Hello Gamecock Nation
Today we are experiencing Polish culture in the great city of Warsaw. We were a little concerned with a difficult trip into the city, but I have been pleasantly surprised with my overall experience. We have been to some incredible cities in Europe and seen some eye opening monuments, but today I would like to reflect on some things Zach and I love about Europe and miss from back home.
The first thing we all seem to love about Europe is the Architecture. Budapest amazed me the most with the Hungarian Parliament. What a sight to see from the river at night! Fashion and the sleek dress from all ages in Poland. They impress all of us with their cutting edge styles. Cafe's have an incredible atmosphere that are great for enjoying time with friends or a coffee and a great book. The Public Transportation systems are to die for. You can get anywhere in any major city for real cheap and very quickly. The traffic signs are unique and the street lights fit the architecture. While in the hotel room we love being able to turn on the radio through the tv and experiencing the different types of music. Then waking up in the morning and having a great buffet everyday. Eggs, bacon, you name it they have it.
After briefly discussing the things I love about Europe I think it is important to tell you about the things we take for granted in the United States. First and for most, air conditioning! I will never take the cold classrooms of USC for granted again. The train ride to Warsaw was "supposed" to be air conditioned but it felt more like a sauna. The next thing I have completely taken for granted is the laundry service and ability to clean my clothes for real cheap. Here in Warsaw it is 10 dollars a shirt to wash your clothes! When Zach and I went to the grocery store we bought one bottle of lemonade and the plastic bag they gave us ripped two minutes out of the store. It looked like saran wrap. When you go for a meal here there are ZERO refills! It has been difficult getting used to paying for every sprite I order. Then we get to the train situation. Very few people in Europe have caught on to wearing deodorant! Yuck, Gamecock nation consider yourself lucky. Then try finding a clock in hotel rooms in Europe; there are none! Last but not least I miss easy English conversation. The language barrier has created a few problems but kept us on our toes!
Have a great one Gamecock Nation! Celebrate our baseball title!
Dave
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Scenes of Warszawa
If you take a look out our window on the 11th floor of the Novotel, this is what you'll see. Warsaw is all the hustle and bustle of a typical metropolitan atmosphere, filled with people, cars, and even an occasional roundabout, but with the added component of the imposing, yet beautiful, Palace of Culture that was a gift to Poland from none other than Stalin himself.
Opposite this view, looking out to the left instead of to the right, you'll see a giant blow-up Puss in Boots, you know- the character from Shrek 3? It's truly a city of old and new, where previous Communist rule is evident in the architecture of the rebuilt city, yet Capitalist culture thrives.
A 20-minute walk from our hotel, however, and you get a very different idea of the city of Warsaw.Old Town is where the excitement is. Full of color, musicians, and folk dancers (even at midnight on a Wednesday), this is the area of town that I can't wait to go back to. Restaurants line the streets on the walk into Old Town, all of which are beautifully lit and provide outdoor seating for the warm Summer evenings, and once the sun finally sets, just over to the right of this square you can see the moon rise above your view of the Swietokrzyski Bridge.
More images will be coming to you soon, so keep a look out!
-Alex
Penniless in Poland
Good morning everyone! It's our first full day in Warsaw, and we're about to head off to an 11 o'clock meeting to learn all about Solidarity.
Yesterday was quite the adventure, as Zach explained the details of the atrocious train ride from Prague to Warsaw, but to top it all off, I have no Polish zloty (the currency) with which to do anything! I stopped by an atm on the way to dinner and realized I had no idea what the pin number was for my card! However, I shouldn't need cash for more than food today, and if worst comes to worst, I can always eat downstairs in the very modern Novotel dining room and charge the room. Penniless in Poland- what a great first day in! :)
And despite yesterday's awful 8-hour train ride, last night was spectacular. Several of us walked about 20 minutes down to Old Town and were pleasantly surprised by the full-of-Polish-culture atmosphere. We dined outside amid the fading colors of sunset and had plenty of entertainment to go around- whether it was the fire twirlers, traditional folk dancers, or the man who played Seal's "Kiss by a Rose" on repeat. Perhaps the most exciting find- Chopin's Musical Benches. In order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth, Poland has named 2010 "The Year of Chopin" and has commissioned benches all over Warsaw that tell a little history and even play some of Chopin's music upon pressing "Play." They can be found at historical sites across the city, such as those landmarks we found last night- the Chopin family house and the church that today is home to his heart (quite literally).
Once again, congratulations to the Gamecocks on the national title!
