The One With More Of The Capital City Than Just The National Stadium

Last Sunday there was the Warsaw marathon - took me 4:44 to finish. I have to admit I did not do my best; it could have gone better, but somehow I lacked motivation. Or maybe it was the early hour (a marathon starting at 9 am means that you have to get up around 6 am in order to be able to eat properly before the run). Or maybe insufficient amount of trainings. Well, probably all that.

Some observations:

• great route
• great weather (got tanned)
• perfect overall organisation
• finishing at the national stadium is a nice touch
• such an early start decreases the amount of supporters significantly - the streets were almost completely empty (at least in the first hour)
• having a national tv cameraman following you in a car for the last 10 kilometres can give you a boost you need

That's it for this year. Next year I'm planning to complete the Crown of the Polish Marathons, which means visiting Wrocław and Poznań.

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Apart from the marathon. I have mixed feelings about Warsaw. There are some nice places there, but one so distant from the other. The city seems too big and designed for cars, not for people.

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At the Manekin restaurant:

I'm sorry, I have always been bad at math - could you help me...? [with calculating the change]

Good thing those pancakes were really that tasty and I was that tired and hungry after the marathon... Otherwise I wouldn't have stand the long waiting line, the even longer meal preparation waiting time, the messed-up order and the waitress who wasn't able to hold a plate, let alone to subtract some numbers.

Stay tuned.

The One In The Capital City

And the Warsaw National Stadium was pretty much all I got to see.

Stay tuned.

The One At World's End

Saturday

7.30 a.m. I had found a person going to the Dębno marathon and willing to take passengers. There were eight of us and turned out to be a varied company: Tadeusz, the driver, and his wife, both members of runner's clubs (plus his father as a backup driver); their friend, Monika, participant of half-marathons and marathons all over the world; Andrzej, one the fathers of the Cracovia Marathon (!); his friend, Stanisław, who used to work at Wisła with women's volleyball team; and a nice, quiet guy, whose name I never got...
So the journey was full of tales of marathons and sport events.

Slept at the gymnasium, where I shared the floor with a hundred other runners. And a few of my travel companions - despite them being real, well-known sport VIPs (constantly some officials kept recognising them and starting a discussion), they did not bother to get a hotel room or something like that, but instead they just shared our common area.

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Sunday

Trying to relax before start, I read some running related quotes displayed on a board at the marathon headquarters. Two favourites of mine being:

At the finish line of a marathon you can feel that you are worth the air you breathe.

And if you aren't bone-tired and don't feel like vomiting, then it means you could have run faster...

And to top it all:

Quotations are prosthesis for mind.

Start
Surprised greatly - nobody ran for their lives, nobody tried to get ahead of everyone else and trample me in the process. Amazing.
In company of two of my travel-mates.


5km
Lost my travel-mates. Found my own pacemakers - two guys running at ~6min./1km.


13km
Lost two minutes trying to resolve problems with my mp3player - turned out it was set to repeat one folder and I did not want to listen to the Twilight soundtrack over and over again - I wanted to listen to New Moon (Twilight Pt. 2) and Eclipse (Twilight Pt. 3) as well ;D


17km
The leader overtook us. For him it was 34km - so he was literally two times faster.


25km
Lost my pacemakers when they met some friends who delayed them.


36km
Made it by myself, keeping nice and steady pace. Until my stomach almost betrayed me and I had to slow down.


40km
Saw Tadeusz and Agnieszka heading for the finish line. For me it was still one more turn.


Finish
4:28:20 - my personal best.
And I had seriously feared that I would not finish within the time limit.

After quick shower (no queue - one ladies room seemed to be enough to handle all the female participants), I went to get my recovery meal. A girl - a teenager, one of the many volunteers - immediately came to me and asked if she could get the meal for me, told me to sit down and wait as she would bring me everything. That was so sweet I almost cried. Really, the people were wonderful.

All my travel-mates made it. We got back to Kraków at 3 a.m.

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What you can say about the Dębno marathon:

• At world`s end.
• The oldest marathon in Poland (how come?!)
• Expensive - the registration fee is extremely high in comparison.
• They provide no sport t-shirts (despite the extremely high entry fee).
• There are no pacemakers ("they could not afford it" - despite the extremely high entry fee).
• Small time limit - 5 hours, whereas it is usually 6 or 6,5.
• Route made of four overlapping circles, very confusing, especially at the beginning.
• Hot spot connection at the headquarters kept freezing.

