Retail Stores and Pig's Necks

We started the day with a breakfast meeting with Szeczpan Figiel, who is the Associate Dean for research at the University. He was headed to a conference and wanted to meet with us before he left. As we finished breakfast, Wojciech came in to pick us up for a visit to various retail distribution outlets in the city. I happened to mention that I wished I could have bought more CDs and he said that we would start at Media Markt, which is an electronics “hypermart.” This place was incredible.It is about twice the size of Best Buy and had all the CDs, DVDs, and electronics one could want. I quickly found a few CDs that I was looking for (I’ll be featuring them in my other blog next week) and walked around the store. The CD selection was about as big as a typical Best Buy and I found the same CDs I had purchased the previous day for about half the price. Since our objective was to visit as many different types of retailers during the morning, we couldn’t linger there. I of course could have spent all day there, but I was forced by the others to quickly pick up something and move on. So I did, with great regret.We then visited supermarkets, discount stores, convenience stores, independent kiosks, different styles of furniture stores, and more. It was a whirlwind breathtaking view of a variety of retail outlets available in Poland.

We then headed to the University for lunch followed by more meetings with groups of students. This sequence of meetings led directly to our presentation to students and faculty at the college. We had 46 people at the presentation, of which 7 were faculty. So, it was a relatively large group. The room was just steaming hot. I was wearing a full suit (with an undershirt) and so was sweating like a pig. Halfway through my presentation, it started pouring with rain. This was an incredibly heavy downpour. So, they shut the windows, which only raised the heat in the room another notch. Seriously, my entire shirt and suit were soaked in sweat by the time I was done. I must have looked funny, standing in the room spouting sweat like a fountain. Still, I think the presentation went well and was quite well received.

After the presentation, Wojciech was supposed to run us to the hotel to get changed before heading out to a restaurant for a Polish barbecue. Well, the downpour had flooded some roads and the streets were jammed with cars that weren’t going anywhere. After a few futile attempts to find a way around the traffic jams, we gave up and headed straight to the BBQ.

In addition to my ever present beer, I also really enjoyed the delicious kielbasa (commonly known in the US as polish sausage) and karkówka. I have discovered another characteristic of Polish and their cuisine. Meat is meat. More than once, I noticed that I had clearly startled my hosts when I asked them what meat it was that I was eating. Usually, the response to “what is this?” is “It’s meat.” Everything is either meat or not meat. So, when I tried to inquire what meat the karkówka was made of, they looked puzzled and said “I don’t know. It’s meat!” When I insisted on knowing what meat it was (because I thought it tasted great and I was on my second helping), they started asking around at all the tables if anyone knew what meat it was. Finally, the answer was found and Wojciech came back to me with “It’s pig’s neck” Actually, it is just the meat from the neck/shoulder region of the pork (Google found me the answer faster). A couple of people who were a little more comfortable with English, cracked up when the answer was “pig’s neck.” So, for the rest of the evening, people would help themselves to more karkówka, point to it and exclaim “pig’s neck!” and cackle before eating it. All in all, a very enjoyable evening.

We were dropped back to the hotel at about 9 PM. I just finished packing and we leave at 6:30 tomorrow morning for Warsaw airport to catch our flight back home. I had a great time on this trip, as usual.

Walking Towards Hel and Experiencing the Heat

Had a great day in Gdansk today. We started at 7 AM and left for the 2.5 hour drive from Olsztyn to Gdansk. When we got here, we parked the car at the Mercure Hotel, a large, fancy hotel in the center of town. We checked in and were surprised to find no air conditioning in the room. Praveen and I were set to share a room here and walked in to the room on the 13^th floor and found it quite hot. I asked our hosts whether we could get an air conditioned room, even if it cost more and he apologized profusely and called the front desk. The word came back that there were no air conditioned rooms in this hotel at all. I find this quite amazing. I mean, this is a classy, high-rise hotel with a luxurious lobby – and there are no air conditioned rooms in the hotel? Maybe I’m too focused on this right now because it is 11:30 PM and we just returned to our rooms. Today was a very hot day and the room is almost cooking. There’s no fan and no air conditioning and I’m dreading the night as I know I’ll get little sleep. SO bear with me while I get this frustration off my chest. It must be well over 80 degrees in the room now and I’m supposed to sleep?

Anyway, other than this, today was a fun day. We started by heading to the Vistula river and catching a boat to the Westerplatte. On the way, we stopped at a bar for a cold beer. It seems that no one here drinks water (they don’t even serve water with dinner – you have to specifically ask for it) but will find any excuse to stop for a beer. This time, it was an Okcim. We hopped on the boat and headed to the Weterplatte which is the place that is considered to be where World War II officially started. A German ship parked off the coast on a visiting excursion in Septmber 1939 suddenly opened firs on the Polish garrison at Westerplatte and began their invasion of Poland, starting WWII. There is a huge stone monument here to those that died on that day and those who died in the war. The day was warm and getting warmer by the minute. On the way to Westerplatte, we stopped by the beach on the Baltic sea and spent some time enjoying the sea breezes. This area is very famous for its amber and according to Radek (one of our hosts who is from this area and served as our guide for the day) you can even pick up small bits of amber on the beach as it gets washed ashore. So, we scoured the beach and picked up several little bits of amber. It was a lot of fun and apparently a common pastime on the beach. I heard the kids love to play along the beach and find pieces of amber.

