Polska!

So, there is this wonderful invention on the German Train system. It is called the "Schoenes Wochenende" ticket or the "nice weekend" ticket. You pay 35 euros and 5 people can travel anywhere in Germany, or the Polish border towns, on the regional trains. There and back in 1 day. Such a great idea! This is how we went to Leipzig last month and how a group of 4 of us went to Szczecin, Poland yesterday. Yes, I did spell the name of the town right!

So Miranda, Erica, Robert, and I headed off on a snowy Saturday from Eastern Germany to even more east. Now, I know I've mentioned the "eastern Europeanness" of Brandenburg. And this is true compared to further West in Europe and in Germany. However, Poland is a whole new ball game. I had never been there before (Add new country to the check list!) but I've always wanted to go since my grandfather's family immigrated to the US from Poland. Szczecin has an interesting history and has gone back and forth between being German and Polish. It was awarded to Poland at the Potsdamer Conference after WWII and has remained Polish ever since. And Polish it was. Luckily, Miranda has spent some time in Poland and knew enough Polish words to ward off all the weird people who tried to talk to us and order us food in a restaurant. No one we met spoke English and only the woman at the tourist office spoke German.

The town has a great idea of painting a dashed red line around the sidewalks of the town and you can follow it and see all the major sites. They also conveniently put up signs on the buildings to tell you what they are. Sometimes, it's something that you really don't care about. Like a statue to Adam Micewicz, but they never bother to tell you who exactly he is. Oh well. So this line was a great idea. Except for the snow on the ground covering the line. But we managed anyway. So we trudged through VERY cold wind and blowing snow around this Polish town. And that was really interesting. We saw a ton of churches and buildings from the turn of the century. That was apparently the hey-day of Szczecin. But it was heavily destroyed in WWII and then was behind an iron curtain for a while, so some parts of the city are a little run down. I wouldn't call the city overall pretty, but it did have some pretty parts. We all agreed that the snow helped that feeling, since if it was just the usual overcast gray, cold, drizzly day in N. Europe, it wouldn't have been quite so charming.

We ventured into a shopping mall about halfway through our journey, just to warm up. There we found a McDonald's that was advertising Fried Bananas (with background of a S. Carolina license plate), NY donuts, and a Texas chicken sandwich. Needless to say, we did NOT eat McDonald's, but Erica and I as the 2 Americans, did enjoy laughing at it. We ended up in a Polish restaurant/pub with real Polish music going on. We ordered meals, and in an attempt to order Perogies with meat and cheese, we ended up with 2 plates of perogies. 1 with meat and 1 with cheese. Oh well, they were tasty and homemade.

As Robert pointed out, the people there just looked Eastern European. It was in the facial structure, the height, the clothing, the way they walked. Everything. Therefore, in a way, we felt like we were instantly recognizable as foreigners, despite the fact that we were all just wearing jeans and black coats like many other people. I guess it helped that we were speaking English to one another. However, this may have been the reason that we were approached by people ALL DAY. It started as we got off the train when a woman asked me if I could hold her dog? Or her bag? I'm not really sure. She first asked in Polish and when she got 4 blank stares back, she tried German...sorta. So I held her bag while she set the tiny dog she was carrying onto the ground. Weird. Then Robert was accosted by a kiosk man. We were approached by 3 Polish men on the bank of the river who wanted us to take a picture of them and then made Miranda get in the picture too. A homeless man (maybe) at the train station followed us for a bit asking for money. And then weirdest of all was that we decided to turn the last 10 zloty--about $4-5--into chocolate for the train ride back. So we went in a grocery store. After we came out, it was dark and snowing and some guy started following us. He was drunk, or crazy, or both. And starting talking to Robert, like right next to him. We all made a beeline for the well lit busy street and just kept walking, and ignoring him. He seemed to be asking Robert for permission, since Robert was obviously the lucky guy wandering around with 3 girls. We lost him after just ignoring him for about 5 blocks. But it was a weird time. I guess we looked like affluent westerners? Even though that's a lie cause we're all poor students.

So all in all, it was a cold day. Nice and snowy. A little frustrating cause we didn't really know what was going on half the time. But it's also kinda cool to be able to say "oh yeah, I went to Poland for the day" I will post pictures soon on Picasa and you can check it out.