Day 5 (Berlin)

First, I'm not getting very many comments at all :( I was hoping for more notes back to me... so if you're reading this, drop a quick line. Then I can see who loves me the most ;) JK - but really, I'm barely checking email, so please leave messages here so I can just log into one place :)

Wednesday's Adventures... in Poland.


First, I thought you might like to see my “home away from home” – aka hotel room.
Look how tidy it is...


I put away all my clothes up (Mom, aren’t you proud?). I figured since I'd be at this hotel almost a week that I'd move right in... new hotel Fri night, a different one Saturday, then "moving" to Paris....


Bathroom – has a few differences from home, but not much. First, of course the electricity is different, so you need a converter to make your appliances fit (and I only brought things that were compatible with their electricity). The shower door, which you can see in the pic, folds out so it covers about ½ of the shower area. I’m not sure if it happens to everyone, or if I’m a splasher, but I manage to make a puddle to step in when I get out since the door doesn’t cover the whole thing (which gives me flashbacks to living in NYC, where there was NO shower curtain – and not even a showerhead mount – you had to HOLD the little shower massager up in order to shower). Lastly, the toilet flushers here are buttons on the wall that you just push in and it flushes – lightswitches are similar too, on rocker switches.

Anyway, on with the day - we got on the S (subway system), then the train today and headed to Poland, to the city of Slubice...

We took the S (subway) to the regional train station, then hopped on a train identical to this one for our trip to Poland today.

Here are a few pictures of Frankfort (Oman)-Slobice (not the big Frankfort!).

See the row of old historic homes?

Now, see those rough edges of brick? There used to be a building there, but it was destroyed in the war. Unlike Berlin, you will see some very obvious war damages in the city as there is still much that hasn't been rebuilt and repaired.

This pic didn’t turn out that great, but if you look about the lamppost, you will see another building popping out of the trees - that building was formerly part of this row of homes.

A church…

Not really sure, but probably another church...

Museum – it had a gorgeous terrace too!

We took a pitstop at a Polish bakery for some treats (and restrooms!).

There was a small little (farmer’s) market outside the bakery,.,. so cute. Why is everyone so elderly First, think about the time and date – this was mid-morning on a Weds. Also consider that the average age for that community is about 53yrs. This is going to be a problem in 10-15 years as the townspeople begin to die. Slubice will have the same problem in about 10 years. The younger generations are being educated and moving away, leaving very few younger residents.

I love this upstairs balcony.

Coleus plants! The pretty kind!! (I fell in love with this in Ottawa (Canada) last summer, and noticed it used in a lot of landscaping – and it found me in Poland :)

Now I want some of these…. The purple flowers are cute, but they don’t impress me as much as the white ones. They look like elementary school craft projects, except more perfect – a cross between delicate tissue paper and a snowball…

Zurich – not sure if this is the same company that Maegan works for, but just in case, took a pic for her :)

The view from the border walking into Poland.

Some of the first building you will see - and traffic circle.

And yes, this means I am in Poland. Which means I crossed the border. I didn't realize that it had happened until one of my professors commented on how impressed she was we didn't have any problems. Basically you just walk over the bridge and are in Slubice, Poland. I'm still sad that I didn't get a new passport stamp though (don't need them since it's part of the European Union).

Signage…

One of the guys insisted I had to be in a photo – yippee! (Since we had to do so much walking today and weren't doing any company visits, it was a jeans day, very casual - I swear I didn't wear tie-dye and jeans to company events!)

More misc. signage.

We went to this University for a lecture on Germany/Poland's history. Very interesting, good presenter. Apparently this university was new and innovative about 10 years ago - you wouldn't guess that looking at the buildings, or the signage missing letters.

Another view of the city.

This is the name of the restaurant we had lunch at. The forks had the company name engraved – and the waitresses didn’t like us much. And the vegetarian dish was basically steamed veggies over rice with cheese that had cooled into a clump. Its the same type of meal you would come up with when you want to avoid grocery shopping just one more day and need to make dinner...