Town-tagged

Raluca tagged me. I’m supposed to tell you about the city I live in right now, Warsaw, but the truth is that, after 10 days since I arrived, after moving twice this week and getting lost three times, I still don’t know many things about this place. So, I’m afraid I’ll leave some blanks, but I’ll do my best in describing the city.

3 places I love in Warsaw:

• The Old Town. Very few of the buildings before the War are still standing. So the old part of the city is an architectural treasure. The place has not only great houses, but also cool bars and cafes.
• The “Bathrooms” Park. It’s one of the biggest parks in the city, if not the biggest, and its Polish name means Bathrooms. It has a castle, a huge lake with ducks, squirrles (very friendly ones! the come is you call them “başa, başa, başa, başa”!), peacocks and very tall trees.
• Traffic Club. A library on two levels with wireless Internet connection and very many books in English.

Still working on the “favourite places” thingie… I need more time!!

3 places One place I hate in Warsaw:

• My neighbourhood. People have tried to convince me that it’s a central area, that it has good tram connetions to the rest of the city, but the truth is I think it takes forever to get to the tram station (approximately 10 minutes on foot, which will probably extend to 20 minutes during the winter when I walk slowly, trying not to slip on the ice). And there is not one fast-food around here. Damn!

3 places where I like to go out with my friends:

• Marak. A soup place. The Polish call soup “zupa” 🙂 The small soup is aroud 5 zlots (a euro and a half) and it’s delicious!
• Browarmia. The beer place with wireless Internet connection, of course. They have all sorts of beer and it’s not expensive at all. Plus, the restrooms are very big there, which I like 😀
• Arkadia. It’s the big mall in the city. It was very close to the old apartment and only a tram station away from my school. I don’t really like going there, but I do almost daily because I can save a lot of time eating, shopping and getting credit for my prepaid phone card in the same place.

3 things 2 things an outsider would not understand about Warsaw:

• The signs in the street. Most words have too many consons consonants, it seems impossible to pronounce them.

• The “tourist un-friendly labels” – every product you see for sale has labels with texts in Polish only or Polish, Czech and some other non-internationally-used-language.

I’m afraid I’m still an outsider…

The fanciest neighborhood:

• I think it’s Zoliborz. And I kinda live in it 🙂 which is ironic, because I hate it

The ugliest neighborhood:

• I’ve never seen it, but I know there is one to the South of the city. I believe it’s considered ugly because of the architecture: comunist legacy!

Now my tags. Tell us about where you live:

Cristy

Andrei Sava

Is there anybody left un-tagged? 🙂