Somewhere in September 2005 I was making jokes with my friends from Otopeni Airport (passports control officers). The subject: I am leaving again somewhere on this planet. I was quite excited because I knew nobody in Warsaw, except prof. Wojciech Wloch that was in touch with me for papers and info I needed.

Arriving in Warsaw. Going to what I was to call “home” in the next 4 months. A very nice “gate keeper” wished me was there to wish me welcome, and actually I feel the need to say that he is the nicest one from the four gate keepers the school has.

After almost four months it is quite hard to prepare for “the trip back”. I got used with my not-early-morning-breakfasts. I love to have lunch in a communist place, one of those places where are fat ladies that are smiling to me all the time even they do no get a word from what I am saying. I love the food you can buy there. Cheap and good. Ok, not always good because it depends on the “women mood”… you know! :-)

I will miss tram 35 (going down town) and tram 22 (going to the train station).

I will miss Arkadia Shopping Center (Good bless this mall – one tram stop from my house).

I will miss my two “offices”: Wojciech one and the library.

I will miss Piotr – the against everything guy, even against me at a point! (friends know why).

And apart from all this I will miss the people, those people that tried how they could to make my life easier and better. So I’ll try to finish this post till my first tear will appear. I’ll say that this post is for “friendship” and for Wojciech, Viktoria, Mariusz (or professor Mariusz :-) ), Aniska and Maryna. Many thanks to one of the cleaning guys – “the big scarry back haired guy”.

Things that I’ve learned in Poland:
- Never say NO to a Polish that offers you a beer. Never say NO to the same Polish offering you the second beer. Never say NO for the third beer, from the same Polish person … And this is the rule of “who fall first”.

- Never talk to a Polish about how great Russians are.

- Never talk to a Polish about how great Germans are.

- Never name the actual President of the Republic.

- Never talk in another language than Polish because you risk to loose your energy without being understood anyway. :-D

- Never take in a bus or tram without a ticket.

- Avoid McDonalds, KFC and so on cause they are not different that the ones from your country.

- Do not stress yourself with running around stores to buy clothes. You will never find something cheaper that in C&A and H&M. If you really want good shoes go to BATA.

- Never use LOT Polish Airlines services. Aircraft sucks and prices are huge. No …they are extremely huge. No…. they are too huge to be true. Please be kind with your wallet and pay few euros to Wizzair (actually cool airline), SkyEurope, Ryanair and EasyJet.

- If you want to buy books, DVDs… and other stuff go to EMPICK.