No new pictures on flickr this time. Instead: my heart goes out to that woman. Grand.

for anyone wondering, this is ukraine. some village between the border and lviv. last week, me and some other brave german girls decided to finally take the step (over the border) and go. who knows when we’ll have that easy of a way to a country still so definitely eastern european?!
and it was worth every step. i don’t think i have ever been that impressed by a new place. at least not in the last couple of years. every cliché i had about poland before coming here was true in lviv. to my impression at least. polyester clothing, horse carriages on interstates, interstates that look like country roads … that are nothing more than country roads. i am not to be misunderstood, i loved it there. it was a great trip, the best one since i came to kraków. not even budapest can beat it.

the whole crossing the border and actually needing a passport to do so is a weird experience. surrounded by watchmen with guns and tall fences you can’t help but feel like a  criminal. and strangely, you kind of start behaving like one, too. thinking what if they find out … whatever they could find out. crimes you yourself didn’t even know of. maybe. anyhow, it was interesting. they let us pass, both in and out, without problems. but we did experience the pecking order … that apparently goes like this: germans look down on poles look down on ukrainians. because on the way back to poland, a polish lady, who first wanted to push to the front thinking we were ukrainian, realizing we were german started yelling at some ukrainian women to let us pass. since we are german we apparently have the right to priority treatment. then came the polish women and the ukrainians had to wait. and in the end, we were the ones feeling somewhat bad for getting to go first. long live the european union passport.

after a bumpy and airless bus ride we then came to lviv to find it even more beautiful than kraków (or at least i did). the austrian occupation left its traces in the architecture and somehow the lvivians managed to keep their houses in better conditions than people in kraków … or maybe there are just less pigeons destroying the facades of buildings with their excrements. anyhow, i liked the city and even more so because you don’t feel surrounded all the times as you do here by the 1000000 tourists in the city. yet, the lack of tourists also means a lack of disclosedness for tourist purposes. talk about bad services in restaurants … waiting an hour to get your (partially cold) food just to be screwed over with the incredibly high check. oh well, incredibly high in ukrainian terms, so it was bearable. you probably shouldn’t complain too much if you pay 1 euro for lunch and 5 for dinner (which we did on our second, culinarily more successful day).

by the way, pictures are on www.flickr.com/iamcientist, as they always are. it easier to get an impression that way.
there are no particular places we went to, beside the “luminating lviv” exhibition, which was basically fluorescent paint in a room with black light showing dancing mushrooms, cats on a tree and other drug experience related things. weird. really weird. i don’t think it would count as exhibition material anywhere else, at least not in my hemisphere.
oh, and then there is this giant cemetery (thanks again for the tip, martin) with graves dating back to the 1600s. we didn’t see those, but the ones we saw were interesting enough. otherwise, we walked around town and ‘collected’ pictures and ideas about how people go about in lviv.

having met some other erasmus people from kraków, we went out for vodka and clubbing on friday night. and even the clubs (at least the one we went to) was more than we expected. girls in polyester skirts and too high heels trying to pick up completely wasted soldiers (in uniform) while dancing to balkan/turkish/ukrainian folk-pop-house. great. i could have just sat down somewhere and watched the spectacle. included in the show were two arabian nights-dressed dancers, a guy and a girl, completely oily AND glittery, giving it their best on the stage.

this experience even made the dusty hostels, which was just being renovated, seem like less of a dirty hole. the website promises a pool, three kitchens and a common room with dvds and reality gave us a kitchen covered in concrete dust, dusty sheets (i think i am developing an allergy …) and free rotten bread under eva’s bed. oh well, it was just to sleep in and cost us 12 euro for two nights. again: it’s bearable.
i can only advise you to travel there if you get the chance. and do it the ‘bumpy’ way as we did, by train, bus, walk and bus again. rather fast, cheap and you get to see most of the country you’re in. we had heard some horror stories about non-polish, let alone ukrainian speaking people at the border, but they all didn’t come true for us. and with the frequent changes of means of transportation, the 8 hours it takes from kraków to lviv didn’t get long at all.

i already want to go back. maybe in a couple of years to see what has changed with (possibly) more and more tourists coming in. i am really surprised that lviv is such an unknown spot on the ‘what to see in europe-map’. it’s a beautiful city and, more importantly maybe, it’s something new. a different mentality, way of life … and alphabet. knowing some cyrillic really helps; we don’t and wished we did.