You'll be hearing again from us very shortly. :)
Alex
Yesterday was quite the adventure, as Zach explained the details of the atrocious train ride from Prague to Warsaw, but to top it all off, I have no Polish zloty (the currency) with which to do anything! I stopped by an atm on the way to dinner and realized I had no idea what the pin number was for my card! However, I shouldn't need cash for more than food today, and if worst comes to worst, I can always eat downstairs in the very modern Novotel dining room and charge the room. Penniless in Poland- what a great first day in! :)
And despite yesterday's awful 8-hour train ride, last night was spectacular. Several of us walked about 20 minutes down to Old Town and were pleasantly surprised by the full-of-Polish-culture atmosphere. We dined outside amid the fading colors of sunset and had plenty of entertainment to go around- whether it was the fire twirlers, traditional folk dancers, or the man who played Seal's "Kiss by a Rose" on repeat. Perhaps the most exciting find- Chopin's Musical Benches. In order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth, Poland has named 2010 "The Year of Chopin" and has commissioned benches all over Warsaw that tell a little history and even play some of Chopin's music upon pressing "Play." They can be found at historical sites across the city, such as those landmarks we found last night- the Chopin family house and the church that today is home to his heart (quite literally).
Once again, congratulations to the Gamecocks on the national title!
You'll be hearing again from us very shortly. :)
Alex
Prague to Warsaw
Prague is one of the major former Communist cities that has quickly taken off and is catching up with Western Europe. It has become a popular tourist attraction with many things to offer travelers. The architecture is spectacular and the scenery is breath taking. It is definitly a city worth seeing.
Sandy and I rented out a paddle boat to get a better look at the city from the river and it was one thing that will stick out in my mind forever about this trip. The city looks so peaceful from the water and the people on the water look so happy. From this prospective, you would never guess that Prague was ran by Communists only decades ago.
One thing that really sticks out to me about Prague too was an almost disturbing memorial for Prague Spring that I saw. The sculptures in the piece look like zombies coming down a staircase on the side of a hill. Some of them don't have heads, are missing limbs, or have mornful faces that cry out to you on the street. At night the staircase is lit up and the sculptures are made in such a unique fashion that at first glance they look so realistic that it is scary. This is one of a few odd sculptures I saw.
Prague captivated us all in some kind of way. It made it very hard to leave. We all wish we would have had more time there because there is so much to do and see, it is impossible to have done it all in just a few short days. After having been to Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty and seeing all the things Prague has to offer too, all of us considered mastering Czech and working at RFE/RL just so we could stay in this wonderful place.
However, all good things do come to an end and we borded the train for Warsaw. The train was not a fun experience. Imagine a very hot summer day, riding for 8 hours with no air conditioning, trying to sleep in a crampt space to escape extreme boredum and the heat, and you have just put yourself in our shoes. Then when we finally got off the train, caught the breeze that cooled us down for a split second, and got to strech our legs a little, we discovered that we were walking for ten minutes to the hotel with out luggage. Please understand that the handle on my luggage decided to jam itself right before this happened so I walked in the heat, dragging my luggage behind me, and hitting the backs of my knees to the point of severe bruises the entire way. Let's just say this wasn't the highlight of anyone's day.
The guide who led us to the hotel was pretty funny though, and very helpful. When he brought us to the first set of stairs that we were going to have to climb with our luggage to get to the hotel he said "Oh, I am sorry about the stairs. The Communists must have built those." He helped all the females with luggage at every set of stairs we reached. If he wouldn't have done that, it very well could have taken us a good bit longer to reach the hotel.
After we showered we ventured into the city like a pack of starving wolves to find the food we had been deprived of for hours. We were all angry and vicious at this point. My group found a KFC and were happy. Although KFC here is not the same as it is at home. No mashed potatoes, mac-n-cheese, baked beans or Bar-B-Q chicken are found here. The only sides are coldslaw and fries. The portions are so small with the food that Sandy and I actually had to get two meals and ice cream to be full. I don't know how any boy would have ever eaten until they were full there. Things are just way different.
However, the fashion is pretty intense and we can not wait to do some damage at the mall!
Morgan Weaver
Sandy and I rented out a paddle boat to get a better look at the city from the river and it was one thing that will stick out in my mind forever about this trip. The city looks so peaceful from the water and the people on the water look so happy. From this prospective, you would never guess that Prague was ran by Communists only decades ago.
One thing that really sticks out to me about Prague too was an almost disturbing memorial for Prague Spring that I saw. The sculptures in the piece look like zombies coming down a staircase on the side of a hill. Some of them don't have heads, are missing limbs, or have mornful faces that cry out to you on the street. At night the staircase is lit up and the sculptures are made in such a unique fashion that at first glance they look so realistic that it is scary. This is one of a few odd sculptures I saw.
