Wednesday, November 05, 2008

cruel truth

The Holidays finished and so my studies were about to begin. After few struggles I’ve decided to accept the offer from QEM course. The course is organized by 4 known worldwide universities: Paris Sorbonne, University of Bielfeld, University of Venice and Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. The course lasts 2 years and I would study 1 semester in Paris and next 3 in Barcelona. Of course this is the path I’ve chosen you can also study in other universities if you want to. Anyway I decided to start my university journey in Paris. The problem was that I still didn’t have the place to live and Mark didn’t have a job. We booked the hotel with internet for the first 10 days hoping we’ll sort everything out by that time.
It was the most stressful 10 days I had since very long time. Everything was falling apart, Mark was not working, we were living in a hotel struggling to find housing. The time was passing by like crazy and there were only a few days before my classes were starting. I have skipped all free guided tours in Paris organized by my university, because we were looking for the apartment. We were calling all day long to every acceptable advertisement but nothing seemed to work out. The French do not want to talk in English and my campus administration is only pretending to be there for students, so they didn’t eased my pain in this apartment battle at all.
Finally one day something moved and we were going to view a few housings. The sun was shining we were very happy and full of hopes that we will pick something and:
Apartment no 1: the flat was far from the city centre but close to the underground station and newly refurbished. Only the neighbourhood wasn’t too pleasant. I couldn’t see white man there at all, I felt like in the middle of some gangs ghetto, which could turn into massacre any minute. No wonder the guy didn’t want huge money for that place.
Apartment no 2: we enter the apartment and landlady shows us a room which is connected with another room, so if our room-mate would like to get out of his place, he would have to wonder through our room. We went to see the kitchen and there was a hole close to the celling!!! I opened the toilet and there were posters on the walls instead of normally painted walls. It all looked like a crap hole that I wouldn’t be able to stand even for one night and then the landlady says she wants 800euro monthly for such thing! Plus charges of course. I was amazed that people can offer such accommodation.
And the funniest part was that there were 2 students living there already.
Apartment no 3: we run to see it afraid that we’ll be late and there was no one in a house. The landlord was late… (better him than us )
Finally he arrived and opened his chamber of secretes. I couldn’t believe it! Again it was like a huge mess. I don’t know if anyone has cleaned that place at least a year before. I was seriously watching it there will be some cockroach wondering around.However the price for it was good only 650euro per month (yes it is a cheap price for an apartment in Paris!) and moreover it was 5 minutes walk from Notre Dame.
After long discussions we decided to take apartment no 3. Mark called the guy the same evening and told him that we want to rent his place. He said ok I will get back to you within 15 minutes. Mark said ok and hung up. After 30 minutes of silent phone we called him again and he said: ‘I am really sorry, but someone else decided to take it for longer time then you would like to rent it’.
It was like a bad dream, once again we end up no where and there were only 3 days before hotel check out.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

the end of a trip

From Livorno to Florence it’s only an hour drive, so we couldn’t miss such an opportunity to visit the city. We didn’t have huge amount of time to see everything though :/ However I still saw the cathedral where famous sculpture of Michelangelo (David) was placed. Next to the cathedral you can sightsee the museum where the original Michelangelo masterpiece is currently held. The interesting thing that I didn’t know before was that Michelangelo, before he died, started to sculpture Pieta for his own grave. He didn’t finish it and threw it away - that is why for a while no one new that it was his sculpture. However after his death, someone found it and took care of it. The sculpture is amazing because you can see Holy Mary, Jesus and a man in a hood. This man is Saint Heronym, who was sculptor like Michelangelo. The artist was trying to express himself as Heronym.
After Florence we went to Milano for one day and next to lake Garda. It’s also a place worth seeing. The lake’s water is horribly cold, but there is quite strong wind, so if you are a windsurfer you will definitely enjoy it. If you are just a tourist then you can sightsee the lake’s shore which is reeeeaaaally long, but picturesque

Our trip ended in Prague, where we were eating great food and drinking our favourite beer (Kozel). 

