wow, it's been a while since i've written anything. lately i just haven't been having the urge to write tho (i must have not been drinking enough ;). i guess it's laregly due to the fact that work is taking up so much of my time. i'm not complaining tho, cause the work is great and the working atmosphere is fantastic. our whole division is largely comprised of younger people and as a result we get on really well.
anyway, enough blabbering about work. i'm largely writing this entry to point out some of the new photos on my picasa website (which i update more regularly than the blog :/). i've actually put up quite a bit since the last time i have written anything and it's well worth a look.
and on to the meat of the blog....
so earlier this year i've actually been on three trips and they were all in very close succession of
each other. the first was yet another business trip to london which was great cause i got to see my mates in london again. obviously a weekend is not really long enough to do anything spectacular, but just hanging out was well worth it. i stayed at gareth's house (where i helped him move to a new place) down in chippenham. i suppose the funnest thing about this trip was the fact that the day after i returned to poland, i would be flying off to amsterdam to meet up with gareth yet again :).
so in effect, after i returned from london i went straight home for a few hours sleep and then made my way back to the airport. just like last time, we had a great time. the main goal for our trip was to see armin van buuren play at his "armin only" party and it was fantastic. the sheer scale of the party was like nothing that i have ever seen in south africa. i guess europeans just know how to do things right :P. oh, and i kind of missed my flight back =^.^=. that was quite an experience. luckly there are many flights from amsterdam to warsaw and i got a ticket for the next morning. after getting my ticket, i made my way back to amsterdam to stay at a hostel (to get some sleep) but... during the night, one of the room residents brought back some chick that he had meet. At which point they started to have sex in the dark, with everyone still in the room. and surprisingly that wasn't as bad as the italian guy constantly trying to get a look. like i said, the whole "missing my plane" was quite an experience.
after i returned from amsterdam i had two days work, after which me and my mates from work made our way to barcelona, spain. we had decided earlier that it would be great to see the grand prix live and after our initial plans of belgium fall apart, we decided on spain. if you ever get a chance to see barcelona... take it! it's amazing there. also, don't make the same mistake i did... if you do go, you need at least two weeks to take in the sights (and a good pair of shoes). there is really so much to see in barcelona. the grand prix was also great. also if you ever go to one, i highly recommend getting a seat under a roof (especially in spain ;). unless your a real veteran when it comes to sun exposure, i urge you to take this advise seriously. oh and bring your own beer and food cause the prices are ridiculous.
and recently (in may) poland had a RAG type month called juwenalia [pl|wiki]. basically students all round poland get drunk and party before they start exams. in any case there was a street parade down the center of town and below you will see the photos from that event.
alright, i'm about done. the photos, like usual, are below and look be sure to check them soon as there will be photos of the zombie walk 2008 just after the weekend.
2008.06.27 | a quick update
2008.02.16 | buy two and get one free
well... i haven't updated in a while and i guess i should have because quite a bit has been happening since my last post. and seeing as i haven't become any less lazy than i have been, i will not go into as much detail for each thing as i usually would :/
product one (zkiing in zakopane)
anyway i'll start off with new years. for those of you that don't already know, i went to zakopane on new years for some snow, skiing and drinking. zakopane is a town in the polish mountains down by the czech border. the people there are called the górale (hilanders) and they hold to the olden day culture and traditions of the polish people to this day. they do this more so than other poles as they rely on it to attract tourists to earn a living. profiteering aside, i think it's great and it is definitely worth seeing if you ever make it to poland.
as you can imagine, zakopane was quite full around new years but not so much that it was unbearable. we stayed in a decent lodging in harenda which is walking distance away from the harenda ski slope. mind you, it was quite far to walk after you've been skiing all day :) but after taking off those ski boots, you feel like you're walking on air (no matter how uncomfortable your shoes are), so it's an easy walk.
a few of us were not that great at skiing so we hired a ski instructor for a few hours which helped us to no end. the harenda ski slope was pretty daunting at first, but after a few days it was not so bad. just to make it clear, i didn't ski right from the top (which has about a 45 degree incline), but from what i guess is the easy to intermediate section.
