Adam's Back in Europe

On Feb 18th, I'm heading to Europe for 16 days. Watch this space to see what I'm up to.

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Yeah BOIIIII!!!!

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My First Three Weeks as an Expat.

It’s no trivial matter to pack all of the friendships, experiences, and knick knacks one accumulates over the course of nine years, and ship them to a different country. It is, in fact, impossible. Friendships don’t fit in suitcases. Cultural shock is unavoidable in a new culture, but one hopes the growing pains of acclimation will result in significant personal growth. I would love to say my new life is all sunshine and rainbows… but it’s Amsterdam. It rains from time to time.

Don’t get the wrong idea… It’s beautiful here, and I’m enjoying it. Today is a sunny day with a light chill in the wind, and it’s causing the petals of tulip trees to float across the streets, akin to the cherry blossoms of D.C or Portland. There is a magical quality to this place. It is lively. Historic. Filled with tourists and residents alike, whizzing past in bikes, cramming into trams and strolling through the quaint neighborhoods. The city’s reputation is on display at all times, and it does not disappoint. Part of me still feels like I’m on vacation.

Last weekend, I went to an Expat Meetup. The Netherlands has a wealth of IT needs (the people who fix your computer), and a lack of IT people. I met technicians from Poland, Spain, India, Romania, Scotland and Indonesia… and I only talked to eight different people! Amsterdam is easily the most international city I’ve ever lived in. And the verdict is in: Diversity is nice. It’s aesthetically pleasing to finish writing this entry in a restaurant listening to two different foreign languages and a regional Brit accent I can’t quite place. Oh, also… a BEAUTIFUL cover of “The Circle of Life” is playing right now, and it just feels so appropriate.

This is embarrassing to admit publicly, but due to a lack of need in Los Angeles, and a lack of instruction as a youngster, I’m not very comfortable on a bike. I’ve had two lovely weekends (and one rainy,) biking through the Vondelpark, but bike traffic is intimidating on the streets. Ninety percent of the roads have bike lines, but they’re also occupied by tourists, mopeds, and friggin’ motorcycles. Navigating these lanes by bike does, however, seem necessary to fully enjoy this city. Hence the growing pains.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY there are challenges to living in a new country; challenges you won’t face on two-week Euro excursions. For instance, keeping my public transport card paid up requires searching for special yellow kiosks, found only in certain grocery stores. On top of that, only SOME of those special yellow kiosks accept Visa. The European PIN card is the preferred (and frequently only) payment method in Amsterdam. I received my card yesterday, but the account is empty until my first paycheck. Trying to transfer funds to it is an exercise in patience that has so far led only to frustration. And don’t get me started on how difficult it is to top-up the pre-paid data for my phone.

But in the grand scheme of things, these are, of course, trivial, temporary hurdles. My apartment hunt is on track. I’ve joined a gym, and already feel more endorphins after a week of morning work outs. I am slowly meeting people through work, and friends from all over the world are planning visits. This is a new chapter, and so far, it’s an exciting one. Thanks for reading it.

 Extras:

-          I haven’t been too impressed with any restaurants yet, but the quality of the food in the grocery stores is quite high and reasonably priced. Dutch cuisine consists mostly of bread, cheese, and fried cheese covered with bread. However, at the Rollende Keukens (Rolling Kitchen) Festival this past weekend, the winner was: The most delicious coconut pastry I’ve ever had. (AKA fried bread)

-          The Dutch (and most of Europe, I think) criminally under-water their patrons at restaurants and cafes. Large glasses of water are non-existent, and you normally have to pay for a bottle. If you want tap, you have to specifically ask for it. Exception for Drover’s Dog, my local neighborhood café with bottles and bottles of water imbued with fresh herbs. God bless you, Drover’s Dog. You are an oasis of comfortable seating, desk space, and H2O. If you ever move to a new city, I recommend finding your go-to café ASAP. It’s nice to be able to retreat to familiar surroundings outside your apartment.

-          It’s also nice to hear from friends back home, via Instagram, facebook or email. Don’t be a stranger!