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Livorno

On our way to Livorno we decided to visit medieval city Sant Gimigiano. We arrived to the parking near the city and there was no free place for us to park, so my dad left us and went to search for some other parking. While searching he tried to make a short cut and then police caught him, so he had to go straight the street on which he wanted to turn. This lead him outside the city. We were still waiting in the previous spot. Suddenly my brother noticed that one car was leaving so we run to keep the place for dad. We had no idea he already was outside the city, trying to come back. Thanks God for mobiles! I called him saying we have the parking place and heard the policeman story. He said he will get back to me. We waited for a couple of minutes and then angry Italian woman came. She wanted to park on our place. Of course we were talking in English she was talking in Italian and there was no way to communicate. After few seconds she was yelling we were yelling and then my dad called. He said he has parked the car and he is walking to us. I said this to the rest of my family and we left the place for crazy lady, who now was trying to drove over us to put her car on desired place. We stepped back and went slowly in direction of the city. Then I saw my father passing by. He was about 300m from me a bit confused, asking some guy for directions. I was sure he will realize we are so close and then I saw he is going in another direction. I grabbed my mobile again and called him:
me: Hi! it’s me, I just saw you. Stop because you are going in another direction.
him: No! No! I’ve asked a nice guy he said I should go up.
me: But I just saw you. Just come back and look on the left.
him: Ehh. ok
My old-fashioned mum was already running towards him in case I wouldn’t be able to convince him to come back
We met finally and hit off to Sant Goimigiano. It was really beautiful, with great galleries, ice-creams which won the price for the world’s best ice-creams of year 2007 and 2008 and tower with the view of Tuscany’s hills. You can view some photos here. Sightseeing and ice-creams put us again in a great mood and we went to Livorno.
We arrived to the agroturismo which I reserved. I must say it’s the best! The price is like for a hostel and you have a gorgeous place with swimming pool and your own cottage! It was terrific! The only advantage or disadvantage, depending on the point of view, is that you can only reach it by a car. But it’s worth it check it out.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Ravenna, Pescara, Roma

After full of adventures Vennice we went off to Ravenna where we spent 2 days and next we spent 1 day in Pescara. These 3 days were competely relaxing. We were lying on the beach swimming in warm and nice sea and enjoying Italy. After such nice 2 days we went to Roma. For me it’s one of the most beautiful places in Europe. Once again I was sightseeing Piazza del Popolo, Di Trevi, Piazza Italia and Vatican museums. Everything was breathtaking and I really recommend going there.
We spent there 2 days and after such cultural injection we went to Livorno. Of course it was too many days without an adventure so it was almost destined that there are new surprises waiting for us.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Venice

After 2 nights we hit to Vienna. Near the border with Italy I finally started to feel Summer. I had to take off my warm clothes and exchange them with light summer ones. It was such a great difference after half year in gloomy UK. We were about to spend one night in a water city. I was a bit afraid that it will smell horribly, because few years ago when I was visiting Venice I was shocked with the smell of the water in canals, but it wasn’t like that at all. I fell in love with this city. You will too. All you have to do is to go a bit further from Saint Mark’s square and it will be enough to see calmer not flooded by tourists Venice. However there were still few surprises waiting for us at the begging of the sightseeing.

We were closer and closer to the city Tom Tom was showing only 500m to the parking recommended by the hotel in which we were about to stay. Everyone was excited and started to look around, then we realized that we are on some suburbs where buildings are falling apart and homeless people are enjoying the sun outside them. There was also a railway station so I went to ask in Information how to get to our hotel. The lady said: ‘Ohhh dear! Your hotel is on the small Island and I can’t even find it on a map.’ I thought this is a bad sign But we came back to the car and decided to go further in direction of city center. After few minutes the views begin to remind Venice I remember with canals boats and huge queue to parking. At the beginning we have joined the queue but after that we decided that maybe we will try to go further after all it was still about 2km to Saint Mark’s square. We did what we thought and then we end up on a parking for buses where you cannot park the car. The problem was that we couldn’t go any further and we couldn’t stop, so the atmosphere started to be a bit tensed. For our luck there was another parking on the right. We just had to get there without breaking any rules. It was about time to split and me and my mum went to the information to ask about the map and directions, and my dad with my brother went to park a car.

In the information they said there is no free map (like our guide wrote) we have to pay 5euro (yuuupi tourist prices....). They also said that we have to park a car and move by boats to wherever we want because there is no other way to travel from this point. It was quite inconvenient information, since we had huge amount of luggage and we didn’t want to leave everything in a car at the parking. But it seemed that we don’t have much choice.