on our second night we all went to town center for dinner at a traditional polish restaurant. the food was awesome and the vibe was fantastic. i guess the location was not decorated for vegetarians as they had various animals mounted on the walls and from what i heard, they also had meat drying upstairs. at one point (i think it was someones birthday), the waiters sang and banged on the metal part of the chimney in the center of the room to celebrate.
the next night we went on a kulig which is a horse and carriage (on sledges). we were taken up a mountian to a clearing were they already had a fire going. on the way we were drinking shots of wiśniówka (cherry flavoured vodka). around the fire we made toast (there was no sausage left at that point) and the group sang polish songs (all of which i did not know). on the way back, the driver went down a rather rough route and the carriage overturned. so all in all it was a very fun night.
on new years eve, we stay at the lodging for a party that they organised. very much a polish party, with loads of food and alcohol. there was some dancing downstairs and on the strike of twelve, everyone went outside to give new years wishes and to watch the fireworks (all private fireworks) which were going off everywhere.
on the last day we went to the town to walk a round a bit before our train was set to leave.
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recently i also went on my first business trip. the initial plan was for me and daniel (another work mate) to go to china. we ended up getting the visas and everything, but in the end it was deemed not necessary. after that it was thought that we needed to go to korea, but in what was now starting to become an annoying trend, that was also deemed not necessary. but in the end we did go on a trip and this time it was london (well staines to be precise) to visit da west staines massiv</pop_culture_reference>.
before the trip i asked my boss if he could extend my ticket from monday-friday to monday-sunday. seeing as this had no affect on the cost he agreed. the timing could not have been better as rose was having a birthday celebration that exact weekend.
work was largly uneventful, but in the end we did accomplish what we set out to do. during the week we did some sightseeing during our lunches and on thursday we went for afterwork drinks with the london crew in the bar called "the town hall". i guess the building was infact the town hall at one point.
on friday daniel and i went back to heathrow (just a few days after the crash) and after i saw daniel off, i headed for the underground to make my way to london. while i was waiting to meet gareth, i did some traveling and took some night photos of some of the sights i had seen my first time in london.
after meeting gareth, we made our way to meet larry (a friend of gareths that i had not seen since high school). larry drove to woolwich where we went to have a few drinks at a local pub.
on saturday i had made plans to see asher. but on my way to london i stopped off at greenwich [en|wiki] first. this gave me a chance to head for the royal observatory [en|wiki] to see the gmt line. i didn't really plan my route this time so i just headed in the direction where i though the observatory is likely to be. i did however have my psp armed with gps and some maps (which i did end up using in the end) but during my random wandering i did find some interesting places along the way which i might not have seen if i gone straight there.
after seeing the observatory, i headed to london bridge to meet asher. we first went to the borough market [en|wiki] which was in the area and afterwards asher took me to south kensington [en|wiki] to see where he works. south kensington is a really nice looking area but i guess it would be seeing as it is quite a rich area and there was evidence of this as we saw several super cars on our way to asher's work.
later we met up with one of ashers friends and we went to the science museum [en|wiki] as it was quite close. the museum is huge (and the entrance was free which you might want to take a note of if you ever decide to go). they had loads of interesting stuff on display, but my favourate out of the lot must be the atomic clock and one of the original apple computers (the type that steve wozniak made in his garage).
after that i met up with rose, gareth and the rest of the gang for drinks to celebrate rose's birthday. it really does take some getting used to with the price difference. for example, a double brandy and coke that would cost you 9 to 13 rand in south africa costs about 7 pounds in that club. i'm not sure if it's just that club that is that expensive, or london in general (i'm guessing the latter).
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free gift (the new place)
and finally, i ended up getting my own place. i'm currently living in a flat in kabaty. i am sharing the flat with the owner but he's my age and very easy to talk to. the location of the place is excellent with a 24 hour tescos [en|wiki] just one minute walk away and the metro [en|wiki] just 3 minutes. the whole area was only build up in the last 13 years, so all of the flats are very new (compared to the rest of warsaw). as a result of this, the flat is very clean and modern-ish. again this is all relative to the rest of warsaw. the internet is currently a bit slow, but we are getting an upgrade at the end of the month (yeah \o/).
also i finally got a new pc (desktop) and those of you that are actually interested can ask me for details later.