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Back at it

I haven’t written a travel blog post since September 2016. Obviously, a lot has happened since then; both to myself and the world at large. Reading through some of these old blog posts, it looks like I never got the chance to share my adventures in Vienna, Munich, Copenhagen, Oslo, Voss and Bergen. This is for several reasons, but mostly due to the loss of my father to cancer in October 2016. I was in Voss, Norway when I got the call that his health was declining rapidly. I flew home and was able to spend 10 days with him before he passed. I did not feel like writing much during that period of time, and for now, I will just leave it at that.

Cut to over a year later. I’ve just finished my contract as a Writer/Narrative Designer on God of War, the upcoming PlayStation title. 2017 was the most creatively challenging and fulfilling year of my life. I am extremely proud what we were able to accomplish, and am so unbelievably excited for the game to come out (April 20th), but for now, I find myself unemployed for the first time since 2013. And so, the hunt for work begins.

I leave tomorrow for a 16-day trip through Amsterdam, Paris and London, in that order. Part of this trip coincides with the job hunt; though due to the uncertainty and sensitive nature of the interview process, I won’t be able to say much more than that. I will, however, add that I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to interview and travel to some of the greatest cities in the world, all in one fell swoop.

Watch this space in the coming weeks for more entries, pictures and fun stories about European travel. Maybe one day I’ll even make this blog look nice :)

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Mike and Adams Trip Through Europe

This is "Mike and Adams Trip Through Europe" by Michael McAlister on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Here’s every photo Mike and I took in Europe, set to an excellent track by Todd Terje, a Norwegian DJ.

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Last sunset in Europe. Been an incredible 6 weeks. Can't wait to come back. #blest #nofilter #sunset #stockholm #DolinOutTheTravel (at Old Town Stockholm)

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Bergen Street Art #pokemongo #pokemondead #pez #bergen #streetart #DolinOutTheTravel (at Bryggen Bergen)

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I took way too many pics of this gorge today. #Gorge #gorgeous #Voss #Gorgevoss #nature #waterfall #norway #DolinOutTheTravel (at Voss)

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Prague

My time in the Czech Republic began on an overnight train from Warsaw to Prague. I was awoken by a gentle shake from my bunk-mate Wojieck around 6am, who informed me we’d be pulling into Praha station in the next 20 minutes. I was in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes, but otherwise feeling pretty good. I chatted with Wojieck and my other bunk mates, Simona and Tomasz, about our upcoming travels. Once again, I was struck by how easy it is to have deep conversations with strangers when traveling. The previous night, Simona and I had discussed the frustration of relationships, as she was currently going through a divorce. She’d met the athletic and charming Tomasz while traveling, and they were spending an indeterminate amount of time together simply living in the moment. She asked about my travels, and as I described my recent experience in Auschwitz, Wojieck politely raised his hand and informed us that his grandfather had died there. These are the moments that stick with me; short tales from random strangers. They are more important than all the pictures I’ll take at famous landmarks.

I walked out of Prague’s train station and headed towards the subway. My Airbnb host, Lidia, had sent me perfectly detailed instructions, and I felt confident about where I needed to go. Unfortunately, this confidence was shattered as soon as I tried to buy a subway ticket and the machine ate my 50kr coin. I fumed for a few minutes, looking for an employee to complain to and not finding anyone. The information desk didn’t open until 7am, so I queued up in the rapidly growing line. Then I checked the exchange rate, and realized 50kr is only $2. I decided to chalk it up to experience, paid for another ticket with a credit card, and caught a subway to Lidia’s.

Lidia’s apartment was right by a tram stop, and extremely easy to get to. Lidia let me in herself, showed me around the apartment, introduced me to her adorable, sweet dog Bernard (Pronounced “Ver-nerd” in Czech) and showed me my room, where I immediately napped for a few hours. I was awoken by a couple of face licks from Bernard, took a shower, and started to explore a city that I’ve always wanted to visit.

Lidia’s place was north of Prague’s Old Town, across the river, so I headed south to find a nice place to write and get some lunch. I stumbled upon Letna Beer Garden, an outdoor space with a stunning view of the Prague skyline. I ordered a beer for 26kr (about $0.80) and sat and wrote until hunger set in. I headed across one of the several bridges into the Old Town and went to Lokal, a popular Czech chain of restaurants. It was an enormous space with a menu full of traditional Czech cuisine, and I tried beef tartare for the first time. So far, it’s the best meal I’ve had in Europe.