However!
They also have the nicest, the kindest, the keenest, the most helpful, the most dedicated volunteers! I mean it. Had it not been for the crew, I would probably not count it as a memorable event. They made all the difference. They were everywhere they were needed, they knew everything they should, they helped you before you even had thought of asking. And they smiled sincerely.
Plus all the supporters on the way - also very involved, despite their small number (small town, small villages), very engaged.
So the people made up for everything else.

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And why all that? The plan is to finally get the Crown of the Polish Marathons and so the Dębno Marathon is the first step (of five).

Stay tuned.

The One With White Chocolate Coated Blackcurrant Filled Gingerbread

I have visited some interesting places in Europe, but I still have lots of catching up to do when it comes to my home country. The cities are what I want to experience particularly. Last time it was Poznań. This time - Toruń.

Toruń's Old Town consists mostly of timber framing constructions, red brick historical buildings and ruins. Oh, and bizarre doors. You can feel it has different style than the cities of Southern Poland. For me, it resembles some Northern Dutch towns.
Plus there is plenty of nice museums and a great science centre nearby.

Some more photos

Stay tuned.

The One At Tour De Pologne

Due to the Tour de Pologne race, the main (and only reasonable) road from Wieliczka to Kraków was to be closed today. So I figured it would be easier to go to the city by bike. And it was.
It was also much, much funnier! While I was coming back to Wieliczka, the racers were cycling towards Kraków, and riding towards them was already an unusual experience. Some people came out to watch and support them - and some of them started pretending to support me: a man correcting me (you should turn around, it's the other way around!); some guys clapping (respect!); children shouting and cheering. They were all smiling and I was smiling, and it was the most hilarious 10km bike ride in my life.

Stay tuned.

The One In The Mountains

In the mountains, first time in a looong time.

Physical stamina tests - lung capacity, muscle strength - passed. Never got out of breath, never felt totally exhausted.
Jogging, Irish dancing, cycling seem all to work out well and keep me in good condition.

Living in the most flat of all countries is a plus when a bike is your main means of transportation.
And you do not really notice - until you get back to normal and suddenly long forgotten bike gears start being useful again.
And you start missing slopes, hills, mountains...

Stay tuned.

The One With Where 10 Books Moves Out, 10 Moves In

Another book exchange in Cracow (I had already been to one before).
Actually, it is the whole series. They organise such event one a month in the city centre.
It works a tad differently: you get the ticket with the number of books you have brought and you are allowed to take out the amount of books up to that number. It you take less, the ones that are left are going to be passed on to the library.

Rip Van Rinkle, a collection of children's classics by Washington Irving (in English!), seems to be the most promising part of my today's haul.

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The moment I was closing the door behind me, leaving to catch a bus, I thought I could go by bike as well. And so I did.

First time a sign like this came in handy. More than once, actually.
It turns out there are quite a lot of them in the city centre. And thank heavens for that!

Stay tuned.

The One Not In The Traffic Jam

YOU ARE NOT STUCK IN TRAFFIC.
YOU ARE TRAFFIC.
Get a bike. Break Free!

CYCLE CHIC (from Aggie)

On my way to work, on a bike, between 7 and 8 am.
I always pass by a huge market and the traffic around there usually gets quite big. But it was the first time that I was cycling there on a weekday and during rush hour, when, of course, the traffic gets even greater.
So it was also the first time when the cars were stuck whereas I, at the same time, was moving along the line of vehicles.
I wish you could see the smile on my face at that very moment.

Stay tuned!

The One With The Time Machine

First time the route (North by Northwest) took me 60 minutes.
Next time it was 55 minutes.
Another time - 50 minutes.

If this trend holds, does it mean that eventually I will get my private wormhole...?

Stay tuned.

The One On The Bicycle

Got a bike!
Rode a bike in Kraków first time in... hmmm... for the first time ever, I guess.

And it was terrifying - for to many reasons to even start listing.
Exactly as I had expected.

So I believe the first goal would be to find some cyclist-friendly routes - to be able to avoid multilane carriageways at every occasion.

Stay tuned.