In mean time my dad was trying to park a car on a parking to which of course was a huge queue. He was waiting and waiting. Than a policeman came to him and showed that he has to go around the queue and try to enter the parking from the right side. He drove a bit further and stopped in front of the entrance like policeman suggested but it was still like getting into the queue without waiting, so the parking guy came and said: ‘uuuuu! Polako bandito you wanted to get without waiting.’ My dad said: ‘no no. The policeman suggested that I will do that.’ The parking guy replied: ‘No no the policeman couldn’t said that. Go there and wait a bit’. heheheh he put my father in donkey corner to punish him for trying to enter the queue without waiting hehehhe. After my dad has finished his detention he drove to the parking and parked a car. It seemed to be the end of wired situations and then came another parking guy. He gave a receipt with time my dad arrived to him and said that he has to leave the car open. My dad was in shock. How can he leave the car open with all the luggage inside! He said that the alarm will turn on automatically after 1 minute if he does that. So the guy replied OK then please leave the keys too. Can you imagine?! My dad was in shock and started to ask how come he has to do that. Than an American guy came and said: ‘Don’t worry mate. Everyone has to do it here. It’s completely safe although it looks like they would have a huge mess in here.’ My dad decided to trust guys opinion and left the keys. We were sleeping not entirely calmly that night but nothing bad happened and next day we got back our car with everything inside.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Vienna

We were staying in apartment in a hostel called Quartier24. It wasn’t located in a city centre, but because of that it was quite cheap, only 17 Euro per person per night. The apartment had a fridge, kitchen , dishes and 2 rooms. I would really recommend it. However while going there you should be prepared to pay with a credit card. There is a machine outside the hostel where you have to enter your reservation code, pay and you get the entrance card. It’s totally automatic and you don’t even see the administrator.

I spent more then a month in Vienna in the past and I must say it hasn’t change at all. It’s still gorgeous. The city centre has fabulous architecture. Museums have great exhibitions. Under the Rathaus you can eat cheap and good food, because there is a market with dishes from all over the world. Also there you can watch opera, films and classical music concerts for free on a huge screen.

The only flaw of this part of a trip was the rain. Like in the UK, it was gloomy and I had to wear long sleeve, which I was hoping to put on the bottom of my suitcase and forget about it, because of the great hot sun.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Come back

I literally popped in to Poland, because 3 days after I came back I was going for a road trip with my parents and my brother. I thought 3 days is quite a lot of time, but I was mistaken. The first day we were celebrating my come back, so the next day we had to rest after such celebration The day after that I went to see another friends but from University and I was planning to drink only one beer However we end up drinking a bit more (two but 1l each ). I predicted such situation so I packed in the morning uuuuuffff. I was leaving at midnight and it was 10pm ish when my friend called and said they are drinking and I should pop in I really wanted to although it was getting late, but Mark (my voice of wisdom ;o) ) said: ‘No honey. If we meet with them then you will never get back on time’. I knew he was right, but quite big part of me wanted to argue with that
We went home and few hours later I was in a car on my way to Vienna.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Packing

Like I wrote before, we have sent 2 boxes from Berlin to Poland, so we wouldn’t have problems with luggage. I really believed in this theory until the Saturday evening, when we started packing. I happily packed the biggest bag and weighted it. I looked at the weight display and couldn’t believe it. It showed 45 kilos! How was it possible? I started to rearrange things but it still weighted 39 kilos. The limit is 20! I was devastated. I knew I will have to leave my precious clothes in Oxford :(
My boyfriend Mark saw me and said: ‘lets get some sleep and we will start all over again in the morning.’ I agreed and went to put on my pajamas. Next day we decided to buy additional kilos through the internet and pack as efficiently as we could. Which meant we moved all the heavy things to the hand luggage and started putting all clothes into check-in ones. But this wasn’t enough! So we had to create 2 piles of our clothes. One with ones we can leave in Oxford till November and the other one which we must take with us. Of course this task was a lot harder for me than for Mark. Ehhhh. Finally, we ended up with 2 check in bags which weighted together 55 kilos. The hand bags I think it’s safe to say weighted about 20 kilos each. I barely could lift mine up . I was so happy that all of this bags had wheels
But the problem arouse when we came to the plane. I was thinking how on earth I will put this bag in the cabinet above my head. I decided to ask the steward in a plane. I made eyes like cat from Shrek and asked if he could help me and put the bag in the cabinet. He said of course, looking at the bag and probably thinking it can’t be heavy since it’s quite small.  I was rescued and he was screwed ;P He lifted the bag looked at me and said: ‘Dear God. Girl what are you carrying in there?!  Stones?! You have probably packed whole your apartment inside.’ I didn’t say anything since there was no point. After all the bag was where I wanted it to be

