Warsaw

Hello readers! I apologize for the inordinately long delay in my blogging. I've been bouncing around western europe and arrived recently in warsaw where I'm staying at the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish National Academy (IMPAN).

I took an overnight train from Utrecht, Netherlands to Warsaw Central station. I was shocked that the train came directly. In fact, I think the train went all the way to Moscow, but I decided that since my entire euro vacation was built on the premise that I'd be giving a talk in Warsaw and attending a conference later, that I'd better not miss it... That would really be signing my mathematical death warrant. As it is I'm on pretty thin ice.

So, Warsaw... I got here on Sunday morning. Noone here at the institute, no internet, no phone, no map... I asked around for a long time just to find the institute. Found it. Checked in, set down my bags, went exploring.

So it Warsaw, what is the first thing I find? Why yes, a shawarma place owned by a jordanian where I had to order my food in arabic. Of course, that screams Poland to me.
Although I was really happy with that, because it turns out that Jordanian Arabic sounds really similar to Lebanese Arabic except that Jordanians sound a lot angrier. I ate my shawarma (with no tomato!!!!) and chatted with a guy who loves the united states more than any self respecting jordanian should. That also made me happy. Then he gave me a true jordanian show. He told me about a nightclub close by that he really loves because of "the bitches." Oh warsaw, you excite me.

Ok, back to work on my talk. Done with work, what's next? Vietnamese food of course! I found a vietnamese place very close by. They were out of Pho! (clark then exudes a long cry) and finds an english speaker who tells me chmielna street (about 20 minutes walking) has a lot of vietnamese restaurants. Off I go! Ask away, ask away. How to I get to Chmielna street? Oh, you don't speak english either...

Finally I made it. Funny thing, lots of bars, no vietnamese places. What I did find however, was that chmielna was back in what looked like some alley from the main road. It turns out that there are lots of "it looks like an alley" streets in warsaw. I decided to spend about 4 hours last night going up and down them seeing what I could find.

Interesting finds so far:
1) Winairnia Tblisi.
I recognized the first word meant winery or something related to wine. The second word is the capital city of Georgia (not the Atlanta one, the eastern european country). Sure enough, a store, and wine bar full of nothing but wines from georgia... Didn't know they had 100 wineries.

2) Beautifully conserved catholic churches next to stalin era statues of workers. Industrial workers promoting the well fare of society (clearly).

3) Warsaw is an eastern block city which is modernizing very quickly. I actually really like it, and am excited to see what I find this week.