what i am trying to say: i am a mere shadow of myself. i’ve been sitting, writing for the past 4 and a half hours and my concentration is close to zero. why would a teacher expect people in an erasmus course with apparently no prior knowledge of the subject to write an essay of 5000 words? as far as i can judge now, impossible. i’m glad i have the day off and can work on it full time. otherwise … i don’t know. i want to be done sometime on the weekend. because FLORI might be coming to visit and i wouldn’t want to spoil that fun by having an essay on my agenda. plus, i need to start studying for the finals. three of them actually.
something which the teacher of the course does not seem to have realized. i wrote him on sunday, he shortly replied wanting to know my exact topic and i haven’t heard from him ever since. frustration.

this is procrastination, i know. but what to do. i just need five minutes “off”. enjoy the sound of a story being added to the building next door and let go of my anger here. hehe.
i hope to find the time to go out jogging for once tonight. haven’t done that in a while, maybe it’ll do me good?

well. i don’t really have more to say, other than: i voted and so should you. make up your mind about what you want the eu to do and participate. goodbye, disentchantment with politics, hello, interest and change. no matter what critics say, i think it’s important.

most of the time, i feel like doing it like this guy. it’s immensely hot for may, i think. but then again, there still is the construction site next door, including the dog that won’t stop barking. so no rest inside most of the time. and no time. and no interest in it either. being outside with people is just more fun.
if we keep playing basketball like we do now, we’ll turn pro someday. maybe not tomorrow, but anyway. and i start recognizing the guys we play against (random polish guys) in the streets, did i mention that before. it’s great, especially because they don’t see me (why would they? who remembers people they played ball with in a park?).

then anna was here from sweden last week. it was great … even though i had to speak swedish for three or four days straight. you just lose that capability so quickly. anyway, we watched that eurovision thingy with a bunch of people, which was hilarious. i wonder if the people organizing it still take it seriously. i guess there are not many others who do. needless to say, all the songs sucked and dita von teese didn’t help either.
another, spontaneous visitor was my cousin. it’s quite funny (he remarked it as well) that we haven’t really had much contact throughout our lives, possibly due to 8 years age difference. but we get along now, it seems. so the age gap is closing somehow … should i feel old?

in two weeks we’ll possibly go to the ukraine. finally. i’m glad it worked out in the end (let’s hope it does). i’m anxious to see lwow. and the corrupt officers at the border. maybe if we pretend to be nice, silly girls they won’t charge us extra? or would they charge us more then? what do i know.

what to write, what to write … things are coming to an end. a month from now, i’ll be sitting on my bags. all packed and ready to leave. rebecca will be gone and so will many of the others here. odd. i guess we’ll promise to visit each other, let’s hope we keep that promise.
we’ve cancelled our internet and all today, too. payed our last rent. which i was reluctant to pay with all that darn noise all the time.

of course, the notwist didn’t play here. the concert got cancelled not to long before it should happen. a shame. next week … or the week after … there’ll be a big festival here with dizzie rascal, franz ferdinand, digitalism and some others. DIGITALISM. wow. i wish i could go, but it’s like 27euro a day and i can’t afford that. unless i want to live off plain bread for a week … and i don’t. besides, i will see them at melt! (which anna wants to come to with us now, too!!!) anyway. so no bad feelings about staying home one night.
if i’m lucky, i will get the first night of dancing on saturday. there is going to be the “cold lady” birthday party at a club in kazimierz. actually, for the first time since we came. post-punk … joy division, bloc party. says the poster. we’ll see, but it’ll be better than house and that’s a start.

well, i better get going … experience some fun stuff to write about here (someday). or i’ll just keep writing my essay.
enjoy these last days of may.