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Final day

I had a final day at work. Everyone was really nice, but of course there were thousands of things to do :/. The freak was on holidays. Juuuupi!!! and I had a great 2 weeks because I was able to work like a normal person, without constant interruptions and stupid questions. However the trick was, he supposed to be 3 weeks on his holidays, but he decided to stay for a couple of days at work and then to work from home. The day after he went home I received an email saying: ‘I am on holidays, but I still read your emails!’. I didn’t understand if I should be scared or was it a metaphorical sentence saying my previous email was ambiguous. I think no one knows except him what he meant
Anyway, I didn’t care that much since I was about to leave. Of course, the Freak knew he wasn’t my favourite guy in the world and vice versa, so when he was saying goodbye to me he said: ‘I am sorry you are leaving’ and showed all of his teeth in a banana smile. I replied: ‘I will miss you too’ and also showed my enthusiasm He was saying goodbye to me few days before I was resigning, because he popped into work for one day. With this guy you never know if he is really on holidays or not.

The last day, girls made me Pimm`s and a cake. They all gathered and said something nice to me, which felt really good. At least I know there were people who knew how hard I worked. The day after we went for a beer with some friends and I was ready to start packing....

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Typical Saturday

I woke up quite early and noticed that 3 days of summer which we recently had in Oxford were enough for Britain. It’s raining again, not heavily but still raining. I have no idea how you can stay positive in a country which is always gloomy. However there is a good side of this. I will put on my new jeans bought on a great sale. I love those sales! You would never buy pants for £6 in Poland. Of course if you are buying pants then it’s almost obligatory for you to buy a shirt too and if it’s all so cheap, then why not to buy a bag Ohhhh I guess this may make everyone happy in spite of the rain
But coming back to us. Mark is still sleeping. He finished his dissertation so now he is recovering from sleepless nights when he was describing everything he did. And I am starting to learn for GMAT. I am hoping to finish first part of it before going to London. Because today we will visit my old friend from Poland. We went to primary school together and after 10 years we will meet in London. That’s crazy I would probably never see him in Poland. Everyone comes to UK now. If you take a look on nasza-klasa, then two thirds of those people are living in England, Scotland or Ireland. I wonder if that will change since pound is getting weaker and weaker. It’s getting more profitable to live in Spain for example, since salaries are good too and the cost of living is much much lower. On the other hand it’s again my bad luck. I came to England to earn some money for my studies and the pound is getting weaker.
Anyway, I am hungry so I will go prepare some breakfast.

Cheers

Monday, July 21, 2008

different cultures

I haven’t mentioned yet, but we are living with Chinese girl and Indian couple, which helps us in seeing huge cultural differences between us. The first quite obvious is in flavours and food. The Indian food is horribly spicy and they don’t eat meat at all. I suddenly realized how I like my chicken wings and other tasteful animal treats. One day they were making their pancakes. The smell was terrific and it looked great so I tried one pancake. uuuhhh it wasn’t good at all! It was horribly spicy and not just hot, simply spicy. On the other hand they always eat this pancakes with natural yoghurt. Blee.
Chinese however have nice food. Lots of rice, but with delicious meat and mushrooms

But there are also other cultural differences, like smoking. For example in China smoking is an element of a social life. Parents do not forbid their children to smoke, because they know how important it is for them. Also if some Chinese will offer you a cigarette it means he has a huge respect for you.