I walked around the city a bit more, then headed back to Lidia’s to meet my dear friend Michael McAlister, who will be joining me for the rest of my travels in Europe. Last I’d seen Mike was at a bonfire at Dockweiler beach in Los Angeles, nearly a month prior. It was surreal for us to be walking the streets of Prague, after nearly three years of trying to put a trip like this together. We grabbed some dinner and discussed our plans for the next several days, and then walked back to Letna Beer Gardens. The stunning daytime vista of Prague had turned to a stunning nighttime vista, with the entire city lit up. The gardens had started to fill up as well, and the atmosphere was full of energy. After a few ridiculously cheap beers, Mike and I headed home for the night.

In the morning, we hit the streets for an intense day of sightseeing. We started off at the Lennon wall, stumbled upon Prague’s Parliament building, the Franz Kafka museum, walked around Kampa island and got lunch, then booked it across the St. Charles bridge to catch a 1pm Walking Tour. Our tour guide, also by the name of Mike, had an annoyingly large joke-to-historical fact ratio. As he led us to the Astronomical Clock’s hourly “show”, we decided to ditch the tour, meld into the crowd and walk around ourselves.

We walked around the Jewish Quarter, where I learned the story of the Golem first originated. It was a very cute street with a bunch of great souvenir stands. We turned the corner and saw Tour Guide Mike and co. heading right towards us! We quickly melding back into the crowd again, trying to put some distance between us and our former tour guide.

We ended up at the river, and saw a giant red Metronome at the top of a park on the other side. We decided to walk up there and check it out, and found a huge park with skaters, a Fun Run, and people just hanging out and enjoying the view. We rested up there for a bit, and figured out our next move. There was a beer tour we wanted to check out, so we decided to head back across the river to the meeting point. As we turned the corner, guess who we saw there, waiting for participants? That’s right, Tour Guide Mike was leading the beer tour! I had spotted him from a distance, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t see us do a complete 180 once we saw him.

Without an official Beer Tour to go on, we decided to make up our own. Our first (and unfortunately only) stop was the Golden Tiger, a traditional old-school Czech bar. They served one kind of beer, and the entire room was filled with stale cigarette smoke. I hated it. We left after one beer, and booked it over to Petrin Tower to catch the rapidly approaching sunset. To get up to this part of town, we rode up a funicular, a type of train car for going up hills (similar to Angel’s Flight in downtown LA, but it actually works). There were many points of interest in this park, but the sun was setting fast. We jogged to Petrin and paid the extra krona to use the elevator, and witnessed the last 3 minutes of a gorgeous sunset atop one of Prague’s tallest buildings.

Back on the ground, we walked next door to the Mirror Maze, which was slightly disappointing, but amusing. Mike and I were getting hungry at this point, so we decided to head back down to the city. On our way down the path, we passed by a random building on the side of the hill labeled, ‘Museum of Magic.“ Trusting in the spirit of adventure, we knocked on the door and entered a bizarre gallery. The three-story building was elaborately decorated and housed hundreds of magic-themed paintings, with titles such as, "The Empress of Fortune Discovers The Devil’s Bishop in the Garden of Prominence.” Mike and I were a bit creeped out, and he joked that the free sangria offered here would probably turn us into paintings. We took a picture together that was worth the 150kr entrance fee, then quickly escaped from The Museum of Magic.

We hopped back on the funicular down the mountain, hopped on a tram at random, and made our way back to Lokal for dinner. According to Mike’s smartwatch, we had walked a total of 14.9 miles this day. We were dog tired, and took another tram back to Lidia’s for some well-deserved rest.

Day 2 of Prague started off with breakfast at The Farm, a lovely establishment with delicious lamb sausage and an outdoor ping pong table, of which we enjoyed both. We headed off toward Prague castle, on another whirlwind day of sightseeing. St. Vitus cathedral is a massive structure on the Prague skyline, with 287 steps up to the top viewing gallery. The view was worth every step. We climbed back down and headed to the Golden Lane, where Franz Kafka used to live. His home has been turned into a gift shop, and I wondered how he’d feel about that if he were alive today.

