Long-term visitor in Kraków!

Thumbs up for good deeds!

2012-02-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

So this evening I was walking out from Poczta Glowna after paying some bills and sending off a few things in the post along with flatmate Karoline. I slightly bumped into an hunchbacked old man with a cane who looked a bit lost and as I was about to pass him by and intended to hold the door open for him to exit as well he grabbed my arm (in a rather non-freaky way, surprisingly...) and started mumbling. We walked him down the stairs and he kept pointing with his cane in the general direction he wanted to go. Looking cluelessly at each other Karoline and I walked him across the street and we soon noticed that he must have been nearly blind as he barely noticed where he was stepping. I put on my polish conversation mask and managed to say 'jestem z norwegii' to which he answered "aaah, bardzo zimny!"- which means "very cold!" and hopefully he understood why we kept spending more time looking for things to say than actually understanding him. So he kept pointing forwards and the conversation kept going like:

me: czy pan chce isc do apteka? (fantastic grammar by the way....)
old man: nie nie nie nie, dalej dalej do delikatesowe!

And I was like- right... he's pointing ahead and we almost walked onto the pharmacy wall but he doesn't want to enter and wants me to take him to the deli down the street which I have never seen in my life! And so we kept going.

At some point he started turning towards the buildings on the street instead og walking "prosto" i.e. straight ahead and kept saying "delikatesowe... jest tutaj!" and I was like... uuuh... no this is not the deli, it's a closed down 'zapiekanka' (Polish pizza-sandwich) takeaway booth! We kept going "prosto" and I read out the names of all the shops we passed but he kept saying "nieee, delikatesoweee!" so we asked a middle aged man on the street to ask the old man where he wanted to go and the middle aged man was a complete nutter and screamed out lout and pointed to a place with bright lights saying "DELIKATESOWE JEST TUTAAAAAAJ, JEST TUTAAAAAJ! TUTAAAAAAJ!" which was a bit freaky cause he said that the deli was in the direction he was pointing but with the loudest voice that made it sound as if we were all three a group of retards who did not know where it was. After telling him thank you thank you THANK YOU and goodbye we managed to guide the old man into the shop in the end and got a genuine "dziekuje bardzo, do widzenia!" back- at least he was very thankful for us helping him out :)

Considering that I have a polish test tomorrow, this little episode was the best revision session I could have had; not to mention it probably boosted my karma from moderate to ***infinity***

.n

The things I do when 'free time' is involved.

2012-02-14T02:03:00.000+01:00

For the past few days I've spent way too many hours in the flat- although my achy ankle left me with not much choice (it is much better now:) I only went out for the odd errand and dinner with a few people who are spending the break in Krakow. I have to say it's pretty quiet around here, but it has given me plenty of time to actually use my PS2 for gaming AND watching films- I have actually seen Pocahontas three times in less than a week. To be frank I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of resting on the couch as much as I have suring this break. Time well spent indeed!

Yesterday I went for a walking tour though- specifically about Jewish heritage in Krakow. We walked around in a part of Krakow called Kazimiersz (aka the Jewish area) where we went to four different synagogues and two cemeteries. It lasted a few hours and the guide told us about the emergence of Judaism, the siginficance of the synagogue and Torah, Jewish customs and the Kosher lifestyle and about important rabbis and their influence. I learned a list of new things and we were only five people in the group so the tour was really easy to follow. I'm definitely going on more of these tours as they are free for the moment because the company wants feedback about the content and quality. The only thing to do at the end is filling out a questionnaire for feedback purposes. Yay for free stuff and a nice Sunday stroll!
There is another themed tour about Oscar Schindler where they go to his factory as well at the beginning of March which I am planning on attending :D This is such a good way of exploring the city which I have not yet found the time to do properly.

So tomorrow morning I'm leaving Krak for a while to see my lovely Edinburgh-friends :) It's going to be grand seeing a bunch of you again!

.n

Berlin: bardzo schön!

2012-02-11T03:29:00.001+01:00

Natalie and I got back from Berlin on Tuesday. Though we were reeeeally close to missing the train from Szczecin because of a delay earlier in the day. Anyway, we managed to get home safe and I even brought along some bugs for my upper respiratory tract.

It was quite an "eventful" vacation. We met some interesting people in our hostel and out on the Sandeman pub crawl- including a professor of social anthropology and a fun gal from Detroit (i.e. second person after Eminem whom I now associate with that place). There was also a bit of language confusion- we both know the odd German word or phrase so agreed on trying to say simple things whenever we got the opportunity. However most of the time "danke schön" got mixed with "dziekuje bardzo" and "enschuldigung" with "przepraszam" as well as "ja" with "tak". We got several confused looks and gave ourselves a few facepalms. The clerks and people behind the counters had a good laugh when we used rock-paper-scissors to decide on which tickets to get or what to have for dinner... Good times. So whilst in Berlin we also:

1) Chilled
2) Strolled
3) Chilled (as in- froze)
4) Met randoms, as mentioned..
5) Chilled
6) Ate
7) Chilled
8) Strolled around in museums
9) Learned about Checkpoint Charlie (well, I did)
10) Chilled some more
11) Met more random people
12) Waited [impatiently] for the Superbowl to start, watched the beginning (well, Natalie did) and went straight to bed (myself)
13) Chilled
14) [almost] got frostbitten whilst chilling ( see what I did there...)
15) hung out with some amazing bears:

...did I mention we just chilled?

Well I have to say the Pergamon museum (i.e. close to the site of modern Bergama, north of Izmir in Turkey) was good, although not as breathtaking after spending a summer in Turkey seeing similar sites in real life (i.e. Hattusha and Ephesos). The current exhibition however was really worth the time and money we spent. It was simply a huge panorama display in a huuuuuge cylindrical room with a 3D-feel that showed an image of what daily life in Pergamon was like with vivid colours, background music with natural sounds and lights changing the mood from morning to evening. The image was so detailed and you could look into the mountains in the horizon as if you stood on top of a hill overlooking the people, the temples, gardens and the settlement area. Really cool!

We only went through half of the German history museum this time (aaaaawesome place by the way- highly recommended! I've been before :p ) , but I guess that is one of the many reasons we have to go back to this city very soon!

.n

Classy artwork.

2012-02-01T02:33:00.000+01:00

I cannot believe I spent three(!!!) hours fiddling only with those waffles in photoshop, but at least this site now looks a little more like a blog rather than a digital notebook in my opinion.

Like it? Love it? Hate it? Despise it? Don't care, cause in any case it's here to stay (quasi-rhyme intended) ^_^

.n

Definition of laziness.

2012-01-28T01:04:00.000+01:00

You know you're a lazy bum when you start skyping with people next door and hope to learn the entire embryology syllabus by osmosis, i.e. watching Dr Najeeb's lecture videos (which are nothing less than EXCELLENT if I may say so)

Najeeb in his element.. :p

Tveit on Skype doing it like a boss ;)

AAaaaaahh. back to the Najeeb show! only 10 more hours to go :o

Laundry day & ice cream.

2012-01-26T20:37:00.000+01:00

I was initially inspired by the guys (!!) who decided to collectively wash their lab coats while we were cooking at Øivind's flat last night, and later by the taste of formaldehyde from my water bottle this afternoon....! So I decided to gather everyone else's coats too for the first wash since September. About time man..

Whiter than ever and ready to go for the anatomy lab next Tuesday ^.^

And just for the record, I made an attempt at baking cinnamon buns last night and managed to kill the yeast A-GAIN >____> so it ended up being flat dough filled with cinnamony-sugary-fat which everyone but me ate with a great conscience. Hence I'm still craving buns and will try again very soon! Though preferably in my own flat when we get a functioning oven (hence why I can't make Bergens-beste-skillingsboller yet, Ina :-/ )

I also tried the strangest ice cream I have ever had today with Bakaliowe flavour which seems to be a strictly Polish thing consisting of vanilla (?) ice cream, raisins, walnuts and figs:

Don't think it's my favourite cup of anything and I hope my flatmates will finish the tub quickly so we can get a tub of chocolate once the space in the freezer clears out!