The One With The Statue That Wasn't There

I had been wondering if I could find a theme for spending a weekend in Poznań and it finally dawned on me: if in Paris or Rome you can follow the characters from the books by Dan Brown (grrr, I call him: Umberto Eco for the birds), then in Poznań you can search for all the locations from Jeżycjada, a series of youth novels by Małgorzata Musierowicz. And I was right to suspect that this plan would get approval from the friend I was visiting.
We followed some guides, lists and maps found on the web. However, neither of us remembered many details, so there where moments when we did not exactly know what we were looking for. At some point, wandering around the city, we tried to find the monument of a deep-sea diver. We went back and forth, but did not manage to localise it. There was an option that there was no staue at all and it was only a literary fiction; but that was highly unlikely, since Musierowicz always writes about things that do exist. Alternatively, the statue had been removed or somebody had made a mistake placing it on the map. After getting back home, we checked and found out there had actually never been any statue - one little girl used to put flowers underneath a fire hydrant and call it a deep-sea diver...

In general, Poznań tuned out to be a charming city. Before the visit I had not had any great expectations. Yes, Poznań is the capital of Greater Poland and it is a big city, and an old one too. But nobody ever praises it, everyone always talks about other places e.g. Wrocław or Gdańsk.

What I can say to describe the city accurately is that it is anything but flat. And I mean it in both literally and figuratively.
First of all, the ground is hilly. Which makes the city panorama all the more interesting. There are many spots from where you can see various areas and recognise different landmarks, and these views keep surprising you.
What I personally got crazy about were the historical tenement houses. They contribute greatly to the city unique character. They are marvellous and what I find extraordinary about them is that they are truly three-dimensional: so many balconies, roof-towers, bay-windows and all kind of architectural ornaments, slopes and curves, that they seem to be more like living creatures, growing on their own, not just artificial, man-made buildings. Moreover, they are everywhere - not only in the strict centre, but also in the neighbouring districts - and each of them is one of a kind.
The main square is very colourful. Truth to tell, the whole city is.
And the number of fastfood restaurants is very low, you can hardly spot any place of this kind. Instead there are plenty of small cafés, pubs and bistros.
What is interesting the oldest part of the city is not the main square and the area around, but the district on the other side of the river, where the first cathedral in Poland was build and where the first kings were buried.

The full photo-journal can be found, as always, on Picasa.

The one, huge obstacle that currently makes it difficult to enjoy Poznań is that the city is going to host the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. Which means that at this moment it is one, large construction area and a work in progess. Still, this commotion is going to be over soon and didn't make me like the city less.

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I do love travelling by train. You get a few hours of undisturbed solitude. You can read, listen to music or simply watch the landscape changing. And there is absolutely nothing to distract you. I believe tranquillity is the word best describing my state of mind on such occasions.

Stay tuned.

The One With The Girls Night In

What is the very essence of the girls night in?
I will tell you what. Sampling films based on books by Jane Austen in search for the best, the most recognisable scenes, that every respectable girl has already seen a thousand times. And then comparing one adaptation to another and contrasting the scenes, the actors, the setting etc.
But apart from Jane Austen...

Jane Eyre

Only one word: passion. There is absolutely none in this film. It is pretty and the music, work of Dario Marianelli, is romantic (I have been listening to the score for a few weeks already), the moors are charming... Yet, there is more life in the landscapes and the weather; they seem to reflect the real feelings of the characters and convey their emotions much more proficiently than the actual people do.
However, that is basically my only complaint, so all in all, it is worth seeing.

I have read the book before and I didn't like it. I could never sympathise with Jane, which I believe to be weird, since she is quite an original, strong and independent person, not some light-headed, silly girl.

I'm not in need of tea, thank you.

Hmmm, maybe that is the reason why.

August Rush

If you are OK with the fact that not only you know exactly how the movie ends, but you are able to tell the whole storyline scene by scene... Well... If you are OK with that, then you can find a sheer pleasure in this film: great music, great roles (marvellous Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, wonderful Bono-like Robin Williams and adorable Freddie Highmore); beautifully edited, sweet and warm story of a musical prodigy, whose determination to find his parents lets him overcome every obstacle and leads him straight to the happy ending that you expect from the first minute.
A contemporary Pinocchio, I would say.

Drive

Wow. I believe I have never seen so many slow motion scenes in one movie - and through that they are all the more meaningful. Ryan Gosling is unbelievable, Carey Mulligan good as always, and the others not bad either. (Although he plays so well that nobody could have spoilt the effect, no matter what. It is his movie). The score by Cliff Martinez (hid did Solaris, for example), perfectly matching the mood, combined with a few songs that I would never imagine I could fall for - and yet I did.
Brilliant.

To experience this girls night in I had to go quite far North, but it was totally worth the effort. And I still love travelling, especially by trains, so the journey itself was a pleasure for the most part.

Stay tuned.