway, after we’d gotten our breakfast and showered and whatever, we began our sightseeing at Lvivska Brewery, where we were promised a tour.

I imagined we’d be doing a tour of the actual brewery and see their actual beer-making facilities, but all we got was a semi-boring museum whose only consolation was free beer at the end. But even that wasn’t thaaat good.

Next we took a bus ride to the Lychakiv Cemetery, in which a million dead people and statues live. We walked around for a while with a tour guide telling us the stories of some significant lives. Pretty cool.

Fast forward to after dinner (around 7 p.m.), when Konrad and I lay down for what we planned to be a short nap, since neither of us slept well during the bus ride.

Fast forward to the next morning, when we woke up.

After a groggy breakfast, we prepared ourselves for more sightseeing: tours of the Opera, Old Town and the remains of Lviv Castle/the top of a very tall hill.

That night we crashed Club Metro, where they had pole-dancing transvestites and all.

The next day was a free day. Being proactive, Konrad had asked the tour guide on Saturday what nearby city she would recommend that we visit. She gave him directions to Truskavets, a town about an hour away famous for its natural springs of youthanizing water and a warning that we don’t drink too much from one of the springs (but no indication as to which one that might be) because doing so could result in kidney failure.

Around 11 a.m. we—Konrad, Martyna (Polish girl), Andrea (Spanish girl) and I—were finally en route to Truskavets. Well, on the tram that would hopefully take us to the bus station that would hopefully take us to Truskavets. No need to have been so droll, though; we made it in one piece.

After a maybe-two-hour bus ride, we emerged in the middle of nowhere. As far as we could tell, Truskavets consisted of nothing more than a roundabout crossroads with a hotel and three other buildings. The roundabout did have a fountain in the middle… Could this be the famous spring?

We walked around searching for any sign of anything, Martyna asking everybody we happened across (Polish is close enough to Ukrainian for basic communication) for any information regarding anything that they could provide in any way. We soon found out that people in Truskavets don’t know much about where anything is.

Eventually, we found a restaurant, which was our primary objective at the time, since none of us had eaten properly all day, and it was around 4 p.m. We had a fantastic meal: salads, soups, chicken and buttery vegetables; luckily our waitress spoke Polish. Even more luckily, we were just about the only people in the place, so she could spare a lot of time to tell us about Truskavets and what we could do there.

She gave us directions to the water springs, and we took off walking. It turned out that anything worthwhile in the town was a good mile or two from the bus station.

We came to the first of the springs, where we, obviously, tried some of the water.

It was really good—slightly sulfury. I felt healthier already. There must really be something to it; the spring was full of people hanging out and drinking from ceramic mugs, just as people in other cities might hang out at a tavern.

In time, we came to the other spring, which had water in many different “flavors.” Some better than others… (And one was positively awful.) After that, we searched in vain for the train station (which I’m still convinced doesn’t exist), and ended up taking a taxi back to the bus station.

Long day done, it was time to turn in. Martyna wasn’t so tired, though, and ended up going out with Konrad and some others for a midnight walk throughout the Old Town, where she attempted to incite a revolution, beginning by trying to convince a Ukrainian guy about how screwed up his country is.

The next day we had time for breakfast and a bit of sitting around, and then it was time to get outta Ukraine. It was a long bus ride, but it gave me the chance to finally finish reading Great Expectations, which I recently picked back up (after borrowing it from my dad about 6 years ago without ever reading). Really a great book.

So that’s basically what happened… I’m sure I left some things out. For instance, how annoying both Spaniards and Poles can be when they’re assembled en masse and left to their own devices.

All in all, it’s definitely an interesting place. Lviv would certainly be one of eastern Europe’s greatest heritage sites if it weren’t in such a dismal state of disrepair, but it has a certain charm as it is. At the same time, it’s totally weird (the reason might be a combination of their ridiculous alphabet and their 1980’s style).

The weather is wonderful, though, and there are some really beautiful parts of the city…. So how could you complain?

See more pictures here in my Facebook album.