Prague captivated us all in some kind of way. It made it very hard to leave. We all wish we would have had more time there because there is so much to do and see, it is impossible to have done it all in just a few short days. After having been to Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty and seeing all the things Prague has to offer too, all of us considered mastering Czech and working at RFE/RL just so we could stay in this wonderful place.
However, all good things do come to an end and we borded the train for Warsaw. The train was not a fun experience. Imagine a very hot summer day, riding for 8 hours with no air conditioning, trying to sleep in a crampt space to escape extreme boredum and the heat, and you have just put yourself in our shoes. Then when we finally got off the train, caught the breeze that cooled us down for a split second, and got to strech our legs a little, we discovered that we were walking for ten minutes to the hotel with out luggage. Please understand that the handle on my luggage decided to jam itself right before this happened so I walked in the heat, dragging my luggage behind me, and hitting the backs of my knees to the point of severe bruises the entire way. Let's just say this wasn't the highlight of anyone's day.
The guide who led us to the hotel was pretty funny though, and very helpful. When he brought us to the first set of stairs that we were going to have to climb with our luggage to get to the hotel he said "Oh, I am sorry about the stairs. The Communists must have built those." He helped all the females with luggage at every set of stairs we reached. If he wouldn't have done that, it very well could have taken us a good bit longer to reach the hotel.
After we showered we ventured into the city like a pack of starving wolves to find the food we had been deprived of for hours. We were all angry and vicious at this point. My group found a KFC and were happy. Although KFC here is not the same as it is at home. No mashed potatoes, mac-n-cheese, baked beans or Bar-B-Q chicken are found here. The only sides are coldslaw and fries. The portions are so small with the food that Sandy and I actually had to get two meals and ice cream to be full. I don't know how any boy would have ever eaten until they were full there. Things are just way different.
However, the fashion is pretty intense and we can not wait to do some damage at the mall!
Morgan Weaver
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Behind the Veil of Western Glory
Now we have climbed up into Warsaw on our itinerary I look back upon our visits with the CEELI institute and RFE/RL. During both visits I found that the people we met with were able to respond to our question but were very careful about how they chose to answer them. When questions were fielded to RFE/RL about government agency funding the responses were short and quickly diverged from what the question was asking. RFE/RL was particularly good giving very PR style answers without letting too much reflect poorly back upon the company. Questions concerning the Hungarian Revolution and RFE/RL's involvement were particularly hard to get a clear answer. The President instructed us to Google an author who was made out to be some sort of expert upon the revolution. This left me with the impression that the company itself does not often look back upon those times and tries its best to move forward, though I feel like they might be neglecting the lesson to be learned from RFE's efforts during the Cold War. On the other hand they were very good at presenting material explaining their new uses of media including television, SMS and social networks.
My visit to CEELI, an international institute that studies rule of law encouraged me even more to consider what the role western style governments and if they were truly appropriate for people who have not developed egalitarian framework in society and do not revere personal freedoms the way that our multi-party democracy does. Our guide was able to explain that the institute holds conferences on rule of law specializing in everything from intellectual property to human trafficking which judges from many developing nations attend. The prospectus of the institute (from what I gathered) was to encourage the reign of justice and to resist legal corruption withing the standards of law in these developing countries. Though this sounds to be a reasonably inoffensive way of achieving proper rule of law, I find that this could easily be a polite way of saying that they wish to demolish the aspects of developing systems that the west would find to be unjust, thus editing legal systems to fit western interests. Dr. Puchala affirmed more of my thinking when he asked what would happen if their mission was ineffective and our guide was only able to give a highly optimistic ideological answer that asserted that there were common legal principles that did away with societal oppression and fought against disparity, and those principles could be accepted by any system with enough tweaking. I drew from this a parallel to communism, as Marxist theory suggested that certain principles could be applicable for all sorts of people and that there was a general yet supreme method of government that most any thoughtful person would accept in light of its theoretical benefits. That too was quite ideological because communism confronted ideological barriers in the west similar to the barriers that rule of law is facing in the developing world. There will always be some degree of people who reject our methods of achieving justice and differentiation in opinion as to what justice is.
More to come today, I made a friend last night who's working for imagine comp put on by microsoft.
- Will F.
