W Warszawy - Ost Blog
Chapter III - Surviving the Winter
[Fri, Nov 17th] Train noir
(0:17 a.m.) McDonalds in Warszawa central station. Gathering all people that fell astray somewhere tonight. Like me. The train got stuck somewhere between Kiew and here, so i got two extra hours in the station. Moved to the big t'ts foodplace because of security. Inside, it could be everywhere on the globe.
(1:50 a.m.) Two hours became two point five became three. There are several people in the shop that look as tired as i probably do.
(11:15 a.m.) Arrival with almost four hours delay. I take the opportunity to tell my travels in the last two months by numbers: about 12,000 kilometers on railway lines. About 28 tickets for public transport in Berlin. Ten hours of train delay versus zero trains missed. Lost a toothbrush, a toothpaste tube, two single earplugs and countless astrocytes. Read 20-30 scientific papers on the way.
I start getting used to it. In fact, it is less exciting than expected: no drunks, no burglars, no stray sex encounters and almost no dialogs. Just some rattle with interruptions. I hardly awake when the engine is exchanged in Frankfurt, when the train gets reassembled in Poznan. The better i sleep, the more productive my monday shifts starting at 6 a.m. become.
[Sun, Nov 25th] Fragmentation
Left on thursday evening for Berlin. Talked science to my colleagues all through friday. Read through a grant application on my way. Came for breakfast with Nils on saturday morning. Suddenly, i found myself near the ground. Scenes flickered before my eyes like an random sample of points from the time-space continuum, all disconnected from each other. My nerves were twisted to the very verge of breaking apart, for this was my life. I felt an entire lack of normality.
On sunday i took a deep breath and started to collect some pieces of myself that had scattered in the past weeks: cleaned my old flat. Packed up my dear but neglected paintings. Posted a few important letters. Paid back debts that had emerged from a temporary inability to re-convert my Polish money to Euros.
Finally, i am leaving with my usual luggage, a drilling machine, some brushes, a poster tube containing about 50 ink sketches, and a bamboo sword.
[Tue, Dec 5th] Göd dag
Spent a relaxing week plus weekend in Warszawa. Feel the ground i'm moving on becoming more firm. Start caring about luxuries. Got a haircut. Enjoyed a movie in the cinema. Even browsed a few ad's for cars (strange if you know me). Peeked for beautiful scientists.
A friend traveling through india has been asked by a local whether he would "do the donkey". I'm not that desperate, anyway.
Got up on monday at zero-four-thirty (yuck!). Arrived in Copenhagen airport at nine to visit a workshop in Odense. I am still coping with the cultural shock: Huge shopping area in the airport. Silent, comfortable trains. Sophisticated traffic system. Enormous bicycle parking lots. German-speaking staff. Excellent breakfast. Clean unisex toilets. To counter the entirely 2D landscape, the Danes have erected a number of phallic pillars on the campus. However, they don't seem to compensate anything personal with this. The University of Southern Denmark itself is a kind of claustrophobic place with dark colors, low ceilings and guidance stripes on endless corridors (for automated cleanup vehicles?). I dived deeply into the world of mass spectrometry to escape this high-end tristesse.
[Mon, Dec 11th] Berlin
Visited Berlin with Staszek and Ada. Thanks to our local guides Nils and Goran!
[Thu, Dec 20th] Praca
Working the last two weeks was like following a straight line laid out before me. The weather is becoming dark. Misty. Wet. What else should i do? I've been improving my software that brings several gigabytes of data together. Built dozens of small molecules in a 3D editor. Made some plans what to do next. 2007 should bring some nice results.
Even Nils started building phylogenetic trees from his plastic dinosaurs. Should make me think whether i work too much.
However, i have some private life apart from spending evenings on my laptop keeping the connection to restern Europe by Skype and mail. Started Polish lessons in a language school round the corner. Playing volleyball each week. Went dancing twice. Last but not least, the metamorphosis of my flat has finished so far. I start liking it (please notice the Coke bottle and trash in the bottom left corner as a clear sign of normality).
Tonight, i will leave to Berlin for christmas. Doesn't feel like a return ticket any more.
[Mon, Jan 8th] Visitors
Stayed in Berlin over Christmas until New Year. What happened there does not belong here, but i had a great time. At some point, i started missing home. Realized i live on the other side of the mirror now.
Returned with my first Berlin guests: Nils and Marei. On daytime, i worked while they went sightseeing and shopping. They produced a great lot of photo & video documentation of their tours. We met in the evening and stuffed ourselves into my flat. The big room started feeling small. They had some justified complaints about the temperature, and i put on the heating for the first time this winter.
One day, Michal went with Staszek, Ada and us to the Warsaw Uprising Museum. This turned out to be a history lesson none of us would forget quickly. The uprising and the subsequent annihilation of the city certainly belongs to the larger tragedies in the war (Reason enough to provide a link.).
