I arrived around 5:30am Polish time at the bus station. The bus ride was about eight hours from Vilnius. I didn't enjoy the ride because it was impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep. I kept trying to position my body between two seat but ahhhh I'm too tall. My mother's side of the family is Swedish and Polish. I don't know have too much information about my ancestors or what city they were from in Poland. Its still nice to be able to come back to the homeland and check out the culture.
When I got to the bus station it was freezing. I walked around to try and find the bus my cs host told me to take towards his house. I couldn't find bus 127 so I took bus 172 thinking maybe he messaged me in error. Either way I knew I could find his place by taking the Metro. While on the bus I asked some people if they spoke English to get directions to the Metro. The majority of the people don't or won't speak English but I was lucky enough to speak in words they would know like "Metro" then they showed me which stop to get off at. I arrived at my host Pawel's place and he had a couple of other couchsurfers staying with him. There were two girls from Barcelona and I joined them for some sightseeing. Warsaw is a city that 80 percent was destroyed from WWII. The old town was rebuilt pretty well to model what it looked like previously.
We met our host for lunch at a "Soviet style" Restaurant in old town. If you don't speak Polish or Russian you're not able to order food because nobody in the place spoke english. Pawel translated the menu for us. The choices were pretty simple and the staff didn't change anything. Pawel said in those type of Restaurants its not the customer is always right but the other way around.
Costs- Polish 3 day transit card- 8 Polish Zlotych(3 US)
Day 24 Male bonding
Today the weather was like a nice Spring day. I actually got a little too hot from walking that I had to take off my jacket for awhile. Pawel and I walked around the city and did some male bonding. We talked about traveling, life, and Love.....Its nice to be able to relate to someone about your past and see how things are similar or different... Stopped by a place for a nice Kebab...hmmmm I love em! Pawel had some of his friends come over at night. We played some music and enjoyed each others company. Most of the people I have been meeting are very polite about the language barrier. Usually when I walk out the room and come back everyone will be speaking in there native tongue. Then my host will say okay lets speak english now. I really appreciate it because its very challenging if youre at a party and everyone is connecting with each other in another language you dont know. Although many Swedes speak great english I found myself in awkward stages when I would be at parties. I would try and continue conversations with people in english but they would generally talk to someone else and then go back to speaking Swedish. I would like to learn another language one day...
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