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2007.12.23 | berlin racing
the trip to berlin started at the rather early time of 02h00 on saturday morning. this waking up early has started to become a real common theme for trips :/. this is something i need to correct on for my future adventures.
the need for waking up this early was brought on by the fact that we would be driving to germany. berlin [en|de|wiki] is a six hour drive from warsaw and we wanted to arrive reasonable early so that we would have enough time to sightsee before it got dark.
i suppose i should first explain why we decided to go on this trip and who decided to come along. earlier this year, in poland, there was a competition run by intel and bmw where they created a f1 simulator using a real f1 bmw car body, a logitech steering wheel, pedals and some racing software. as you might have guessed, the aim of the competition was to race faster than the other opponents in this simulator. my mates from work; adam, kuba and sylwia (kuba's girlfriend (who does not work with us)) took part in this competition. after trying in a few cities, both kuba and sylwia won first place in two parts of the competition. kuba won the overall prize of a trip to germany to go-kart against robert kubica and sylwia won the seperate women's competition with a rather fancy computer as the prize. so in light of kuba's success in poland we decided we could give it a go in the german competition of the same nature. so kuba, adam, wojtek, sylwia and i decided we would go to german for; a) the competition (not all of us) and b) to generally have a good time in germany (lots of beer and such).
so by 03h00 i had arrived at kuba's house where we set off to germany. what ensued was a rather uncomfortable 6 hour drive to germany. for those of you that complain about south african roads, you really have nothing to complain about. polish roads are some of the roughest roads i've had the discomfort to travel on (barring perhaps any south african dirt roads). the roads were constructed in such a way as to save as much money as possible. as a result, the roads are so thin that cars and trucks literally create impressions in the road from the pressure of the tires on the road (i'll try and get some photos next time). most of the drive was uneventful expect where is started snowing. this was the first time it has snowed since winter back in february and the sight was rather amazing.
in the end we made some really good time in the car and arrived at the german border in a little over five hours. the plan after getting to berlin was to first go straight to the competition, then do some sightseeing and finally go to the hostel.
at the mall where the competition was held we were pleasantly surprised that we could practice and race in the simulator as long as we wanted to due to the relative lack of people wanting to taking part. in the end adam and i only raced about four or five times after which we went with wojtek on a walk to see the surrounding area. kuba on the other hand decided to stay and continued to race. despite our relatively short time racing we all made it into the top 100, with kuba currently at 31, adam at 80 and myself at 68. our results were better at the time but since our trip we have been slowly dropping in the standings.
towards the end of our walk, the skies let loose and it started to snow. that was my first proper snow fall in europe and it was fantastic.
after getting back to the mall, we took the car to the tiergarten where we walk about looking at parliament buildings, reichstag and the brandenburg gate. by then it was already getting dark quite early in the afternoon as d.s.t. had ended a few weeks before. unfortunately we did not go inside reichstag as the queue was about an hour and a half long.
the hostel was actually quite nice, despite the price. the bunk beds are, however, rather squeaky (some reviews mentioned that as well) which isn't pleasant if someone is tossing and turning. in our quest to find a nice german place for dinner we found an excellent place in oranien platz. for about 12 euro each, we got a huge basket of bread for starters, a huge salad, and the largest schnitzel i have ever seen (with fried potato wedges, i think). we were mighty stuffed after that dinner.
afterwards, the waiter suggested that we should go to wittenburg platz (as we wanted to find a night club). so we took s-bahn which is one of the quietest undergrounds i've ever been on. in the end we did not find any night clubs, but wittenburg platz happened to be on the road that leads to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche which was well worth seeing (unfortunately my camera is not so great in the dark).
the next morning it was snowing a bit, but after breakfast the snow had stopped. fortunately we didn't encounter any more snow during our sightseeing :).
on our way to see the memorial to the murder jews of europe we stumbled upon the remains of the berlin wall. up until that point we were not sure where the wall was and we were very lucky to find it by accident. the berlin wall is also very close to the sony center, which is also worth seeing.
afterwards we went to see the berlin tv tower after which we made our way to museum island. we really didn't have any time to go to any of the museums, but the actual island itself is really interesting.
because we were driving back as well, we had to cut our sightseeing short at about three or four o'clock, but despite our short time in berlin, i think we managed to see quite a lot. next year, i think we will make another trip to germany to take part in the competition again. when we do, we will try and pick a city close to a ski resort (or something else just as interesting).
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