At about 2:30 PM, we headed back to Gdansk and walked around the old town area. This area is really beautiful and all the homes that were destroyed during the war have been restored to their original glory based on photographs. So, it has the beautiful cobbled streets and spectacular frontage of the original homes. We ate lunch at a beautiful restaurant inside the Old Town Hall (washing it down with more beer) and then spent a few hours just walking around the town. It really was a great experience. As usual, it is so incredible to walk into a church and see an original astronomical calendar created be one Danzinger in 1442. Many of the buildings are just as old. Some of the original cornerstones for the homes bear dates from the 1700s. Quite an experience!

We then decided to take the local train to another beautiful town, Sopot. Gdansk (also referred to as Danzig by the Germans), Sopot and Gdaniya are close together and known as the tri-cities. They are all on the Baltic sea and all have long histories. Sopot is also the site of the longest sea promenade in Europe, and so we walked around that area breathing in the sea breezes. In the evening, we stopped at a bar and drank some more (I had a “Green Sugar” which consisted of Niemeroff Vodka and a bunch of other liquers and was quite delicious). I mean, yes, I’m drinking and eating a lot, but when in Poland …

Across the bay from Sopot is a spit of land that extends out to the sea and ends in the Polish city of Hel. A constant joke we kept up during the day was “Oh no! We’re getting closer to Hel,” or “Looks like we’re headed to Hel.” Doesn’t sound so funny now, but it somehow got a laugh from the group every time the tired joke was used again.

Also, just like I noticed on my last trip to Europe, people here view distances quite differently from us. It is amazing for me to realize how spoiled we are. Frequently during the day, our hosts would say something to the effect “It is very close to here – only 20 to 25 minute walk.” Truly, we walked EVERYWHERE today and these 20-30 minute walking distance is considered to be very close. Essentially, we left the hotel at about 10:15 AM and just got back after 11 PM. We were on our feet walking somewhere almost all day. I’d say we did about 8-10 hours of walking in the sun today. And none of these guys considered it even slightly odd. Everyone walks to places here. If we just started considering a 20-minute walk “just very near” like these folks seem to do quite naturally, I think half of our obesity issues in the country would disappear. Of course, people are noticeably slim here – very few overweight people.

Well, I better get to bed. We have an early morning tomorrow – we plan to hit the road by 7 AM and are meeting in the lobby (all packed and ready) at 6:20 AM. I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to sleep in this oppressive heat tonight, but that’s all part of the fun experience.

Pork, Fish, Beer, and Vodka

Had a relatively busy day today, filled with meetings at the University of Warmia & Mazury. The campus is vast and beautiful. The University is relatively young (with a history stretching back to only a hundred years or so). We met with the Associate Dean and with a group of faculty.

Highlights were lunch, where I had Carpacio Pork (very thinly sliced raw pork) and a breaded pork fillet (another Polish specialty) and beer. For dinner we started with Zyviewc beer (pronounced Zhi-vee-yets), Chlodnik (a cold, yogurt-based "soup" with beets and other vegetables) and sauteed pike-perch with wild forest mushrooms and deep fried potato cakes (another local dish). This was chased down with Zubrowka - Polish bison grass vodka. The vodka is very flavorful and has this relatively strong flavor it gets from a particularly tough, scented grass that the bison feed on. Dinner was at this beautiful restaurant (Prgystan) on a lake.

Again the weather was beautiful with a slight breeze and neither warm nor cool temperatures. I would guess, in the low to mid 70s.

Welcome to Poland!

So, my colleague and I got to Olsztyn, Poland this afternoon after a long flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam (7.5 hours) and a considerably shorter flight from Amsterdam to Warsaw (less than 2 hours) followed by a 3-hour car ride from Warsaw to Olsztyn. While I made the trip fine, my colleague's bags never even made it to Warsaw. Hopefully, it's somewhere in Poland.

Olsztyn is in northern Poland and is the capital of the Warmian region. Warmia is where Copernicus lived and expounded his theory of a heliocentric astronomical universe. What I find fascinating every time I visit Europe is its living history. Most of us consider Copernicus to be old and waaay in the past. However, it gives me pause to think that Copernicus lived here in the 1500s. He published his theories on the earth revolving around the sun in 1543. Yet, in the town on Olsztyn, you can still see the castle that was built in the 1350s. Also still standing is the Cathedral of St. James which was built between 1380 and 1445. Now think of this. When Copernicus hung around here, these structures were already almost two hundred years old. I can just about imagine a young Copernicus showing visitors around the town explaining about these ancient castles (over a hundred years old!) in his neighborhood. Here we are, an additional 400 years later (more actually), still able to walk through these buildings and marvel at their construction.

That's what I love about history - it's entertaining to imagine people living and seeing these same structures five hundred or more years before me. It is even more fascinating to me to imagine people three hundred years ago pointing to these same "ancient" structures and wondering about the people who lived there two hundred years before them.

This is the sort of sense of insignificance it is hard to get in America. It is so strange to think of how incredibly young our land is. I mean, by the time we had out first settlement in the continental US, Copernicus had been dead for over a hundred years. And we're talking about the first permanent European settlement in the USA!

Had delicious pork cutlets for dinner. The weather here today is just astoundingly beautiful. The sn was shining, but it wasn't hot. We went for a walk in the afternoon and there was a strong breeze blowing that wasn't at all cold, but wasn't warm either. Both my colleague and I commented about how strangely perfect the weather is - not hot and not cold. Let's hope it stays this way.

My room at the Novotel is typical European style. While it is fairly large and not as cramped as these hotels usually are, there is no air conditioning and no fan. So, I know I'm going to find it difficult to sleep. How spoiled we are - I groaned and complained about the lack of air conditioning until I finally realized it wasn't going to do any good. I asked the front desk for a fan and they said they didn't have one. It is now 11 PM and it still isn't as cool as I'd like it to be.