Santa Claus is comin' to town with PIEROGIES!

Beautiful Park

Artsy-fartsy Picture

Warsaw Christmas Market

So, remember in my Morocco trip post how I kept a list of life lessons learned? Well, earned several more to add to that list, but from my weekend in Warsaw. So, I guess here goes, the list of life lessons learned in Warsaw:
#1: Pierogies for breakfast, lunch and dinner are not frowned upon, but encouraged.
#2: Chocolate in all shapes and forms makes a good meal replacement as well.
#3: Pay for the more expensive hostel because it will definitely be worth it.
#4: Christmas markets are the best thing EVER, because it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Hold on, no worries, I get that all three life lessons require some explanation. So, here it goes. Basically pierogies are all over the place and come in so many different varieties that it is often hard to choose, but one can never go wrong with the classic russian version: potatoes and cheese. Here is how it goes at the pierogie place: Walk in to a warm cozy restaurant filled with yummy childhood-memory-inducing smells. Get all happy. Find a menu. Try and figure out what the words in polish mean, actually, just try and find the one that looks like 'russian' and go with it (or if it has an english menu, then pick whichever you want). Order, pay, sit down. Wait. Food arrives looking and smelling awesomely and it literally screams 'EAT ME!' to you. And even though you have that intense urge to gobble up all the pierogies at once. Stop. Don't. Take a picture of both your plate of food and any label bearing restaurant name (extra points if it has the restaurant, pass go and collect $200 if a map is included). Now you may eat the pierogies, but make sure you savor them because they disappear quite quickly. After you leave the restaurant, fear not, less than a block away you will for sure pass another pierogie restaurant if you have a hankering for more.


As for chocolate, well, Warsaw is home to the Wedel's original chocolate shop. Now, I am not a picky chocolate person, so really, any chocolate will do, but OMG, not sure any chocolate will do now that I have been to Wedel's. It is pure magic. You walk in and are hit with this warm fuzzy feeling of being literally covered in the smell of melted chocolate just begging you to spend wayyyyy too much money, it doesn't help that you walk in right into the counter filled with chocolate goodies. But, then, you sit down to order something to drink and eat and see all these tables with various chocolate creations and you start to feel overwhelmed, well, it doesn't stop there, because the menu comes out and it is way more than a menu. It is like an illustrated novel where every single picture is begging to be ordered and if you don't pay attention, ordering more and more and more could just happen. But, I ended up not spending all my money at Wedel's and got the Trio of hot chocolate and the apple pie à la mode. They were both good choices, actually, amazing choices. I think my hankering for real Thanksgiving apple pie played a role in my choice even though I also wanted a chocolatey creation, but I guess I will just have to go back.

And I guess now, I have to discuss our hostel. Not even sure where to start, except that you get what you pay for, I guess. Where to start. Well, the wifi was shit - not only was it only the lobby, but it didn't work on the iPhones, which wouldn't really be an issue because there were computers in the lobby to use, but someone was ALWAYS on them and would be for way more than the 30 min. time limit. UGH. Then, oh dear Lord, the bathroom. THE BATHROOM. There was 1 per floor, which meant that it was shared by like 20+ people. And it wouldn't have been too bad, hell yes it would have, no need to try and glorify it, I mean come on! There was mold crawling up the walls, the grouting was crumbling, there was a consistent supple of standing water with the same crumpled up wet "towel" on the floor during our whole stay. There was a sporadic supply of toilet paper and hand soap. And there were creepy crawlies all over the floor. And it smelled, and I have been living in Paris with the Paris metros, and it smelled WORST. So, definitely will not be giving Nathan's Villa Hostel a good review and will for sure, choose the more expensive option when confronted with cheap vs. cheaper vs. cheapest.

And finally, back on a happier note, the CHRISTMAS MARKET!!! It was fantastic, and the only thing that could have made it even better would have been if there was snow and all the lights were on. But, we had lots of fun from getting real candy apples to chocolate-covered fruit to doing some shopping for winter clothing essentials (i.e. hat and scarf). I wish I could describe it to its full glory, but the pictures will have to try and do it justice.

Well, that is this week's blog. Look forward to next weekend: Salon du Cheval and Dublin!

Over and out, your Global Warrior, Caitlin.

Restaurant name and map!

PIEROGIES!

Christmas Tree 

Warsaw, POLAND

More pierogies

Beer, chips 'n' guac, pollo en mollo

Candy apple from Christmas Market

It's Christmas time at Wedel's!!

E. Wedel's Chocolate Shop

Apple pie & trio of hot chocolate

Twinkling Tree

Köttbullar, Dalahäst and Kungsträdgården...

Y'all are all probably what the heck my post title means. Well, all I have to say is that this Minnesota girl, born and raised on steak and potatoes, shoveling snow and enjoying windy walks to the ice rink, fit right in in Stockholm, Sweden. So, if that isn't any tip off to what my title means, I'll lay it out for you: it's Swedish for meatballs, wooden horse and the garden where the ice rink was located.

So the big thing about Stockholm is it is expensive, which means broke-studying-abroad college students can't afford to eat out every meal and end up eating at fast food joints and I'm not saying I'm against that, but I'm a big believer that if you are going to travel somewhere, and that somewhere being somewhere when who knows when you will be back, then you should probably spend the time, money and effort to eat typical Swedish plates. Alright, rant over.

Narrowest alley way

Trolls!

Royal Castle guards

Found a horse in the castle!

Future Princess

Nordic Sea

The Vasa

Swedish Meatballs

Ice skating 

Gingerbread Pig Cookies

Reindeer!!

Yet again, found my Dalahäst. 

