Oh boy xD Sunday night was amusing, to say the least. (: So! After a while, Nate, Kasia, and I head for the soccer game, right? Well, we find our way there, walk to the stadium, notice how many lines of people there are, how pretty the stadium is, and also the amount of police and riot squads prepared for the game. Mind you, Kraków Wisła and Cracovia are huge rivals in Kraków. As in. Hooligans have essentially sworn their lives to defending both teams. So they meet up for knife fights and what not. Oh, no worries! The stadiums and games themselves are holy grounds, so no fighting there, but still. Just to give you an idea of what the turn out should be.
Needless to say, that was the turn out indeed. People after people after people in multiple lines, going to the parking lot. We, however, had no tickets. We approach the ticket stand and I read, "Brak biletów." ... Out of tickets... ... Ohhhhh, boy. So I wait in line to make sure it's what we think, and I hear the lady telling other people there are no tickets left. Well... Duh. How dumb were we?! Seriously. Biggest rivalry of the season. Biggest game. Of the season. Families of all sorts gathering for the festivities. And here we are, trying to get into the game without having reserved tickets. Brilliant, right? :D Hahahah, but it was just amusing. And honestly, I was grateful for it, because that meant we wouldn't be like chickens running around without our heads, going from one stadium to the next to the bar, and just... it helped calm the evening down a bit. We headed back to the square and stopped by some little coffee shop, where I had a gofra with nuts on it. It was rather dry, so now I know I have to have some sort of fruit to make it absolutely phenomenal as opposed to pretty awesome.
Then we headed back. Only to head back out again for the hockey game!!! Oh goodness. Let me tell you. Being with Kasia for a hockey game is quite wise. She explained every. Little. Detail. Well, it's her life, quite literally, so I definitely appreciated it! Apparently, the game play in Poland is a bit different as well. No surprise there! Although, Cracovia, our team, won! Wooooo!!!!! It was quite the exciting game, actually. Or at least I thought so. Oh! At the beginning of the game, the puck flew out of the ice rink. Five feet away from Nate, actually! So he ran to get it, but then... there was a kid going after it as well... ... So he gave it to the kid, of course. Which was the right and best thing to do! (: The crowd was tiny, as there had really been no one to come root on the away team. Although, the teams seemed friendly to each other. Not a single fight broke out. And this is hockey. The fans were wonderful, with their chants and what not. "Hej, hej, Cra-cov-ia!" Much fun! Hm, I can't think of anything else significant, though. It took a little over two hours, but it went by quickly except for the intermissions.
We headed on to Alchemia afterwards, and the entire area was incredibly peaceful, so we had no reason to be concerned about rowdy losing fans. Speaking of which, the soccer game was one by Cracovia for the first time in at least 2 years. Cracovia is the last in the league, while Wisła is I think... number 4? So yeah. HUGE deal for them. But it was still calm! Alchemia was really nice; I learned they had an outdoor area which has space heaters for the evenings. It's a shame we came too late to take advantage of it. :c But instead, I grabbed a Zapiekanka with salami. Yes, it was delicious, and we chilled in the bar for a little bit. Nothing too special, really. Eventually, we grabbed a cab home.
Two significant things happened in this cab: a) the driver asked me, "Czy jestesz Polką?" Translated: "Are you a Pole?" and my immediate answer was yes. Well, guys. We've all known this for a while, but it was just... far more natural for me to answer yes than to explain I'm an American. I don't... feel like an American. I understand the culture, and it most certainly did shape me to become who I am today, but... I am far more Polish than most people probably like. Ah well... But the second thing was actually that we found out about the collapse of a stairwell in Kraków. Actually, it was the collapse of the stairwell leading to Łubu Dubu. Yes. The club we went to on Saturday night. It collapsed about an hour and a half after we left, 11 people were injured, and they had to evacuate 2000 people from the building, which hosted 3 clubs. The driver informed me that the building was really old, and I also later learned that the clubs were running for 2 years without paperwork... Unfortunately, now the club is closed, due to obvious reasons. So, in a way, we lucked out that we went to it before it was shut down, even though we learned it was the best club in town, essentially. However, far more fortunate than that was the fact that we left the club as early as we did; therefore, none of us were hurt. Yeah... Good timing.