My visit to CEELI, an international institute that studies rule of law encouraged me even more to consider what the role western style governments and if they were truly appropriate for people who have not developed egalitarian framework in society and do not revere personal freedoms the way that our multi-party democracy does. Our guide was able to explain that the institute holds conferences on rule of law specializing in everything from intellectual property to human trafficking which judges from many developing nations attend. The prospectus of the institute (from what I gathered) was to encourage the reign of justice and to resist legal corruption withing the standards of law in these developing countries. Though this sounds to be a reasonably inoffensive way of achieving proper rule of law, I find that this could easily be a polite way of saying that they wish to demolish the aspects of developing systems that the west would find to be unjust, thus editing legal systems to fit western interests. Dr. Puchala affirmed more of my thinking when he asked what would happen if their mission was ineffective and our guide was only able to give a highly optimistic ideological answer that asserted that there were common legal principles that did away with societal oppression and fought against disparity, and those principles could be accepted by any system with enough tweaking. I drew from this a parallel to communism, as Marxist theory suggested that certain principles could be applicable for all sorts of people and that there was a general yet supreme method of government that most any thoughtful person would accept in light of its theoretical benefits. That too was quite ideological because communism confronted ideological barriers in the west similar to the barriers that rule of law is facing in the developing world. There will always be some degree of people who reject our methods of achieving justice and differentiation in opinion as to what justice is.
More to come today, I made a friend last night who's working for imagine comp put on by microsoft.
- Will F.
Starbursts for lunch, or maybe a Snickers?
Hey Gamecocks,
I hope everyone is celebrating safely back home in Columbia and all over Gamecock Nation. Hearing about our epic win over UCLA was a great way to wake up, even if it was a bit early for us at 8am Prague time. Hope everyone enjoys the short video I posted.
I just wanted to tell everyone that we have finally made it to Warsaw, city of sausages. It actually doesn't smell too bad of kielbasa and is seeming to be quite a hidden gem on our trip. But since I'm sitting here in my ice cold hotel room overlooking the old Soviet Culture Center, I wanted to memorialize our train ride from Prague to Warsaw for everyone.
It was awful.
But to elaborate some, it was extremely laboring on our bodies, our mental stability, and all five senses. The first pro we found when we got on the train was that our seats in our compartment all pulled out to create a giant cot that six people could lay flat in and get some decent sleep. Brilliant idea, right? Yes, but only if you have decent air flow.
About an hour into our 8 hour ride the AC on the entire train broke, decided to sleep, or just stayed in Prague without us knowing. So here we are, 6 very sleepy college kids, and all of the sudden we wake up slowly and there is no air movement whatsoever in our car. Stifling, smothering heat. It was so bad, we just couldn't get any more sleep. So instead of a decent 5 to 6 hour rest, we all ended up with about a 2 to 3 hour bout of nap time. And I'm sure as most know, college kids need their midday nap or else nothing productive can get done.
And to top it all off we didn't have a dining car. On an 8 hour ride. Really? The only thing they were selling were Snickers and other candies, along with cold drinks. Wow. Needless to say we were quite tired and hungry once we arrived in Warsaw.
But its all now in the past, we are all full of delicious Polish food, and I think we are all calling it an early night. Sort of. Can't wait to get back and celebrate with everyone again for our great Gamecock victory.
Carolina love,
Zach
I hope everyone is celebrating safely back home in Columbia and all over Gamecock Nation. Hearing about our epic win over UCLA was a great way to wake up, even if it was a bit early for us at 8am Prague time. Hope everyone enjoys the short video I posted.
I just wanted to tell everyone that we have finally made it to Warsaw, city of sausages. It actually doesn't smell too bad of kielbasa and is seeming to be quite a hidden gem on our trip. But since I'm sitting here in my ice cold hotel room overlooking the old Soviet Culture Center, I wanted to memorialize our train ride from Prague to Warsaw for everyone.
It was awful.
But to elaborate some, it was extremely laboring on our bodies, our mental stability, and all five senses. The first pro we found when we got on the train was that our seats in our compartment all pulled out to create a giant cot that six people could lay flat in and get some decent sleep. Brilliant idea, right? Yes, but only if you have decent air flow.
About an hour into our 8 hour ride the AC on the entire train broke, decided to sleep, or just stayed in Prague without us knowing. So here we are, 6 very sleepy college kids, and all of the sudden we wake up slowly and there is no air movement whatsoever in our car. Stifling, smothering heat. It was so bad, we just couldn't get any more sleep. So instead of a decent 5 to 6 hour rest, we all ended up with about a 2 to 3 hour bout of nap time. And I'm sure as most know, college kids need their midday nap or else nothing productive can get done.
And to top it all off we didn't have a dining car. On an 8 hour ride. Really? The only thing they were selling were Snickers and other candies, along with cold drinks. Wow. Needless to say we were quite tired and hungry once we arrived in Warsaw.
But its all now in the past, we are all full of delicious Polish food, and I think we are all calling it an early night. Sort of. Can't wait to get back and celebrate with everyone again for our great Gamecock victory.
Carolina love,
Zach
Just a little video to show our celebration
Congrats Gamecock nation on our first baseball College World Series title! Here's a little Gamecock celebration from the Prague train station.
Carolina love,
Zach
Carolina love,
Zach
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