Arrival

I have arrived safe in Warsaw.

My trip started off interesting. On my flight to Copenhagen, I was seated in the middle section in between a very large guy, a morbidly obese guy, and his armrest-hogging wife. There were babies to my fore and aft, and an evangelical Christian tour group to my rear. Luckily, the very large guy got a seat somewhere else and I was able to grab his aisle seat. The woman still managed to take my armrests despite having three seats for herself and her husband.

The in-flight entertainment system was impressive. They had movies, tv shows, and games. They even had cameras on the nose and bottom of the plane so you could watch what was happening during the flight. I have trouble falling asleep on big planes so I amused myself by flipping through movies I had already seen and trying out the simplistic games. They were mostly card games, but I utterly owned their version of Space Invaders.

It was rainy and cold in Copenhagen when we landed, but luckily I wasn't outside. After a very short layover, I boarded the flight for Warsaw. The other passengers seemed to be Danish businessmen mostly with the occasionally Pole. For some reason, everyone was seated in either the back or the front of the plane (guess where I was...). No one was in the middle. I made small talk with a Dane who thought my bad German was actually bad Danish and whose Danish I though was quickly spoken German. That would probably explain why the conversation didn't go anywhere. The flight was a little turbulent and I was charged for a bottle of water, but we arrived at Warsaw on time.

In the airport, I met my contact, Dorota, who manages the Fulbright program in Poland. She doesn't head the program, but she seems to be the only one who does any work. We then waited for two other Fulbrighters to arrive. With all of us there, we took a harrowing taxi-van ride to our hotel. Warsaw is in the midst of a building spree so traffic is very bad. The weather was very pleasant.

The Hotel Etap did not have my reservation for some reason, but a room was found for me and I am comfortably ensconced now. The hotel is very clean and reasonably cheap. The decor looks like it came out the cheap section of an Ikea catalog, but it is very functional. WiFi is available for a cost. My preferred habit of jacking someone else's unprotected wireless network is not available to me at the moment.

After a much needed shower and some repacking, I fall asleep until 5 something when I was woken by a knock at the door. It was one of the Fulbrighters from earlier, a girl named Elise. She just graduated from Brown, but is from Alexandria. She is also a TA like me. We took a taxi towards the center of Warsaw in search of food. The driver was very talkative and his English was functional. After walking in the rain (for it has started to rain while I slept) for awhile, Elise and I ate at a Spanish restaurant. We had a nice tapas and pasta dinner complete with Pilsner Urquell (a Czech beer), and talked about ourselves and the program. We were both surprised by the fact that there is only three TAs in Poland. There were 10 spots originally to our knowledge.

After dinner, Elise and I walked all the way back to hotel, only getting slightly lost a few times. Tomorrow, there are various sessions at the American Embassy to attend followed by lunch/reception at the American ambassador's residence. The morning after that, we depart early in the morning for the orientation in Wroclaw.

I will try to post updates as I can, but I am not sure what my internet access capabilities will be for awhile.