Mike and I were getting very hungry, but we stopped in one final house on our way out of the Golden Lane: Medieval Armaments. This 3 story building was filled with full medieval plate armor, helms, swords, axes, and even a crossbow firing range. We stumbled upon a room of hybrid gun/melee weaponry, and our 14-year old selves squealed with glee. We spent way more time in this building than we had intended, and it was time to leave the overpriced touristy section of Prague and head to the city proper for some more authentic Czech cuisine.

That evening, we headed back to Lidia’s to grab drinks with her and her friend Elena. They took us to Cross Club, an intricately decorated 3 story bar/restaurant/club. It had an intense neo-steampunk vibe, and surprisingly good food. Mike and I chatted with Lidia and Elena about life in the Czech Republic, traveling, etc. I always try to share at least one drink or meal with my Airbnb host; not only does it make living in someone’s spare room less awkward, but it’s also a great window into everyday life in a major European city.

The next day we hopped on a tour bus for a day trip out to Kutna Hora, home of the Bone Chapel. We rode in the back of a very sweaty bus for 1.45 hours to this small town outside of Prague, admiring the Czech countryside and trying to avoid leaking condensation from the semi-working AC vent above. Kutna Hora used to be a mining town, and the legend goes that a monk traveled to Jerusalem, grabbed some dirt, brought it back to this town, sprinkled it on a graveyard, and now the graveyard is holy land. So EVERYONE wanted to be buried there. At some point, a monk decided to exhume all of the bodies, and decorated the ossuary (bone warehouse, your word of the day) with the bones of these people. He didn’t do it to be malicious or creepy; it’s an expression of Memento Mori, honoring our own mortality and recognizing that death is just a part of life.

Regardless, with over 40,000 different skeletons, it was a creepy, unsettling place. Seeing scapulas, clavicles, and pelvic bones used as strikingly beautiful decorations filled me with awe and a bit of horror at the same time. We didn’t get to spend a ton of time in this chapel, as our tour had a few other stops to see. I didn’t mind; 20 minutes was enough for me.

We walked through the quaint town and explored beautiful churches, while our tour guide, Nikolas, dispensed historical information. He was much better than Tour Guide Mike, as his joke/history ratio was very low. He gave us an hour to explore on our own at the end of the tour, and pointed us to a pizza place nearby if we were hungry. Mike and I headed over to the outdoor patio to split a pizza and grab a couple beers and enjoy the peace that comes from being outside of a major city. Nikolas walked in, and we invited him to sit with us for lunch. He gave us a nice recap of Czechoslovakia’s history during WW2. I highly recommend him if you ever take the Kutna Hora tour on the Good Prague Tours website.

We headed back to Prague, and arrived as the sun was setting. If it hasn’t been made clear by now, I’m a big fan of watching sunsets, and our tour had dropped us off near the Powder Tour, an old munitions building that now serves as a lovely vista spot. Mike and I climbed yet another several hundred steps up a spiral staircase, and were yet again right on time to watch the sun descend behind Prague’s magnificent skyline.

After dinner, we stopped by Hemingway Bar for some absinthe. It was an extremely nice bar with excellent service and ambiance. We tried authentic Czech absinthe, and for both us, the taste left much to be desired. Still, it was a fantastic bar, and I highly recommend stopping by for a non-absinthe drink. We then headed over to Jazz Dock, a bar right on the water with live jazz music every night. I loved the atmosphere in this bar, and extremely impressed with the Shirley Horn tribute band.

We headed back home, feeling satisfied with our time in Prague. I’d heard so many great things about this city, and all of them were true. I fell in love. I can’t wait to come back one day.

Thanks for reading!