yes, life is as nice as it appears to be in this picture. we apparently have this incredible lake just nearby the city centre (6 minutes by tram), the weather has been, is and -according to google’s forecast- will be just perfect and there’s always something going on.
there has been a film festival for independent movies as well as a indie-progressive-festival until just recently and i think there will be a few others (one about advertisement?!) soon. if they’re not already going on.
it really amazes me how vibrant this city is. i don’t even know how to put it, but there is just something about the way it feels to be here that is … alive or buzzing. the liveliness of streets filled with people combined with nature coming to life … it makes being here a wonderful experience, that’s what i can say for sure. especially now that we as people seem to have gotten more used to each other and all. it’s a shame that this all will be over again in just a couple of months. but it’s quite safe to say that this erasmus semester will be one worth telling of and remembering. and i suppose that is what matters in the end.
gee, this sounds like advertisement … haha. but the truth is the truth and should be told. since friday is may, 1st and thus a free day, rebecca and i will go to wroclaw with two friends of ours, anita and fanny. just for a day, but that should be enough to see the city and is something my bank account will thank me for. because, yes, even in poland you can run out of money. maybe i should join the romanian kids with their accordions and little dogs who play for money in the streets. and if the police pick me up (something i saw them do to one of these kids the other day), i’ll blame my romanian mom and run away with the money i earned.

the pictures of our latest adventures can be marvelled at on www.flickr.com/iamscientist. some of them i took at the off off festival concerts. handsome furs and pivot. opinions might differ, but i liked them both very much. each in their own way. i didn’t think that especially handsome furs had such fanbase in poland, but people just loved them. i think they had to play 2 or 3 encores. well, it’s better this way than the other way around, right?!

besides that, we have been busy accumulating all sorts of balls to play with. despite mr. basketball being the most famous of the bunch, we are also able to pay volley- and football. aren’t we energetic. there are courts to play on for free in a park nearby and playing there is actually a nice way to communicate with the ‘locals’. who apparently like basketball very much. and are a whole lot better at it than anyone of us. but losing is not thast bad if you’re  having fun. and so far nobody has gotten hurt severely either. i got a ball in the face the other day … thank god i’m not the nose-bleeding type. i suspect the drousy feeling i had all day yesterday resulted from a concussion that hit gave me. anyhow, getting a little excercise this way is far more entertaining than jogging in circles, to me at least.

i don’t know how to create a transition between these every day things and the fact that we’ve finally visited auschwitz the other week. oh well. there won’t be one then. we went there just after my birthday with rebecca’s family. i’m glad we decided not to do one of those guided tours, but to take a minibus and be able to look at everything at our pace. it was, of course, really interesting, but somewhat surreal, too. the smaller camp is made of brick houses (it’s an old polish garrison, i think) and looks quite neat. in combination with the beautiful weather -blue sky, flowers blossoming and birds singing- it actually seemed like a nice place to be. it’s not, of course, but it is hard to grasp the horrors which happened there just standing in the middle of the site. it also bothered me how impious some of the other visitors behaved. getting your picture taken beneath the “arbeit macht frei”-gate is not exactly the thing to do, i would say. or taking pictures inside the buildings, simply ignoring the 100,000 signs asking you not to take pictures inside any of the barracks. some people just don’t get it. anyhow. i was impressed. more by the scope of the big camp (birkenau) and the inconceivability of everything that just openly happened there for years and years than by the museum itself. i suppose that happens if you get drowned in pictures and stories from the era from your childhood on. a picture of yet another deportation just loses some of its horribleness and becomes one of all the other pictures. setting foot into this vast area of shabby barracks and seeing the proximity of the crematories to the where the inmates dwelled, on the other hand, struck me. it is completely inexplicable to me how anyone could possibly deny the holocaust … ever. oh well, people’s dumb minds are outside my understanding.
so are the thoughts of the busdriver that took us home. it was a minibus, as i said, and it was crammed. which meant that we got to stand the entire one and a half hours. the air wasn’t exactly what one would call fresh and for a while, i didn’t even have anything to hold on to really. well, this was not adventure enough, thought the busdriver, and decided not to fasten his seatbelt AND to send several text messages with his mobile while going down bumpy polish country roads. if that’s not entertainment, then i don’t know what is.

well, now i have to go buy the ticket to wroclaw and then it’s time for our highly anticipated russian mafia presentation. once it’s done, i have earned my first 3ects points. wooo. tonight we will then have the oral part of our polish course midterms. to talk to the teacher for 5 minutes about my features and hobbies should be managable. i’ll let you know how it went.

just a short interlude -the next blog entry is in production- in the form of a list of songs to sing these fine days. is this becoming any other random blog??? noooo. hehe. oh well, yes. at least for tonight. but tonight i don’t care. take it or leave it. right?!

