Hey everyone! So sorry about the Great Gap in my blogging! It has been a crazy month withschool and travel etc. I'll try my best to remember the highlights of this last month.
(This bit was written after I finished writing: make sure you have a while to read...its a biggie!)
First off about 30 of us GAPpers went to a place called Wroclaw (pronounced Vrroswav). Initially I wasn't planning on going, because I was under the belief that there would still be some people left in Warsaw, but it turns out they decided the day before to go without telling me! So when I came to the realization that I was going to be alone in the city, I decided to trek along to Wroclaw (about 3 hours before the train left! hehe). So we all met up in the mall by the station, and caught up and all that (9 out of the 10 Warsaw GAPpers, plus Magda, one of the teachers thats like a big sister to us all. The kind of big sister that shows you where to go when you turn 18/21.
So the trains in Poland are awkward. We stopped through in a major town called Poznan, which was completely out of the way. From there, we made a 90 degree turn, and continued onto Wroclaw. The whole train trip in total was about 5 hours, so not to bad. But there was a mix up with the seats. We all bought tickets in the open car but at the last minute the changed all the cars, so some other people had tickets with seats in the OPEN CAR haha...so we were all shuffled up. An because I had bought my ticket at a different time to the others, I was moved into a completely different carriage. However, when we got to Poznan, the train practically emptied, including a 30-something lady and her father that were quite rude to me and Magda, insisting that I moved seats because I was in theirs, despite the fact that there were plenty of other empty compartments in the car. So after about 20 minutes of sitting by myself, I deserted my seat and went and sat with the others. The rude people got off at Poznan, and I sent them on their way with a pleasant farewell (nothing rude I promise, just a cheeky papa! (papa is a slang for goodbye in polish)).
We finally arrived in Wroclaw at about 11pm, and trekked with a drunk Willy T. to our hostel, him insisting that we trust him because he knew the way (one of the most famous lines in our group, "Trust me bro!"). We all ignored him, and he finally gave into the peer pressure and crossed over the road back to us, having a near escape with a tram. On the way to the hostel we encountered some strange communist looking metal statues...well I'm not sure how you can look communist...but they looked as if they were from the communist period I guess. So the WPC (Warsaw Party Crew) took a posed picture with them:
yes, I am the one riding the one half way into the ground...oops.
We got to the hostel eventually, and after an hour of sprucing up and quickly catching up with everyone we (at least I) hadn't seen in a month, we were ready to go out. It took us a good hour of wandering to finally find a club we could all agree on (the one that was recommended was 21+ for guys only which sucks). We finally got to a club called WZ (pronounced Vu Zed) which was a great find. It had two dancefloors, one Hip Hop, the other Trance Techno. It was pretty cool until some dodgy guy started dancing with all the GAP chicks, and finally stole one of their phones. We found him, and I was like "you have her phone", he looked at us and in an obviously fake drunk state mumbled in polish. When we finally rounded up all the guys to try to get it back, he had disappeared into the night, and that was pretty much the end of the night for us too.
Our first day in Wroclaw was spent wandering around the old square, a beautiful sight. It is much older then Warsaw as it was not completely obliterated during the Second World War. My favourite part of Wroclaw is the colourfull buildings
This is a photo that I stole off of one of the other GAPpers, but still! I was there...haha.
Some of the other parts of Wroclaw i enjoyed were the churches and views. Heres just a couple pictures of what Wroclaws all about
and
So the highlight of the whole trip was the journey back. Magda had forgotten to tell us that the 25zl extra we paid for reserving a seat was only for the outward bound trip, so we didn't have seats on the return trip. And as it was Sunday afternoon, it was obvious the train was going to be PACKED, and the only place where we were guaranteed seating was in the dining car. So we took over three of the dining car tables, which was fine in the beginning, but as the train started to fill up the waitress became annoyed, as she had agreed with Magda that as we were all together, as long one of us was eating we could sit there...so what did we do? Ordered a dish at a time for 5 hours! Haha.
Since the trip to Wroclaw not much interesting has happened. I went to a Rhianna concert two nights ago in Warsaw which was AMAZING. There was a ban on cameras, but one of my mates managed to get hers in (they weren't patting down the girls), so I should have some pics up shortly. For now, however, there are some videos on youtube. She saved her most famous song,
Umbrella, for last, and it was definitely was one of the best performed. Her second best song performed was
Please Don't Stop the Music, which was awesome to dance to, as everyone knew the song and was singing along. And as she was getting changed, her DJ was putting on some tunes that everyone could groove to eg. Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson.
Well, for now its time to be off...I think I've said this before but this HAS to be one of the most epic posts I've put up...and to follow suit of Homer Simpson...I have to say that this is the most epic post so far.
So for now, farewell, and I promise that I will write soon, maybe even tomorrow if anything interesting happens today/night.
*ryan*
p.s. It has been snowing for the last days on and off...yesterday was the best by far because the snowflakes coming down were massive! About the size of an American 5 cent piece/New Zealand @20 cent piece. The best bit about the snow this week is that it hasn't been sticking to the ground, and therefore my shoes don't get all grotty when I walk to school! Somehow, not even the ground gets wet. It just kind of snows...and disappears!
OK, bye for now!