[Sat, Jan 13th] Sauna
Looked for a place to link myself to the earth, like Finnish do. My web inquiry brought up three saunas that did not belong to some hotel or recreation farm. Two of them were obviously gay style. The third was at a swimming pool a comfortable 3km walk away.
The whole place was kept very clean and hygienic. Already in the entrance hall, i was made to replace my shoes with sandals. The shoes were left in a bag at the wardrobe. The sauna was a neat 2*2*2m cubus complete with wooden panels and two levels of bench. They had heated it to pleasant 95 degrees. For some strange reason, the kiuas was below one of the benches, with a small opening to pour water inside. The sound of the löyly was like an old man trying to breathe, and that was the only sensual experience i received. The rest of the sauna did the job thoroughly enough to deserve that name.
I noticed that most visitors stayed wrapped into their towels all the time. Some entered in their bathing clothes (both men and women). One guy even had his steel watch put on. (So this is how sauna should be in my opinion [Finnish with translation]). The normal sauna ticket was scheduled for 45 minutes, which i exceeded by at least half an hour. They said nothing, though.
Afterwards i got myself a pizza tonno. Some gastro-intestinal-terrorist had spilled mayonnaise all over it. This got a mark as 'worst food encountered'. This from one who found squids almost delicious and considered a one-piece tortoise a great experience.
[Sat, Jan 27th] Kyrill
The winter storm sweeping all over Europe had hit Sczesliwice park one week ago. On my way to work they were buzzsawing some unfirmly rooted trees to pieces. By the evening, they had cleared at least all the tracks to Berlin, despite train chaos in most of western Germany and the Berlin main station half wasted (exxagerating). My train left and arrived on schedule (which was rare even under normal circumstances, see below). The storms aftermath brought cold air and deep pressure to Warszawa, and when i stepped out on wednsday morning, the earth was covered white. The snow kept falling, building to considerable heaps. Everywhere. I got myself some solid boots. The thermometer dropped. The ponds in Sczesliwice park froze within two days. I had to launch my heating for half an hour twice. Nights outside were grim. Nevertheless, i managed to establish some basic social life. The fear of being lost, drifting rootlessly, kept fading. Not that much of a vagabond i seem to be.
[Thu, Feb 1st] En Taro Adun
Did something completely normal for a change. Janek Kogut (quote: "You will all die! (manical laughter)"), our System administrator, invited me to some multiplayer gaming. He shares a flat with several other people, which they use as a base for their plans on world domination. For this evening, two of his flatmates put their businesses aside and we enjoyed several rounds of StarCraft (Girls, you may very well skip the next paragraph).
SC is a realtime strategy game in which three kinds of aliens go at each other. Most of the time you collect blue crystals and buy spaceships, monsters, psionics et al with them. In the beginning, my laptop lagged terribly. We found several viruses as a reason, the worst disguising as my antivirus software. Then we got things going. Fijal ruled the board, while i tried to get used to English shortcut keys. My teammade saved my butt several time, giving me the opportunity to watch the others amass hordes of tanks and mutalisks and sweep everything off in a rush. Later it got more balanced, because we added a computer bot player to the weaker team. Carriers worked well for me. In the end, the Protoss had the best rating of the evening, i think.
[Wed, Feb 14th] Ruzica si bila, jedna u mom srcu
Last summer, a caring soul had provided me with a CD of Goran Bregovic songs recorded in Polish. Their sentimental folk melodies had been good company in the dark, sad, lonely days in autumn. However, on my last trip to Berlin the croatian version got into my hands. The original song had a bright latin rhythm and sounded a lot more joyful. Considering i took up dancing Salsa, this describes my situation quite well.
[Fri, Feb 23rd] The Boniecki disease
Two weeks ago a nasty virus hit our research group and put down one third of the people. Named it after the guy who - to his own misfortune - discovered it first. I managed to stay healthy until everybody was cured. Right after that i spent a weekend managing stuff in Berlin. Found little sleep on the trains and with my hosts. Started feeling some static between my ears.
When i came to work on tuesday, i was told how bad i looked (no photos here), went home earlier and dropped dead almost immediately. Stayed in bed for three days. Went to see a doctor yesterday. Besides being asked about Matti Nykänen, the guy prescribed me a lot of pills to prevent bacteria from jumping aboard. Among them were some sulfonamides. I recall putting them into a public molecule database last year (SuperHapten Database). Now i'm eating them for a change. Not too bad.
[March] Winter got canceled
I found myself with Monika in Ursynow, spring beginning much earlier than i had expected. There, a flat-share holding seven people in a house with terrace plus garden met me with hospitality. Found myself spending sunny mornings outside raking old leaves and planting lettuce. Inhaled the fresh and humid soil. During my cleanup i also found a box of copper sulphate and a forgotten pot containing microbiological oddities.