Oh to speak Czech in Poland..

After a weekend in Poland, it is good to be 'home.'  The weekend started bright and early Friday morning with about 10.5 hours on the bus (we did get an hour for lunch).  And despite the fact that the trip was unbearably long, it was good to have all the AIFS students back together again. We all live in the same building, but we have created our own sub-groups (naturally..) and this was just a good refresher of our whole group.  It was great to catch up with those people that you "sometimes see and say hello to, but don't ever have a chance to sit down and talk." And it reemphasized how far we've really come after having been here for 2 and a half months..

Upon arriving in Krakow, we headed to the main square to grab a quick bite to eat. In a frantic attempt for all 54 of us to get a traditional Polish meal, we somehow seemed to end up at the same restaurant. And for some (odd..) reason, this was not very pleasing to the staff of the restaurant ;]. So instead, Annie, Kari, Court, and I headed down the street to the highly recommended Georgian restaurant..and oh man, was it worth it!

Now, to understand the next part of this story, I need to rewind a few months. Right before I left for Prague, mom pulled out all the old European money that her and dad had from their previous European adventures. Part of that was some Polish money from 20 or so years ago. Fast-forward to this weekend. Oh man, was I excited when I input the 1000 zlotych in the currency converter to be told I had close to $400 on my hands. Little did I know that Poland apparently changed their currency in the last 15 years to compensate for the overinflation the country used to have (100-1000%!!). Good thing I found out when the waitress said "This isn't real...not anymore at least." Crying shame. Apparently I can exchange the "old" zloty for the "new" zloty at the Polish National Bank. But my 1000 zlotych note is approximately worth 1 new zloty (35 cents). Not worth it in my opinion. I'd rather frame it!

Apart from that, our weekend mostly consisted of wandering around and sampling polish cuisine.

Sunday, we began the trip back to Prague (it was a short weekend..) with a 3 hour stop to Auschwitz along the way. I won't talk about it, because I don't think I can put it into words. I tend to express myself through photos (if you haven't noticed...) and so that is what I will do. But since I'm simply describing via photos, I think it deserves it's own blog. So look to the next one.