Life in the C.O.W.

After a year in The Capitol of the World (London), I decided to compile my mass emails to one place, complete with photos!

Dzien dobry od Polska! - 15 Nov 2007

Inside "Head" our favorite Polish monument

***See note at end of post

Hello everyone!!

Sorry it has been so long since I have written!! My computer died and I was just able to get a new harddrive set up (even though my power cord does not work now and I will not have a new one until next week at the earliest....). Anyway, besides that mishap things have been going very well here in London.

Work is still not very exciting and feels very much like the movie Office Space. Regardless, I am here for the experience and to build the resume even if I don't take a job with UBS after this year. At the moment, I would probably not take a full time job if they offered it to me. Luckily, it has gotten a little more exciting. My newest responsibility (and most important) is to manage the various books of different traders. I have to make sure that everything is balanced out and report the overall profits and losses for the day to the traders. I definitely understand a lot better how the business works because I have to answer constant questions from different traders on pretty much everything I do. That is exciting when I am doing that kind of stuff, but at the moment it only takes up about 2 hours of my day. It should start becoming more and more of my day soon though!

London is..........well it is beautiful in some parts. I thought that I was entirely over London and all its pollution, noise and crowded streets, but every time I get out of the areas by my house and by work I am pleasantly surprised. There may still be something left in this old city!

Although I am liking the city (at least a little bit) again, I will not be in it hardly at all until February. Last time I sent out an email, I had booked a flight to Egypt and that was my only definite plan. Last weekend, I was in Krakow, Poland, this weekend I will be visiting my friend Netta in Santander Spain, the following weekend I will be off to a combination of Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia. The weekend after that, I will be in Stockholm, Sweden, followed by (hopefully) Montreux, Switzerland and then Amsterdam the next weekend. The weekend after that, my parents will be in town, the following weekend I will be with them in Belgium. The very next weekend, my friend Katie will be in London (well, just the Sunday), and the next weekend I will be dogsledding under the Northern Lights in far northern (Tromso) Norway. After that I have a weekend of classes, then I will be off to Egypt! It is amazing how cheap it is to get to places while you are out here, and I figure I might as well do it now while it is so easy!

Anyway, as my email is titled Greetings from Poland, I should probably talk about it some. This last weekend I went with 3 friends (a different travel group than normal) to Krakow, Poland. When our plane landed, it was blue skies, ruining my hopes for a snowy time in Poland. We casually walked off the plane and to the bus that took us to the airport (which took a total of about 10 seconds) and as soon as we got on, it turned into a blizzard outside!! This luckily kept happening all trip, although it did cause us a three hour delay on our
way out.....

Snowy Krakow

Krakow is a very nice medieval city, filled with lots of old architecture.

Proof: Very nice, medieval and old architecture

The most amazing part was Wawel Hill where the old castle and church lies. The castle was ok, it was only built a few hundred years ago and looked more like a mansion. We went into the church and it was by far one of the more amazing things I have seen. The best part was the trip up to the top of the bell tower. I felt like the Hunchback of Notre Dame as I climbed the rickety wooden staircase barely wide enough to fit me. There were even parts where I had to almost sit down to get through the staircase because the ceiling was so low! It really felt authentic, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed it.

Wawel in all its glory

After a few more blizzards, a lot more walking, lots of Pierogis, some Polish Vodka and stopping at a van that sold Kielbasa, we all went to bed, we had an early morning ahead of us.

Josh was not very excited for a vodka tasting...

Kielbasa from the back of a van only open from 2AM onward on an isolated street...sounds like perfection to me (and clearly half of Krakow!)

The next morning we went to Auschwitz. The thought of going there was almost terrifying, but we felt it was something we should see sometime in our lives to get a little better understanding of what it was like those 60 years ago. The tour focused much more on the buildings than what was done there or the people that were effected so you could almost forget just where you were. There were two main camps, the first was very small, had large bunks for sleeping, heating, it was actually almost nice. The second one was not nice. It was more what you have in mind when you think of Auschwitz and stretched as far as the eye could see. All the buildings were much smaller than in the first camp, and were not near as comfortable. The countryside surrounding it was all rolling green hills with small forests and towns dotting the way here and there. When we got there it was a clear sky and again, a massive blizzard came in, making the site that much more haunting. It did really make you wonder how one person could do so many bad things.

Gate

Horrible sleeping conditions

Well, now that I have ended this email on a depressing note, I am going to have to go. My apologies for not responding to all of your emails yet, I will hopefully be able to do it soon, maybe even tonight if I need a distraction from starting my 30 page paper that has arough draft due tomorrow.

I hope all is well, and miss you all,

 Sean

***Note: There was A LOT more to this trip than in the aforementioned email, including a night in an apartment converted into a night club, hundreds of pictures with our favourite monument, Head (what's not to love about a statue of a giant head you can climb inside of?!):

Exhibit A (Night, side angle)

Exhibit B (Day, snow free). There are also Exhibits C through ZZ such as "Day, with snow" or "Night, front angle"

a store with hundreds of different vodkas to try:

Arguably the best store in the world since the samples were dirt cheap

and a tour of the Schindler Factory (of Schindler's List fame):

Look out for Liam Neeson!

Basically, for what was hands down one of the best trips, this original email did it NO justice.

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