Happy Halloween!

(And now I’m going to be late for work).

Eine kleine surfmusik

I went to Brooklyn to see my high school friend Martin’s band this weekend. He and his girlfriend Patty perfectly worked out the all-important instrument-outfit coordination. Thank goodness.

Halloween’s on the way

I went out last night with some friends and eventually wound up in this bar, which was fully decorated for Halloween. Here’s one of their more aggressive decorations:

Food variety in Poland

Another Poland post (while I’m still hemming and hawing over what to do with the blog):
In Wrocław, Debbie and I went to what I think was the TGIFridays of Poland. But the menu was more middle eastern-focused. In any event, this was my placemat, advertising one of the middle eastern dishes. Mr. Shoarmancki, you smoothie!

More subway art

I saw this on the way back from visiting the office of an apartment broker:

The hunt continues

I looked at five apartments yesterday. This is what happens when you take a picture of the view outside a screen window at night:

Apartment-hunting (my annual diversion)

I looked at an apartment in Chelsea yesterday. The apartment was terrible, but I did get to pass by these little guys in the subway:

Hostel madness

The hostel where I stayed in Edinburgh was arranged such that three or four bedrooms (each holding 4-8 people) had access to a common kitchen area. Howard and Dominick (who were traveling separately) were staying in one of the rooms and each of them did a lot of cooking there. There were both also perfectly happy to go out in the evenings to hear music with me.

I did not do any cooking during my time in Edinburgh.

York

On my way up to Edinburgh in September, I stopped in York for the day. York is in northern England and has significant Roman and Viking history, as well as a tremendous cathedral, which was built on the site of a Roman fortress. Among other things (including buying cold medicine and kleenex), I took one of the free walking tours of the town. This was the tour guide. He just looks like he knows stuff, doesn’t he?


In exciting housekeeping news, you may notice that all the time stamps on posts and comments have been switched to eastern U.S. time, rather than British time. Crazy. (Another crazy thing: today is my first day back at work—it’s been a while now.)

And helloooo, New York!

And here I am. Amazing.


I’m trying to decide what to do with the blog. In the meantime, I’ll post a few more pictures from my time off. Here’s a picture of a pub in Warsaw. Some types of pubs are simply universal. It’s things like this that can bring the people of the world a little closer together:

Good bye, London

So this is it—my last night in London (as a resident... for now).


I enjoyed it!

Kraków’s attractive landmark

I’m struggling to finish up what I need to before the movers come tomorrow, so this is a quick post. But here is a picture of Kraków’s well-known landmark, St. Mary’s Church (or, in Polish, Kościół Mariacki).

Pretty, isn’t it?

A few pictures from Poland

I got back from Poland last night. It was a great trip, and I took a lot of photos, so I won’t go through the whole thing here. But here are a few pictures to begin at least a little of the description of the trip.

As I mentioned previously, we spent a lot of time on the trains. We entertained ourselves in various ways, including talking to others on the train, which was by far the best way. This is Chris, who talked to us the whole way from Lublin to Kielce. He’d just gotten back from working in Liverpool and could do an amazing Liverpool accent. He also sang us some Polish hip-hop:


When there was no one to talk to, we played cards and tried to find other ways to entertain ourselves. Thank goodness Jaynna brought her harmonica:


I’ll also say a little about Polish food. It’s hearty and good, and we ate a lot of it. Even the condiments were filling:


After a while we started varying the menu. I got Indian food in a restaurant in Wrocław:


Let me break down the elements of the dish. This was the main part:


And this was the rest:






Hm, I’m sort of craving chicken curry now. But I’ve also got to run some errands. The movers come on Friday—eek!

Technology is awesome!

Wow! So I’m posting this from my Blackberry. I’m currently on a train from Wrocław to Kraków. It didn’t occur to me until now to use the Blackberry to post, and it’s a much slower process than on a computer, but it’s amazing what opportunities can present themselves on a four-and-a-half hour train ride.

In any event, Wrocław is a very interesting town. It was part of Germany before World War II and was called Breslau. After the war, many of the people displaced from Lwów, which was the capital of the Polish Ukraine, settled there, when Lwów became part of the Soviet Union (the Rough Guide is priceless).

Ewa, whom I met when I went to Düsseldorf in April, lives there, and after some mishaps designating the meeting-place—churches and cathedrals are evidently distinct from one another—we were able to meet up and walk around—hooray!