Flying to Krakow in Poland tomorrow, if anyone has any last minute ideas & suggestions on how to survive in Poland then now is the time :)

We're waitng for a report from the trip! :)

I stayed only 2 days and decided to fly back home after that. Unfortunately, I haven't yet recovered from a major burnout and had to find out the hard way. But even though I failed to accomplish most of my mission goals, I did at least try. Axing most of the trip so abruptly was a tough call, especially since I missed out on meeting a friend in Warsaw and visiting the countryside/-Malbork with another friend. However, Poland hasn't seen the last of me. I will be back for more (pierogi in particular).
I didn't leave the country empty handed though, I bought the obligatory red Polska T-Shirt with the white chicken on it and managed to make 3 paintings including one of a magnificent 17th century Winged Hussar half-armor at the National Museum, see attached picture. The light kept dimming down after every couple minutes which was a bit annoying, I mean saving electricity is a good thing but they didn't think about museum visitors who sit in one spot for a while and don't run through the museum like headless chickens. Old Krakow is very picturesque but overrun by tourists and temperatures were way too hot. The hostel I stayed at was good but of course there was a middle aged guy in my room on the first night who snored so loudly that even my fancy $10 earplugs (made of silicon) didn't block out the noise. I considered strangling him in the middle of the night and dumping him out on the street but I'm not sure if this is legal in Poland. I always thought it's highly anti-social of people to stay in dorm rooms when they know full well that they snore. The other people in the room were a group of young Finnish girls who were friendly and didn't snore. One of them was pretty (which I didn't notice until the 2nd day because I was so burned out and tired I stumbled in and out of the room like a zombie, the slow ones) so I made a little sketch of her. It's funny to note that on the 2nd day I was so tired I couldn't get up until 2:30 PM but when I asked the Finnish girl group what they had been doing that day it turned out they spent half a day shopping for a travel bag for one of them because her bag had fallen apart. The new bag they bought was the size of a Volkswagen Golf, I kid you not. When I asked why on Earth they needed such a gigantic bag they said that girls need that much space. Fair enough.
On the way back to the airport, an elderly Polish guy helped me with the ticket machine in the bus. He ended up being on the same flight back to Switzerland and when we landed at the airport, his son who lives there came to pick him up and gave me a ride to the train station where he dropped off his dad and me. I gifted the elderly guy an organic vegetable juice, bought myself an uncooled iced coffee and chatted with him until he boarded his train.
When I arrived in my city, I saw a crazy person at the train station supermarket who randomly chatted up everyone in there. I thought he was quite amusing and talked to him for a while. He had a micro scooter which he named 'Esmeralda' and that was about the most normal thing about the guy. I'm astounded at the amount of complete and utter craziness a person can have and yet not be locked up in a psych ward.

EDIT: renamed file name, many thanks to tburger for correcting my nonexistent Polish!

Ha! This white chicken is actually a gold-crowned white eagle and is our national Coat of Arms (with the red, shield shaped background). It'sreally nice of you that you bought a souvenir that seems rather nation-specific. :)

Your painting is really good! Especially that you only had a limited time to paint it, and of course the lighting.

I remember when they introduced new ticked validators in Warsaw, people seeing them for the first time were a little shocked when the machine quickly pulled the ticket while making some noises.

Hope to see you coming here again in the future!

Yes, the chicken description is so funny :)

You did catch quite a heatwave, pretty abnormal for this time of year, so were specially unlucky as that mellows one out a lot. It also sounds like you could do with more relaxing vacation rather than active sightseeing.

Anyway, all the best for the return trip and thanks for these cool impressions.

WITH A WHAT?! :-)

Glad you liked pierogi and have positive feelings after trip. Oh, you should rename the picture - it's not polski_huzar but polski_husarz. Huzar was a member of light cavalery - most popular in XVIII age long after husaria was gone.

Sorry about the heraldic faux pas :) Maybe I'm jealous because Swiss souvenir T-shirts only have a simple white cross on them, not an epic bird.
I will be back for sure, got a whole list of things I'd like to see in Poland.

I had no idea Polish summers have the potential to be so hot, having grown up in a mountain village I'm not used to such heat. I even brought Gore-Tex shoes and a jacket and umbrella, fortunately I also brought sandals and a sun hat with neck protection plus long pants and shirts with long sleeves which is what I wear in desert countries usually. To my surprise, all the local Polish people were walking around with no sun protection whatsoever, that completely confused me. How do they do it!?
I wish I could do the relaxing vacation thing but when I travel abroad I want to be productive and capture the good stuff, historical treasures etc. I'm only happy when I can bring back loot as in pictures I drew/painted by hand on location. The idea of going to a country with interesting history and sights and then relaxing/partying seems unimaginable to me.


Thanks for the correction, it is apparent that despite having a Polish T-shirt I won't be able to pass as a Polish person as my command of the native language is close to nil. The Polish people sitting next to me on the flight to Krakow told the stewardess that I'm Italian when she walked through the aisles asking everyone's language. I thought it was quite funny that they were so dead sure about it but for the sake of practicality will accept my role as Italian tourist.
I wrote down about 20 words and short phrases in Polish but didn't have time or energy to learn them so I just politely said dziękuję in every situation. There were only very few people who were able to speak much English outside the hostel (even among younger people) which surprised me because all you GOG members from Poland are perfectly fluent in English. I'll try to learn more Polish for the next trip. I'll inadvertently still be the 'Italian tourist' in the eyes of the local population but I might be capable of ordering the right kind of mineral water this time around. Stretch goals, that's what it's all about.

A little update: After flying back to Switzerland after only 2 days on Polish soil, I rested a couple days and flew right back to Poland deciding that only 2 days is really not even remotely worthy of a country such as Poland, no matter how tired I was.

More info (and pics) on the 2nd Poland trip in this thread:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_headquarters_warsaw