FUN EXTRAS: - The first morning, before setting off to explore, Mike went to go find some coffee. He came back 30 minutes later with two cups and said, “Full disclosure, I’ve already had two beers.” It was 8:30am. He regaled me with his coffee excursion; how he hadn’t been able to find an open coffee shop, except for a 24-hour casino that advertised coffee to-go. When Mike walked in and ordered a coffee, a Czech man by the name of Yakoff at the bar said to him, “You know the best kind of coffee? Yellow coffee.” He then ordered a beer for Mike. Mike, not wanting to be rude, accepted the beer and spoke with him for a bit. As Mike finished the beer and was about to order coffee to-go, Yakoff ordered him another beer. He was lucky to get out of there after the second beer. -Leash law are less strict across Europe, which result in some wonderful random interactions with adorable dogs. - Segways are about to be illegal in the streets of Prague, but they were out in full force while we walked around downtown. We also saw the Sperm-man on a Segway, drinking a beer. - When you need to pee, but don’t have 10kr… This is my nightmare.

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Mike wasn't happy with his impromptu joke, but I laughed. Posting it anyways. We were crazy high up. #superhigh #sunset #almostshatmyself #Copenhagen #DolinOutTheTravel (at Church of Our Saviour, Copenhagen)

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World's 2nd Oldest Amusement Park #sunset #themepark #rollercoaster #nofilter #copenhagen #DolinOutTheTravel (at Tivoli)

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Oktoberfest #beer #munich #DolinOutTheTravel (at Oktoberfest 2016)

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Surfing #surf #endlesswave #standingovationwave #MuSICKBrah #munich #DolinOutTheTravel (at Eisbachsurfen)

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Opera #operacrashers #noshortsallowed #snooty #vienna #DolinOutTheTravel (at Vienna State Opera)

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We're in Vienna now, but I already miss Prague. #wanderlust #sunset #staygolden #prague #DolinOutTheTravel

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Absinthe #absinthe #dripdrip #hemingway #prague #DolinOutTheTravel (at HEMINGWAY BAR PRAGUE)

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Warsaw/Angloville

If you’re looking to travel abroad cheaply and don’t mind hard work, I recommend checking out Workaway.org, where you can find many different opportunities for work-share. For those that don’t know, work-share means you work in exchange for housing and meals. Many of the work-share opportunities are in remote locations; farmers needing extra hands, people remodeling their houses, etc. One day, while looking through work-share options for this trip, I received a message from Angloville, a program that advertised itself on Workaway as an English immersion program for Polish people to improve their conversational English. Essentially, Angloville recruits native English speaking volunteers and gives them a hotel room and 3 meals a day. In return, all we had to do was speak to the Polish participants. In English.

Initially, this sounded too good to be true. A free, week-long stay in a fancy hotel, 3 meals a day, and all you want me to do is talk? I love to talk! There must be some kind of catch, I thought. I did some research and wasn’t able to find one negative review of this program, so I went full steam ahead and applied for a week at Lipowy Most, a golf resort in the middle of nowhere Poland. The participants would meet in Warsaw, where we would board an early bus for a 3.5 hour ride out to Eastern Polish countryside. There was an optional tour the day before our departure through the city of Warsaw, followed by a nice lunch at an authentic Polish restaurant. My plane from Kraków landed a bit too late to make the tour, but I was able to join my future colleagues for lunch.

I arrived at the restaurant, introduced myself to the group, and went to town on some delicious Polish cuisine. The majority of my fellow native English speakers were young Brits, but there were also some Australians, a Canadian, and several Californians. I was struck by the variety of accents, ages, and backgrounds among the native speakers. I met Leah from Canada, and Lauren from Melbourne, who both had done a previous Angloville the week before. This was reassuring, hearing they had already done one program and were excited to do another. I sat between them and Ryan, our program coordinator with a pleasing British accent, who gave me some additional reaffirmations about our upcoming experience.

After lunch, at Ryan’s suggestion, several of us walked around the Old Town to grab a beer. Having missed the walking tour, this was my first time walking around Warsaw, and I lamented only being able to spend one day here. Around 60% of Warsaw was destroyed during WW2, but the juxtaposition of old and new buildings was visually pleasing to me, and I could tell this city had much to offer. We watched some street performers, went up a very tall tower to take in the views, and then grabbed some zapienkis for dinner. I got mine with bacon, goat cheese and cranberry sauce, and it takes the top spot as the best Zapi I had in Poland. Sorry, Old Town Kraków.

I bid my new colleagues adieu and headed back to my Airbnb for an early night in. In the morning, I took a tram to the meeting spot where I met the rest of the English speakers, as well as a few of our Polish participants. I could tell the Polish were nervous; they were all at different levels of English, and most of them seemed reluctant to engage in conversation. The group loaded our bags on the bus, and I grabbed a seat towards the back for what turned out to be an eventful ride through the Polish countryside.

About an hour into our trip I started to doze off, only to be woken by the sudden violent breaking of the bus. It shook violently as we veered off the road. To our extreme collective good luck and fortune, the side of the bus hit a large mound of soft sand. There were a couple seconds of pure terror, were I thought for sure that we would tip over. Luckily, our driver (who had to make a split-second decision between plowing into the back of a trailer that had stopped short or trying to avoid him on the shoulder) had expertly, if somewhat violently, parked us safely on the side of the road.

We determined that everyone was OK, minus a few bumps, and began to make our way off the bus and onto the shoulder to survey the damage. The front door had been completely ripped off, and sand from the shoulder covered the front floor of the bus. We sat on the shoulder for maybe 5 minutes before the police and ambulances showed up. They surveyed the damage and made sure everyone was OK. One of our native speakers elected to go to the hospital, as he was sitting towards the front of the bus and had fallen out of his chair, hitting the front roll bar quite violently (he turned out to be OK, just some bruised ribs). I should mention at this point that few of us were wearing seat belts during this bus ride, a lapse in judgement I pledge to never make again.

We sat on the shoulder for awhile, somewhat shaken up but happy to be alive, and this provided an excellent opportunity to get to know each other. We ended up waiting several hours for the replacement bus to show up. Our poor program coordinators handled the situation expertly, masking their extreme stress with a calm demeanor. Our replacement bus showed up, and we continued on to the hotel. Everyone wore their seat belts.

2 hours later, we finally arrived at Lipowy Most. We were starving, tired, and ready to unpack and chow down. After grabbing a couple of much-needed alcoholic beverages at the hotel bar, we sat down to enjoy the best pirogies I’d had to date. The food, I would soon discover, was one of the many positive experiences of my time at Angloville.

Angloville runs on a tight schedule, and our accident had pretty much derailed the first day’s activities. After dinner and a brief orientation, most of us were ready to go to bed. Our coordinators, not wanting to waste an entire day, convinced us to do at least one icebreaker before we turned in. It was a very simple “speed-dating” icebreaker, where we simply stood in two lines and briefly spoke to each participant. After the day we’d had, this in itself was challenging, due to everyone’s low energy. But it was nice to gauge the varied levels of everyone’s conversational English. After the icebreaker, we explored the hotel a bit, taking note of the pool, sauna, downstairs nightclub/game room, hotel bar and the stunningly beautiful hotel grounds. All of these would see a great deal of use by the end of the week.

Our first official day started with a delicious buffet breakfast at 9am, with our first Mentor Meeting at 10am. Each Polish participant was required to give a 5-10 minute presentation at the end of the week on a topic of their choice, completely in English. My Mentee was Zuzanna, a really lovely woman who already had a firm grasp of the English language. We talked a bit about her travels through the US a few years ago and formed an outline for her presentation, while I also explained some common idioms we use in English. Beat around the bush, in the hot seat, slippery slope, make the most of it… Phrases that native English speakers take for granted can sound somewhat strange when you’re trying to reach the next level of English mastery. I was forced to examine each idiom and try explaining them using only the most direct, clear, basic sentences. It became a word puzzle of sorts, and I received an immense amount of satisfaction every time I saw the look of realization in my conversation partner’s eyes when they had successfully grasped the meaning of an idiom.

The majority of the days at Angloville are spent on One-on-One’s; 50-minute conversations with one of the Polish participants. For these conversations, you’re handed a slip of paper with 4-5 different questions to facilitate the discussion, along with several related idioms for each question. The questions were split between general current issues and business-related questions, as the majority of our participants were successful business people, site managers, consultants and even a CEO of a major Polish company.

The provided questions were generally insightful; for instance I had some amazing conversations about health care, climate change, gun control, immigration, Trump (this came up a lot) and many other topics. We were expected to converse with the participants, asking them their opinions and helping them with vocabulary, pronunciation, phrasing, etc. There’s a fine line to walk when correcting someone’s English between being helpful and being condescending, but I enjoyed the challenge. Some of the Poles didn’t even want to use the conversation topics; they preferred to just talk and learn more about each other’s lives. Being forced to explain your positions on controversial issues in a foreign language for 8 hours a day was understandably exhausting for our new friends.

There were group activities as well, where we split into teams and created a marketing campaign for a new product, or wrote up a mock-constitution for a new nation. The native speakers in each group encouraged the Polish to come up with their ideas and then present them. There were some really hilarious presentations during these group activities, and the whole thing felt like a summer camp for adults. In the evenings after dinner, we had an “Entertainment Hour,” where we’d play group games of some sort. After that, it was glorious free time.

During my time in Poland, I’d had the impression that the majority of the Polish were rather stern and unfriendly, especially if you only spoke English. This misconception completely dissolved over the next several days. I learned that while the initial Polish reception towards strangers may be chilly (a holdover of Soviet occupation and Communism, some of the older Polish informed me), when you break past that barrier… possibly with the help of some Polish vodka… They are some of the friendliest, most hospitable people in the world. Nearly every night of the program we congregated down in the lobby for drinks, sharing stories, sharing Polish vodka, and continuing to practice their English. I felt that these times were almost more beneficial than the structured conversations, as the pressure was off and the only goal we had was to enjoy ourselves. There was even a stereo we could hook up our music to for some late night dance parties.

I witnessed some inspiring success stories. At the end of the week, one participant accepted her certificate and proudly exclaimed, “Last night, I had my first dream in English!” My favorite success story was a man by the name of Dariuz. He was very quiet for the majority of the week, and I did not get to speak to him much during mealtimes or group activities. But we finally had a one-on-one towards the end of the week, and I asked him if he thought he had benefited from his time here. He responded with a smile, “Last night, I spoke to my Polish colleagues for 3 hours in English!” His daughters also spoke English fluently, and he proudly told me how he had called them last night and had a full conversation in English. Seeing him at the end of the week, participating in more group conversations and making jokes in English, compared to his quiet demeanor at the beginning of the week, really hit home how effective an immersion program can be.

The last night of the program ended with another late-night, vodka-fueled dance party. After several nights in a row of partying until 3-5am and waking up around 9, I was ready for a full night’s sleep. An uneventful and crash-less bus ride to Warsaw dropped the group off at the train station, where we said our emotional goodbyes, gained 20 new Facebook friends, and parted ways. My new friend Lotty from southern England accompanied me to the train station, where I bought my overnight sleeper train ticket to Prague. It was boarding in a couple hours, so I jokingly took Lotty to our “First Date” at McDonald’s, and we reminisced about our amazing experiences this past week. She was on her way to Budapest for another Angloville program, and I can’t wait to hear all about it.

I boarded my sleeper train compartment. It was around the same size as my last one in Poland, only it had SIX bunks instead of four. I made my bed, chatted with my compartment mates a bit, and fell asleep almost instantaneously as my head hit the tiny pillow. It was the best night of sleep I’d had in over a week.

Thanks for reading!

Fun Extras: - Typing these entries in public places are nice, because the conversations are all in a foreign language and it’s basically just white noise. I change locations immediately when I hear English, though. - Paying to pee still sucks. - Polish bathrooms have very short motion-sensor lights, so you basically have to dance while using the toilet to keep the lights on. - After the crash, while we were waiting for our replacement bus, it started to drizzle lightly. Then, an hour or so into the second half of our bus ride, our new driver got lost. It was truly a comedy of errors. On the plus side, we saw a great deal of a very small, charming Polish town.

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Only about half of the trek down the St. Vitus Cathedral spiral staircase. We were very dizzy by the end. #spiral #stairs #prague #DolinOutTheTravel (at St. Vitus Cathedral)