The second interesting thing in Chinese culture is weight. They are obsessed with their looks. Apparently if you are too fat, then you are embarrassing your friends and family. Thus, friends don’t want to hang out with you and your family push you to loose weight. My room-mate says parents can even tell you that you are fat, you have to loose your weight, so they won’t be feeding you. Can you imagine all the grandmas in Poland hearing that Mine would feed me even if I wouldn’t be able to fit in a door frame

I must admit it is quite interesting to see all really tiny Chinese and huge Americans and British people on the street. In Britain they can eat potatoes, beans and eggs all the time. They put it in everything. Lately I wanted to buy a hot sandwich like the ones in Poland with loads of vegetables, souse cheese and mushrooms. I went to the hot sandwich shop ordered cheese and mushroom sandwich and guess what was in it?
Of course there was cheese, mushrooms but also egg and potato. It was awful I have no idea why this restaurant is so popular. Anyway, this habit explains a bit why in Britain they are constantly talking about obese people.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

climate change

Global warming, climate change who didn’t hear about these issues at least hundred times. But do we do something about it?
Every day scientists are coming up with new ideas how to rescue us from exploiting the rests of our natural resources, or prevent the huge hurricanes and other weather anomalies that are tightly bounded with pollution we produce. They created a car using only solar power, which is becoming more and more popular in Germany. In China on the other hand you can find cars using electricity. All you have to do is to charge your vehicle and it will be ready to go.
However lately I read about the most extraordinary project. The group of scientists discovered that cows are farting with methane, which is a flammable gas. The same gas that pollutes atmosphere even more than the popular carbon dioxide. Can you imagine cows are polluting our globe!
I couldn’t believe it. But there was something else. The scientists thought, since cows are farting with methane, then they can use their gases for other purposes. But how are they going to gather cow’s farts?
They have constructed a huge plastic container and placed it on cow’s back. The container is collecting cow’s winds, which can further be used to other purposes. Look:

It is said that in Argentina 30% of country’s total greenhouse emissions are caused by cows.
You can read more about this discovery here: original article

Saturday, July 19, 2008

cookie incident

When you finally realize that you are spending too much money, you start to search for easy substitutes that won’t change your live but will save pounds in your pocket. We are trying to do that but with a poor result However one of the tries was to make cookies on our own. We bought this cookie package and followed the instruction. First they asked to add a bit of oil, then a bit of water and 1 egg. I did it then I stirred the spoon for 2 minutes, which was quite exhausting I have to say. Those housewives must be really strong . Anyway I made the dough that looked like the one on package’s picture. Next we had to put the dough in a clumps on a metal thing with spaces in between (I don’t even know how do you call it) and placed it in the oven. After 5 minutes the smell was gorgeous, so I went to the oven to see how our cookies look like. I opened the it and saw everything falling from metal thing to the bottom of the oven! We had to rescue our dessert! I started to gather everything from the oven’s inside on a chopping block. There was barely anything on the metal thing. Ehhh and you wouldn’t believe that someone will be able to ruin 3 step recipe
However I cooled down what was left from our cookie dough and formed another clumps. But this time we put it on a proper baking tin. After a while the cookies were ready and now we know that we shouldn’t be using metal thing for baking :D

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Tough times

Ehhh short holidays has been finished. My small Berlin summer is gone and the trouble times have begun!

I wanted to go to Australia like from always… I’ve been on Australian Community newsletter for a few years now, I found Universities and courses in which I am interested and it’s about time to do something about it. I managed to contact the representative of my University and applied, I took IELTS exam, sent all the papers and waited for some news. But in the mean time I thought it is always good to have plan B, so I applied to European University too. Then I received my results. I have conditional offer to Australia and I am accepted to European course!!! I was so happy when I found out.
The European course is great too. It’s held in English, the first part of studies is on University of Barcelona and the second part is on the French Sorbonne in Paris. However my enthusiasm cooled down, when I read that I have to pay 1000euro as a deposit for my European studies. I can’t afford paying such deposit and just loose it in case I will go to Australia. On the other hand from Australia they told me I have to take GMAT exam in order to be accepted. Of course GMAT costs about £158 so there is no free of charge solution Anyway, today is the last day when I could pay the deposit for booking my Barcelona/Paris studies. I didn’t pay it, so you have to cross your fingers for my GMAT and Australia, because my Plan B no longer exists.

Besides, I got used to going to my work and doing my day-to-day nice things that I am always not in a mood for learning My first GMAT learning experience has ended with a quite nice nap
Thus now though times have come. I have to study and work and figure out new plan B.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Berlin tour part 2

Not far from the city centre we saw old church. This church was bombarded during 2nd World War, but Berliners decided to leave its tower to remember what happened. Next to the ruined tower a small new chapel was built and a new tower. Both chapel’s and new tower’s walls are covered with small glasses, which makes its interior quite amazing.
Ruined church’s tower:

With new parts:

Inside: