Day 62 – 67, Warsaw, March 11th – 16th 2012

I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  TEN whole days without a posting!  That is awful!  And now I’m even going to role those ten days into one post!  even more awful!  As you can probably tell, internet availability has been somewhat lacking.  Hoping between wifi cafes has not been ideal for posting up stuff.  But I will try to be more active now that I have got a little more stable internet back again.  It even made me miss Mother’s Day it would seem, so here is a public apology to my mum for that!  I am sorry!

So, what have I done since being back in Warsaw.  Well, hmm, mostly tried to find internet it would seem! One major occurrence was the haircut I gave myself!  At long last I now have short hair again!  It had got to that point when the hair on the sides starts to curl upwards and I look like I am sporting a nice set of wings like Hermes or Mercury!  So, yes, a good chop with a pair of kitchen scissors and I felt positively refreshed!

The first thing I did on my first day back, a Sunday, was to return to Maharaja, the indian restaurant.  I took Marta, who is kindly looking after me again, on the hope that the Thali lunch was still on.  Unfortunately it is not on over the weekend, but we stayed anyway and I ate a really great sweet and sour fish dish with a Vegetable stuffed naan.  It was really really good!  So much food, too much really and I should of taken some of it home, but I ate it all instead!  We then walked around the city in the cold sunshine and took some photos, Marta had taken her holga with her, the new love of he life.  We found a small statue of Jesus that was in a rather strange position, in the little courtyard of an old tenement block.  The building is one of the ones that has survived the war, but it still bares a lot of the scars.  We managed to get inside, the doors were open and went up the staircase to the top and got a good view of a few rooftops.  The inside looks like it hasn’t changed much since the war either!  A great building, but it needs some work doing to it if it is to survive much longer!

Later that afternoon we met up with Carolina, one of Marta’s best friends and we were intending to visit cafe Vincent, the french bakery on Nowy Swiat, when we go there though the place was totally rammed with people (this was not a surprise), so we crossed the street and went to this little ice cream parlour directly opposite.  This place is a little gem, mostly for people watching.  We ordered some cake and I got a coffee and we sat and chatted whilst little old ladies snuck into the place, past us and then to the toilet.  Some of them stayed for ice cream, some not.  One really amazing lady seemed to be having the time of her life with her ice cream.  Spoon after spoon disappeared into her mouth, the pace was incessant, and it seemed as though she had a never ending ice cream.  I have never seen so much concentrated enjoyment on an adult face in my whole life!  After this little place Carolina and Marta were still craving vincent, and something savoury.  So we tried again, this time we managed to get a seat, and I ordered a tea whilst they both ordered a ciabatta and more tea.

We sat and drank tea and ate for a while, then decided it was getting late so we left.  Eventually we decided to head to Carolina’s place for a while, so we got on a tram, or two, bought a bottle of wine, a rather unusual Moldavian variety, and went to her flat.

The next day was a rather quiet one for me, I left the flat late and went for a small wander around the town, I did buy a new tea, from the 5 o’clock tea shop in the basement of the horrible shopping mall in the city centre.  It is a Yunnan Green Superior.  I bought it mostly as an everyday tea, nothing special.  It is good, but i think the leaves have been ripped up too small, it is lacking the smoothness that bigger leaves can give it.  I also popped to the supermarket and bought some food for dinner.  That night I made a Moussaka, and I have to say, it was the best one I have ever made in my life, and possibly the best I have ever tasted!  (this probably means that it didn’t taste anything like a real Moussaka, but it was goooooood!)

Tuesday now…Again, I went into town late, I spent the morning working on a few things.  But then went in to meet Marta, I had a little walk around the embassy district while I waited, the ponds in the little park there were still frozen despite the temperature being above zero for the past few weeks.  I then met Marta and we went to Green Coffee for a drink and a bit of internet access, we checked emails and just did the little things that needed to be checked.  That was about it for Tuesday I think.

Wednesday, Marta had the day off for a doctors appointment so she dragged me out with her to the shopping centre where her doctors is (yes INSIDE the shopping centre!).  This place is called Blu City, and is just full of the usual shops, Saturn, Empik, McDonalds etc etc, and lacking in customers which is probably more normal now than we like to admit.  After my wandering past and through a few of the shops Marta reappeared, we went back home, and I am now struggling to remember what we did for the rest of the day (see, this is exactly why I need to keep updating daily!)

Thursday, the same problem, exactly what I did during the day that wasn’t spent on working towards the residency  I do not know.  But in the evening Marta and Ania’s landlady came over, so I made myself scarce for a while and wandered to this park called Park Arkadia.  This place has got a great view out across the East of the city, the sunlight was fading and the lights were beginning to twinkle from the flats and high rises.  The park falls down a steep hill where there are a couple of ponds, which were still frozen, the ducks skidding about avoiding an enthusiastic chasing dog.  A few people were there, wandering around or sitting on the benches with a bottle of beer or two.  One guy with two girls on either side of him looking rather happy with himself…  Then I went back to the flat, via a shop to buy loo roll.

The next day I spent most of the day working at Hello Collective stuff, but then in the late afternoon I met Marta and we went for a wander around the old town, we got on the tram for a couple of stops and got off near Metro Swietokrzyska.  We wandered around in the low yellow sunlight for a while, before we decided it was too cold and it was time to head home again.

Ok, time for a new post…