Warsaw

After a long airplane ride, I finally touched down in Poland. It was raining and very cold. I was in touch with Kuba, Karolina's boyfriend, before coming to Poland. I was staying at their place for the duration of my stay in Warsaw. I tried to get a simcard but the clerk was so rude and in the end I couldn't get it to work, it was so annoying and I had already wasted some money. I was talking with Wiktor telling him where we could meet near old town before the wi-fi disappeared. I had missed the bus going to old town while trying to get wi-fi but ended up losing both opportunities. I tried to go outside and wait for the bus again in the cold rain. Not gonna lie, it was a bit of a stressful start. Eventually, the bus did come and I went in seamlessly, not even having to pay though this was my bad. It would soon become a prevalent theme while traveling around Europe. Seeing Poland firsthand was exciting, a country I didn't know much about was now unraveling itself before me. Slavic/Baltic influence was pretty strong, in both its language and culture. Most of the buildings were a bit bland and not so developed but old town was absolutely stunning.

I got down and went to the plaza, where I agreed to meet Wiktor. I stood there in front of the statue, hoping Wiktor got my message, trying to find wi-fi. Surprisingly, he showed up at the nick of time right behind me. It was such a nice reunion, he has changed so much from a teen now almost looking like a scruffy man. I was quite guilty for making him wait but now it was all good, my next problem was letting Kuba know that I am now hanging out with Wiktor and can't make it to his place yet. This was solved through Wiktor albeit he wasn't too fond of my decision. Wiktor and I hanged around the old town, going through some alleys and seeing the remains of the castle. He shared some bits and pieces of the history of the place, the significance behind the statues and buildings. We decided to go meet up with his brother, Kacper. It was a long but fun walk, filled with a lot of catching up and laughter. Kacper and his fiance at that time, Natalia both welcomed us into their new home. It was still in the works but I could really appreciate the aesthetics. It was very minimalistic and I really appreciated their non materialistic approach to home ownership. We settled in and had a brief chat before going to pick up the apartment keys from Kuba and to try and find another sim card. We drove to Kuba's apartment and was able to say hello, I got the keys and off we went to one of Warsaw's main malls. Wiktor did most of the talking and we tried several shops and decided to go with T-mobile. I got my simcard and off we went back to Kacper's place for dinner. We ordered traditional Polish food from UberEats and it was actually all pretty delicious, they had dumplings and sour soup. I ate my fill while we exchanged a lot of cultural background concerning Japan and Poland. I learned a lot from them both especially their views on social media. From Natalia's words, "I don't really see the need to look at what's going on in other people's lives or to share about mine own" and it really hit well for me, I soon deleted Facebook after coming back and it was actually pretty good. It was also quite a coincidence that Natalia works at the Copernicus Science Center which was the place Wiktor and I were going to the day after so I was quite looking forward for her to show us around. We talked for a bit more before we said our good byes. Wiktor drove me back to my place.

At this point, I was already quite tired but to my surprise Kuba was in there with his friends having a bit of a drunk poker party. His house, his rules I guess but I just wanted to sleep at that point. I had no choice now though as I had to just vibe with them for a bit while waiting for Karolina to come back. She did apologize but hey, I don't really have any right to demand anything as I was just crashing at his place for free. They kept offering me shots but I kept refusing as I wasn't really in the mood to drink but then one of them invited me to smoke and that I was down for. Karolina soon arrived, we were very happy to see each other and she quickly fixed up a place for me to sleep which was moving a sofa into the kitchen. It smelled very European in there, I both liked and disliked the set-up, even with the door closed they still were pretty noisy until like 2AM where they left. I didn't get much sleep at all that night.Read more