Elizabeth Takes Poland

I have seen quite a few of you since my return, but for those that I have not had the time to see - hello, I'm home! I arrived back at the world's busiest airport Wednesday night and had the exciting opportunity to stand in a very long customs line. My journey home had two legs, Warsaw -> Amsterdam and Amsterdam -> Atlanta, and I flew KLM on both. If anyone has the opportunity to fly KLM, I would highly suggest. On the transatlantic flight, they fed us FOUR TIMES! One lil snack of smoked almonds, a dinner, an ice cream cone, and a choice of flatbread or cinnamon roll. It truly was a lovely dining experience among the clouds. Or so I thought! I guess I caught some bug while hanging out with my closest 300-400 friends. Thursday night I started having a little bit of a sore throat, but I figured I was just dehydrated, because I try to not drink too much water on planes. Well, by Friday it had become a full blown cold with a mild fever. Since you know I am writing this, you...

Last night I got back to my apartment after a low key hellish seven hour bus ride. Imagine being stuck in traffic, having an old man constantly grab the back of your chair to see what was in front of the bus, people calling their relatives on speaker phone, and the bus shaking enough to make you nauseous for the first three hours until your body just got used to it. So ya, it wasn't grand. But it was completely worth it, because Zakopane was one of the most breathtaking places I've ever been. Ok, so let's chronicle what all I did, because I don't want to miss anything. Before I force you to read a minute-by-minute account of the past three days, I figure that I should give some background info on Zakopane, Poland. This mountain village is located in the southern part of the country about 2.5 hours from Krakow and nestled in a valley surrounded by the Tatra mountains. It is very close to the border with Slovakia if you consider scaling a few mountains a fast route. Zak...

My spring semester is finally over!! I took my last final yesterday afternoon, so now I am just waiting to get a few grades back! I know everyone else has been out for a month now, but I'm pretty excited to have fairly few responsibilities for my last two weeks in Poland. So you know what that means? Traveling! I have planned a trip to Zakopane for June 20-22 to get to explore the Tatras mountains! Zakopane was one of the places I identified before I even got to Poland as somewhere I really wanted to go. I was hoping to go for my birthday, but I had quite a few projects due the next week, so Eli and I just hung around Warsaw that weekend (it was great, not gonna lie). But I still needed to go before I left, so I booked two 7.5 hour bus rides to get me there and back. Worth it.  I am also probably going to take a day tri p to  Łódź (haha that's right, try to pronounce it). I don't want to spend a lot of money in these  next  two weeks, but I also want to see a...

You all probably thought that this week's post would concern my and Eli's trip to Munich, but HA - that trip didn't happen. Unfortunately, RyanAir cancelled our flight a mere two hours before it was scheduled to take off. This means we not only had to try to frantically cancel all of the transportation we had booked in Germany (which -fun fact- was not possible), but it also meant we were already at the airport. You may be thinking that's fine, because the Warsaw airport is pretty close to town. Well, Chopin Airport is, but not Modlin Airport, which is only used by RyanAir and can only be accessed by private bus or taxi. However, since we were already at the airport we had the opportunity to stand in line with a bunch of other angry people just to be told to apply for a refund online. We later found out after I got to chat with a RyanAir service person, Abu, that the form we were told to fill out was only for a refund for the two flights. This is important, because i...

Hello, all! I am only 25 days away from being back in the old US of A! Please don't take my excitement as me being bored or tired of Poland, but I am truly just ready to pet my pups and eat some Moe's, gosh darn it. Eli left for a trip this morning (his third pre-6am wake-up call in a row), so I am back on my own in the apartment. Which means I made my favorite stew and bought some black currant juice (and ice cream... and Wedel chocolate...) to get me through studying for exams. Because, yes, being this close to coming home also means the dreaded finals. SGH has three exam periods: -0 exams: during the last week of classes and gives you the opportunity to get a few exams out of the way that you know you will pass -regular exams: exams scheduled by the Dean's office (the same as any American university's finals) -retake exams: if you fail the first two attempts and are just praying you will pass this time Out of my original eight class, six have exams; the oth...

Hello, all! Once again, apologies for the more sporadic posts. School has really picked up as we near exams, and it's nice to spend free time with Eli, I suppose. This weekend we got to spend a lot of free time/all the time together, because we went to Romania! We flew to Bucharest on Friday and flew back to Warsaw today, Monday. On Saturday, we made the trek to Bran Castle aka Vlad the Impaler's Castle aka Dracula's Castle. We had to take a 2.75 hour train to Brasov, a medium sized town that includes a mall with some cheap eats. From Brasov, we made our way by bus to Bran, which was another 45-60 minutes due to some road work along the way. Although this meant that our total travel time was ~7 hours, I think Eli and I would both argue that it was completely worth it (despite the hour on a bus that shook so much I thought my brain would turn to mush). We got to experience the beautiful Transylvanian countryside both on our way their and once we arrived in Bran. One ...