the long winters – blue diamonds
someone still loves you, boris yeltsin – modern mystery (as repetitive as it might be: THE spring music per se.)
cold war kids – rubidoux
audrey – big ships
bright eyes – if the brakeman turns my way
pivot – o soundtrack my heart
mixtapes & cellmates – quiet
patrick wolf – augustine (me and him at melt! … )
ra ra riot – ghost under rocks
why? – fatalist palmistry

if someone gave this to me as a mixtape … lovely. goodnight.

you can thank the wonderful cracovian weather and all the visitors we’ve had for me not posting anything on here. spring here really is as wonderful as people have told us before and we’re trying to use every minute of it. the money shortage, which i apparently have right now, is somewhat of a hinderance, but it will all work out in the end.

right now we’re preparing to go out to one of the lakes around here. i guess it’s still within krakow’s city limits and easy to reach and i will definitely provide you with pictures. erasmus barbecue is on the agenda. with about 10000 people, if everyone who said they’ll come actually do. meat on the grill, students in the sun.

maybe i’ll manage to write more tfonight, maybe … i won’t. anyway, i’ll update shortly. until then, check www.flickr.com/iamscientist.

picture – title? title – picture! you have to grant me that connection. hehe. and if not, nevermind, i like it anyway. i’m in the best possible mood today and mean to share it with the world. spring has finally arrived in krakow and it’s amazing. no coat, no woolen socks, no bad feelings. as far as i am concerned. and the good weather makes the town ever so much more beautiful. sitting in a café at the rynek, seeing people let balloons fly and rebecca get her first sunburn.
additionally, a sudden change in which music is being played has occured. not surprisingly, i guess, some music just fits this weather better. so there has been a lot of old death cab stuff  and girls in hawaii hovering around our place today, along with someone still loves you, boris yeltsin (which is my favorite spring music, i have to admit). it’s funny how you forget how much you like certain songs, don’t listen to them for a while and, when listening to them again, are just as stunned as you were the first time you heard them. but that means there’s still potential to be overwhelmed in me and that’s a good thing. or it’s just my extraordinarily good mood today. oh, and another thumb up from me for this town needs guns. i see myself listening to them a lot.

but enough of that. there’s some pictures of our polish spring on www.flickr.com/iamscientist. plus, those of our wonderful trip to budapest.

i think i might have found one of my favorite places in the world. there’s something about budapest which i instantly liked and i could have stayed there much longer than three days. thanks to petra, who was so kind to be our guide, we didn’t even have to run around with a map in our hands, searching for the nicest places to see. we realized that, since christmas, we’ve seen each other more than our (respective) parents. which is a good thing, but quite unusual.
it should be mentioned again that rebecca and i only paid 20euro each to get to budapest. and yes, it was a regular bus. nevertheless, the trip there was kind of … adventurous. if you’ve ever been on a coach (regular, big coach), going through the mountains of slovakia in complete darkness at about 80 km/h while there’s snow on the ground, you will know what i mean. i did not sleep a single second, but clasped my seat and waited for a lethal accident to happen. honestly, how can you possibly overtake a coach on a slovakian mountain road when you already see oncoming cars. fortunately, nothing happened and we got to budapest at about 22.30, where petra was already awaiting us (with home-made cake from her grandma). lovely.
well, my original idea of that satuarday night was to get to marcel’s place (thanks again for having us), freshen up and go to bed. but things never turn out as planned, right? in our case, it meant spending all night (and early morning) at a club drinking gin tonic. the most fun i’ve had going out so far. the music played was balkan pop … apparently they played techno later, but i wouldn’t remember. ask rebecca about it. the crux of partying one day is the hangover the day after. so we decided to pay a visit to one of the famous spas. it was quite the experience. several pools with some kind of mineral water, outdoor pool included. sitting in 38° warm water while there’s rain falling onto you sure is nice. whether sitting in 38° warm water is a good thing when you’re hung over is another story, but it won’t be told here and now.
monday and tuesday we spent walking around my newly beloved budapest, our path can be followed on flickr thanks to me taking pictures excessively. petra was a wonderful guide and the town was an even better host with its springlike temperatures. time passed too fast and on early wednesday morning, we were off to krakow again. getting up at 04.00, taking the bus at 06.00, arriving in krakow at 14.00 and actually making it to our lecture at 15.30. including the polish course in the evening, this was quite a day. but we’re still young, we can handle it, right?

