I've been in Warsaw for a week. Time for a quick narrative blog while I'm waiting for my coq au vin to cook. I'll have to keep checking the oven every few minutes as I am roasting some potatoes in some Olive Oil and I always worry that the oil may overheat and catch fire. As I understand it different oils and fats catch light at different temperatures. Wouldn't it be easier if manufacturers wrote the highest safe temperature on their products. It would certainly save me a few grey hairs. If anybody has any tips do please let me know.
It would be wrong of me to start making comparisons between Russians and Poles so I won't go there but I would like to recount one or two 'adventures' I've had during the week. I flew into Warsaw Chopin airport last Saturday afternoon and took the train to Warsaw and then a taxi to my pre-booked hotel. At 11.00 on Sunday morning the brother of the Estate Agent and an interpreter turned up at the hotel to show me around some flats they had selected for me.
I wouldn't say I fell in love with, but I certainly very much liked, the first place we went to see. Rather than stop the viewings I thought I would just carry on and look at the others they had chosen. So that I could compare what was available. But of course, my powers of recall and observation being what they are, by the time we got to the 5th flat I had almost forgotten what was in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th. I decided to go back and look at the 1st flat again and that is the one I chose.
I was able to move in the very next day as credit checks haven't reached Poland yet. Not that I would have failed them but they do take time to carry out and I only had 2 nights booked in the hotel.
The flat is inside a gated compound on the North West edge of town so the first things was to write down the access code. Imagine bowling up in the middle of winter having forgotten the code to get in. Nightmare scenario. It's the last station on the metro which is handy because then you'll always get a seat (on the way in at least). It takes 15 minutes on the metro to get to the town centre. This compares very favourably, time-wise, with the Moscow metro where I could spend several hours a day underground.
This time difference is due to the relative size of the cities. Moscow has 13 million (registered) inhabitants and Warsaw has 2 million. Stupidly I thought that would mean fewer people on the streets and a quieter city. Not so. If the city is 6 times smaller then there are fewer people but they are spread over a much smaller area. So there are Poles in whichever direction you turn! Not just North and South. They seem to enjoy forming queues at the drop of a hat. I had to wait 30 minutes in the city transport services office before I was given my Warsaw City card (which allows me to buy cheaper, 30-day, or 90-day, fares by presenting this card to the ticket machine and feeding it money). And as for the queues in the supermarkets - in Moscow I had developed the habit of abandoning my trolley and finding another shop with fewer people. Here I'm not sure I could find another shop with fewer people. I tell a lie, there are plenty of 'corner shop' type establishments but the food is, of course, a little more expensive. I will have to find the optimum time to visit the local Lidl, which is almost next door.
Dinner is ready. A big sigh of relief that I haven't set the place on fire. Part II of the blog in a few minutes. For those of you who aren't already bored silly by this meandering tale of life in a foreign land.
As a teacher who has some lessons over Skype, being without Internet access is a big problem for me. The Internet Provider UPC started promising internet from Monday afternoon. Tuesday was a public holiday here (Epiphany) so they are excused but I had to wait in on Wednesday and Thursday for the technician not to show up. I was finally connected to the world on Friday morning.
An amusing incident yesterday when I went into a phone shop to ask them to cut my new Polish SIM card to convert it into a micro SIM that would fit into my new 3-SIM phone. It was so embarrassing when he simply pushed the SIM card out and it instantly became a micro SIM. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.
The flat has very little in the way of "essentials" so I've been busy shopping during the week. The trouble with being car less (as opposed to careless) is that you can only take what you can carry on the metro on each trip. So separate trips to buy a TV/Monitor, a printer/scanner and, more mundanely, an iron and ironing board.
Went for my first run of the year this morning. Look to your laurels Morag. Unfortunately, 21 minutes "on the legs", as my old mate Adrian used to say, is still a long way short of the hour and ten minutes needed for the Ramsey 10K. But it's a start.
For those of you who know me well, let me just add that I'm heading for an overdue AF day today. Nearly there.
Apologies for the verbosity. I got carried away.
