undiscovered

i’ve had a good trip to poland so far. though parts have been extremely frustrating. the flight was pretty good. apparently polish people clap when a flight lands. i find this to be pretty ridiculous and lame. i hope that it is only a polish thing. i was pretty tired because i’d been flying for 10 hours when this happened for the first time and given that it wasn’t even that smooth of a landing or that comfortable of a flight, i did not find this clapping thing to be a good idea. we shouldn’t encourage poor pilotting. though he was a good pilot there was little or no turbulance that i was awake for.

my first experience with airline food was pretty cute. i requested a vegetarian meal and they pretty much just gave me random vegetables. like “well this wasn’t murdered i bet she’d put it in her mouth” so i ended up with baby carrots, baby potatoes, and steamed mixed veggie that included carrots. so a lot of carrots. luckily i think they’re pretty delicious when they are steamed and its not like anything had any flavor to it at all. there was also really delicious bread from chicago that i’d recommend to anyone.

customs in poland wasn’t bad at all but i suppose that it wouldn’t be. they just stamped my passport and then i had to wait about an hour for my luggage to come around but it was pleasing to see it round the conveyor belt for sure. i then had to take a bus out to the hostel in krakow. this part was a little frustrating because i wasn’t adjusted to seeing strictly polish on the signs and once you left the airport you were on your own as far as engish signage went. one woman tried to speak to me in polish and i was like “uh uh i don’t speak” and she said “oh.. london?” and i said “united states” and she said “tragedy?” and i was like “what?” and she was like “hours ago?” and i was like “oh yes, very sad” and had no idea what she was talking about. but later learned this much to my own shock. man. pray for the victims.

once i finally navigated the bus system i had a little bit of trouble getting to my hostel because the polish label streets on the buildings not with traditional signs. except one place and that was really confusing and lead to me taking a wrong turn and wandering around old town but that was alright and got me better oriented. i also realized at this point that if you’re lost and you ask a young person where you should be going they’ll help you a lot. there was this wonderful girl on the bus that helped me out a lot. god bless her. i love polish people a lot.

i arrived at my hostel at a little after 4 and was really frustrated and just wanted a nap and to stay inside for the next 3 weeks. unfortunately, they had messed up my reservation. so i waited for a little while and they found a place for me across old town. i was angry about that. so i went next door to check in because i was supposed to call mom at about 3 i thought and when i was explaining to her what had happened the guy there told me that i could have a room there. or a bed. with some people from texas and atlanta. awesome news! and this turned out to be the best thing to happen to my trip to poland so far.

i got all settled in and walked back to blingbling to tell them to cancel my spot at the other place for last night and then went and changed into pajamas where i realized that it’s a bad time to arrive as an american to a foreign country. there was a scottish guy that was kind of an ass and pretty much hated the whole country. but whatever. i love america and its so great i can’t even explain what’s so wonderful about it. it’s just the best there is, for sure. i hung out in the computer room/lounge and started talking to a boy from holland. we had a good conversation and then i was invited to dinner with him and two british girls and his friends.

by the time we were all changed and ready for dinner, there was quite a group of us. the two british girls, carena and sarah, the dutch boys tom, waldo, and chris, and thibault from paris and petteri from finway. we went to this italian place in old town and i figured out that poland is inferior to the us because of the quality of their spaghetti. we had a great time hanging out and getting to know each other. it was pretty much awesome. the british girls and i were talking about auschwitz and they said they were going today so i asked if i could tag along with them and they said that would be cool so we decided to meet at about 8 this morning to go out there. we finished off last night with a trip to the bars in old town. it’s kind of cool because its basically like a restaurant and you can just sit and have cokes or whatever but its a really relaxed atmosphere.

also, everything here is insanely cheap. it’s awesome. you can do anything for practically no money at all. the hostel is costing me like 99 zl which is about $30 for these two nights. it’s really rad.

i didn’t sleep so well last night. i was really jet lagged so my body thought that my 1am bedtime was actually me taking an evening nap so i woke up at like 4 am ready to go. hopefully that ends soon. i eventually got back to sleep at about 5:30 or so and when i woke upa t 7:30 i was really really exhausted. i could’ve slept for a least 300 more hours. at least. but instead i got up and went to meet the british girls for breakfast and then we started to head to auschwitz. we missed the first bus out there by a few minutes so we had to wait until 10:10 to take the next. when we got there at about 12, we missed the 12 o’clock tour by about 3 minutes so we had to wait until 1 o’clock but we kept ourselves entertained during that ammount of time.

auschwitz was a really interesting place. i have lots of pictures of my day there and it was just incredibly interesting to see where the holocaust actually happened. though it was also pretty surreal. it just didn’t feel like it had actually gone on. carena especially had a hard time accepting it. but you get to where you realized that it happened and you just stay in complete shock. it’s so eerie to be there. that’s the only word for it. just eerie. and its so freakish to think that people could otherize a group of people as much as the nazis did to the nongermans. it doesn’t even make sense.

we took the 6:42 bus out of auschwitz and went back to krakow getting in a little before eight. we met again for dinner at 9 and sarah and i went out to old town and ate at this little restaurant with polish food. they were out of pierogi’s though so i had to eat salmon but it was good and the protein was probably good for me. i smell of fish right now though and i hate that smell. oi.

tomorrow i’m going with a canadian who looks asian and a south korean to the salt mines. im going to try to find a girl to go with us.. maybe someone around in the lobby looking to go without set plans. backpacking is amazing. i wish i could just wander around europe like all of these kids are doing. it’s so much fun all of the people that i get to meet!

i’m pretty exciting to get on to kielce though. it will be nice to get settled into a routine and not feel like such a vagrant.

• Category: Journal