now we’re back to normal. tomorrow, we’ll have a picnic by the river with anita and fanny. and my aunt and uncle will get here and start a ‘visiting wave’, which will last until the end of april. speaking of visitors, anna will hälsa på from malmö in mid-may. i am excited. då får man prata svenska hela dagen igen. it’s not like i don’t get to speak swedish here, but anyway.
i hope all the visitors will not distract too much from the actual work we need to get done. presentations, essay preparations and all. we’ll see. since some of the teachers just like to tell stories and call that lecture, maybe i will structure my work like that as well and call it essay/presentation. as a matter of fact, i am taking the most unacademic course i have ever. not to generalize, the academic level here is quite good, but that course … . take an italian, put him in a suit, let him tell stories about the mafia and call it sociology. if it didn’t have some entertaining value, i would just get up and leave every time. my intended goal is to make my presentation better than any of his lectures. hehe. fancy he reads this. haha. well, even if. i’m just an erasmus student, what can possibly happen.

anyhow, this is this. enjoy cracovian (or whichever) spring.

… as well as rebbe, killacat, thorre and pawi. as you can see everyone got a fancy new name, except for me. i was just anne. well, at least ten years from now i’ll know who i was. and needless to say, i won (the first of two games, that is. in the second, i hardly made more than 80 points). hehe. i had tons of fun, i think we all did. too bad that my camera couldn’t cope with the lighting there and the pictures all look pretty much like the one on top here. but hey, that’s arty, right?!
and in case you didn’t know, bowling is all about being slow and precise. whoever combines these features, will certainly end up winning. being slow is not all that hard if you’re not used to bowling and can hardly hold on to the ball. while being precise is especially hard then. oh, and by the way, i wripped my pants while scoring a spare. i just heard it wrip and people started applauding. well, if it takes the sacrifice of a material thing to win a spiritual game of bowling, i am fine with that. plus, the pants had been frayed out before and i can blame the wripping on that fact, not my missing technique or anything such.

as always, pictures can be seen on www.flickr.com/iamscientist. this time, along with a funny little experiment i made with my camera the other day. i realized that it actually does have a “multiple photo” function, you know, where you hold down the button and take several pictures in a row. which, of course, i had to try out with rebecca as my motive.

our first visitor is just about to leave us and things are calming down before THE weekend. as the forecast promised, there is snow on the ground (and in the air), but at least the sun manages to shine through the falling flakes.

doesn’t this make you think of what to get your friends and family for christmas instead of the fact that you need to go and buy a new pair of shorts for the summer? that’s what i thought. it’s march 22 today and i long for spring to come. this picture was taken about three days ago and if one can trust the weather forecast, it will look like this again not to long from now. possibility of snow showers until wednesday, at least.
and calling home makes me miserable, because all over germany and, yes, even sweden they have beautiful sunshine. we don’t even make it up to 10°c. needless to say that i am constantly freezing and would rather stay in bed all day.

but but but, by this time next week, rebecca and i are going to be in BUDAPEST. and i am as excited as one can be. not even the worst weather could ruin this trip for me. petra, a really good friend of mine, is there right now visiting her family and i will have the chance to see her. and she will have the opportunity to show us around her favorite places in budapest. plus, thanks to an acquaintance of ours from malmö, marcel, we don’t even have the need to find a hostel or anything. he has generously offered us to stay at his place while we’re in town. awesome. which means that the whole ordeal only costs us 20euro, that’s how much the coach ride costs us. i repeat: awesome.

first on today’s agenda is to show thore, a friend of rebecca’s who has come to visit, around town and possibly hike up the kosciuszki mound. in hope of getting somewhat of a scenic view from up there … despite all the clouds. thore is actually the first in the (ever-growing) list of friends and family who want to come and see us. which means that we will have such company almost throughout the entire semester. visitors including rebecca’s family, my aunt and uncle, possibly my mother and a whole bunch of friends from germany and sweden, who have said that they want to use the chance to see kraków while we’re here. makes sense, i suppose.