so the past week has been pretty much a national mini holiday. the occasion was labour day which was on the 1st of may. it's officially only a holiday on the 1st to the 3rd of march, but most people took one or two days off to get themselves a nice nine day long holiday (two weekends and a week). so i spent this time at my grandmother's house in wiśniewo. click here for google maps. i like google maps; it uses so much less ram than google earth (if you don't include firefox's minimum requirement :).
the house is more of a block of flats, but over time my grandmother bought out another flat to make a two storey home. the other flats are either owed by other distant family (that i don't know too well yet) or rented out (i'm not sure how the whole renting thing works in poland yet, but it can be quite different depending on whether the building is government owed or not). during this time i spent a great deal of time gaming (psp and wii) because my cousin is not big on talking walks. i did however get out a few times and took some photos of the surrounding area. on some of the photos you will see some really big houses, but my cousin assures me that most of them are cohabited by multiple families (or by many families within one family, if that makes any sense). the area is quite nice, but many houses need work. and the roads are pathetic (most of them are still dirt roads). i hear that it takes ages for the government to build roads in england (according to clarkson), but i think we have it worse here in poland. but that could be changing now that the eu is throwing money at poland, so many roads could be (and already are being) repaired.
i want to talk about the wii a bit. i've really come to love it. it's not really visually superior the xbox 360 but the controllers are so cool. i thought the xbox controller was great with it's analogue shoulder buttons, but this one is a cut above. with most racing games that you buy, you get a plastic grip that the controller fits into to turn it into a steering wheel. and the sports games are great as well (swinging bats, clubs or rackets in a very realistic fashion to the original sport). check out this video for an example of a racing game (unfortunately with the steering wheel grip). with that said, you need both a wii and an xbox 360 if you're serious about consoles.
and finally, as promised by the title, here are some things that i miss from south africa:
- the number one item on my list is the south african potatoe. for a country that makes tons of vodka from potatoes, they really don't know how to grow a decent potatoe. i suppose that could actually be the reason why the potatoes are so terrible here; they are only concerned about vodka quality potatoes and nothing else :P when you buy the potatoes here, that are normally unwashed and have many cuts in them. even after washing them, they don't look all that good. in the end you can't cook the potatoes in their skins because they are not edible/palatable. after cooking the potatoes, you end up with half cooked and half raw potatoes. they refuse to cook evenly. could be because of their high water content (i think). anyway, i miss clean sa jacket potatoes.
- number two would be st. elmo's pizza. i suppose it's not really that i miss st. elmos pizza in particular but the fact that i have not found a single wood fired pizzeria here in warsaw. you'd think that being just one country (least number of countries, not shortest distance) away from poland, that they would have heard the news that wood fired is better. also, despite the fact that the pizzas here have the same topping, they look and can taste different. oh, and they like to put corn on many of their pizza varieties.
- the only other thing that bugs me are the towels. however, i can't be sure whether it is all the towels are not absorbent here, or just every single one that i have used in my family inventory.
i like lists :) they make my posts seem longer without any added effort.
below are links to the pics. enjoy. p.s. i've updated the photos of beer bottles.