That was the end of that night, though. The next day, aka, yesterday, was Nate's birthday! I helped him make his cake, Tort Krakowski. A delicious sort of crumble cake, with a raspberry jam and some sort of egg whites spread on time. It turned out really well, actually! Besides that, I did nothing particularly exciting. No. Really. It was my day in the apartment. :D
Example: I Skyped with Cody and Bryce. That was awesome. Then I just chilled around until we had dinner. Maggie made this wonderful turkey pancake like thing, which was delicious, mashed potatoes, and veggies. We had Nate's cake, and a cake Monika bought for his birthday. Oh yes! Monika came back from family, finally! ^_^ So she invited me earlier (while Skyping with Bryce), to eat some of the soup at her place she had just made. Per usual, delicious. Hahaha. Hmm, but yes, back to birthday celebrations. We also did some cheers. Sang Happy Birthday and Sto Lat, of course. I drank half a shot of vodka, in order to not get struck by lightning. Apparently, my face was hilarious, and in fact it looked like I was about to spit it out... ... To be honest, I'm surprised I didn't. There was one moment of sensation, I had no clue what to expect. They told me I downed it too slowly. But... to be honest, I have a hard time seriously chugging or downing any sort of drink, so yeah... Therefore, I still hate alcohol (who would've thought?). This was also some really nice vodka too. Oh, 40%, per usual, as we're in Poland. None of that weak stuff. :P I had to chug two shots of some sort of orange soda after that to get rid of the taste of half a shot. Ick...
Although, the celebrations were enjoyable. We all sat and listened to music, provided between Kasia and Nate. Really, quite the pleasant evening! (: It was also after that that I briefly Skyped with Cody, and yeah. That's all for the night.
Today, the Holocaust class was more depressing than normal. We watched a video which showed color slides of the Łódź ghetto, and then a man who was a doctor in the ghetto narrated his experience as well. It was in three languages: Polish, German, and Yiddish. One of the parts that really got to me was the entire fact that the doctor nonchalantly told his father about the death of his father's brother via a postcard, and when he finally received his father's reply, which basically called him a disgrace and scolded him for being so insensitive about the death, his father had already died. ... Yeah... *sighs* It's absolutely sickening and unbelievable people could put one another through that. No matter how differently you think, no one should be forced through such... inhumane conditions.
I bought my Polish book for my language course after class and went to the apartment, wheeeeeere. I found another postcard waiting in my post box!!! :D SUUUPER exciting! <3 It was from my Dad! I was actually quite surprised, but I practically knew immediately when I saw it was something about Tail of the Dragon. ^_^ I looooove mail. Eventually, Nate and I head back into town for pierogi, like every week. But this was a different week! Quite fun! We were waiting on a bench, hoping for an empty table, and the guy in front of us invited to sit with him. He was a Canadian man who studied photography in Edinborough for his post graduate some thing degree. He traveled a lot of eastern Europe already as well, and was teaching some course in Kraków or something. He has some free days, so we of course gave him heads up of what he should go see. It was a really interesting lunch. (: But then that ended, went to Empik, went to Poland in Europe in the 20th Century, where we also talked about World War II. We discussed the Holocaust, Katyń, the plan to destroy Poles methodically as well. Yeah. Also depressing. I left class just broken-hearted by my two classes, to be honest. But, from there we headed to a military antique store!
It was super cool. Lots of old military paraphernalia, and I think I might actually buy an old army beret from Poland's army... I saw a really nice red one which had four stars on it... I'm going to have to look up the meaning of the stars and everything, but I know one thing for sure: this beret was during a time not through the Soviet era. The Eagle still had its crown. (:
From there, I headed onto Polish class, which was also interesting. We're going to have our first test next Tuesday. Originally, she said Thursday, but she was nice when everyone asked to have a full week to study. This is going to be weird, to be honest... I've never really taken any tests or anything in Polish because well... Polish has just been a home language... Now it's an academic subject of mine, as a language, and it's just... weird. Ah, but we discussed about today being an informational age, as well as whether or not there is taboo in today's world. Yeah, I liked the end of class for sure.
But I disliked post class. I found out that what I had told my teacher about my intentions for the course were wrong... She thought I didn't want it graded, because I told her that ECTS points were useless for me. But that's what my resident director told us! I didn't know that you had to get those in order to get it graded... Argh. I was incredibly upset when I found out about that... It should still work out, and I think I'll still be taking a final before I leave, but it was still rather aggravating. Just, the miscommunication was something I felt like I had little control over. I was told one thing and learned another thing about the process. So we'll see how that turns out.
Although, for now, I have a headache, and I think I'm going to go to bed early (it's just a little after 21.00). That's why this post might be a bit dry. So yeah... Enjoy your days!
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