But, besides wanting to eat really good food - which we did get to have good hot chocolate and swedish meatballs - did lots of museums! Went to the Royal Palace and did the Royal Armory Museum - which was really cool - makes me want to actually be a REAL princess and have my own gold carriage pulled by dapple grey ponies. We also went to the Vasa Museum, which houses a HUGE old viking ship, the Vasa, which sank in 1628 just off the shore of Stockholm. It was salvaged in 1961 and is the only preserved vessel from the 1600s. Then we went to the Skansen open air museum on Djurgårdsslåtten which was really cool, kind of kid-orientated, but lots of fun - we went to an old fashion bakery and got really really really good gingerbread cookies. Also went to the children's museum where I got to hang with a reindeer!!

Being abroad means that I am missing out on a lot of important things, and the big one being: HOCKEY (NHL due to the lockout, and college and high school because they don't stream over here and forums are blocked). So, if you know me at all, any opportunity to do anything hockey-related meant that it had to be done (same for anything horse-related). So ended up going to Kungsträdgården to go ice skating! It was awesome.

Life Lessons from the Sahara Desert

I figured it isn't really worth it to recount all the missed time in between the last post and this post. So, I'm just going to talk about my fall break trip to Morocco. So overall, it was pretty dang awesome. Lots of traveling, but in the end totally worth it. Fall break started off with me getting ALL of my homework done Saturday, which meant that I didn't have to worry about doing it over break (aka, in the bus, where we all know I would have gotten car sick) or the day we got back from break, when I would be using that time to shower and do all my laundry from the trip. So, got all the homework out of the way and was all packed and ready to go by Saturday afternoon, which was good, because it was an early morning on Sunday - had to catch a 5AM cab to the airport to catch an early flight to Malaga. Landed in Malaga and it was immediate rejoicing - the sun was out, no jacket or scarf was needed and the soaking up of some vitamin D was happening. Then we proceeded to eat our way through our time in Malaga (with a walking tour thrown in - which then required us to eat because we burned so many calories). So, had lots of tapas and sangria, churros with warm milk and coffee, fajitas with chips and guac. And then it was off to Morocco, with yet again, another early AM wake up - this time, 4:15.

Quick side note here, if you haven't noticed yet, a common theme of fall break is starting to show up: early mornings. Here is a list of our mornings and what times we had to be up, with the additional fact that most evenings were quite late.
1. Sunday, Oct. 28th: 4:30am for a 5am cab
2. Monday, Oct. 29th: 9am (yay for sleeping in!)
3. Tuesday, Oct. 30th: 4am to meet ISA Spain at 4:30am
4. Wednesday, Oct. 31st: 7:30am breakfast, 9am walking tour of the Medina
5. Thursday, Nov. 1st: 7am breakfast, 8am buses left for Erfound
6. Friday, Nov. 2nd: 5:30am sunrise
7. Saturday, Nov. 3rd: 7am breakfast, 8am in jeeps
8. Sunday, Nov. 4th: 6am breakfast, 7am in bus
9. Monday, Nov. 5th: 740am train
10. Tuesday, Nov. 6th: 830am leave for 9am class (right back into the swing of things)

Back to my retelling of fall break. So, meet up with the ISA Spain group at 4:30am and proceeded to head to Morocco. Bus to Ferry to Bus. And arrived in Fez in the evening. In Fez, we had a guided walking tour of the Medina, where we went to a carpet shop, a jewelry/trinket shop, a tannery, a pharmacy and a weaving/scarf shop. It was really cool and definitely gave me a look into a different culture and way of life, and made me very grateful to be living where I do. Then it was on to Erfoud and the desert!! Which meant, first the bus to Erfoud and the 4x4 Jeeps through the desert to our "haimas" (tents/camp). We stopped for lunch at the Oasis - which was really cool. After driving through flat, scraggly hills, with lots of rocks and sand, it was really nice to come around a turn and be faced with a long strip of green trees and a winding river. Arriving to our camp that night, it was really cool to see all the stars and the Milky Way, and then to watch the moon rise. The next day was a long one - it started off with the sun rise and didn't end until long after the sun set and moon rise. After getting up before the ass crack of dawn, actually getting up to see the ass crack of dawn, ended up being totally worth it, even if the sun takes a long ass time to rise, unlike its friend, the moon. But after breakfast, it was time for the long awaited and much anticipated camel ride. I would like to point out that I made the mistake of asking a question along the lines of if the camels were used every day, only to be corrected that they weren't camels but one-hump camels (works better in french, one hump camels are 'dromadaires', two hump camels are 'chamaux," whereas in english, they are just camels). But clearly, camel riding is the closest I am going to get to riding a horse this quarter, so I definitely appreciated it. Also, we all named our camels, and mine was Samuel (the cam-u-el) and he was the pony of the camels, go figure. Halfway through our camel ride, we came to this huge dune, which we proceeded to climb up - all the Berbers were dragging us up the side of the dune by the end, because life lesson #1 learned in the Sahara, no matter how many stairs you climb in Paris or how much walking you do in Paris, climbing a sand dune will be really hard and exhausting no matter the size of the dune, hell, just walking through the sand will be hard enough. At the end of our camel ride, we walked into the nearby village and all 80+ ISA students descended on a hotel's swimming pool. Not sure a swimming pool has every been loved that much. Then it was a walk back to the camps, a quick nap and then dinner festivities commenced, which included a pre-dinner concert/dance party and then a concert at dinner. Next morning, it was back in the jeeps to the buses and to Meknes. Lots of sleeping and movie watching. Night in Meknes at a fancy hotel, where dinner consisted of pasta with spicy meat sauce, spanish rice, chicken, french fries and a flan for dessert. The next morning it was back on the buses to Malaga, then on the ferry for a quick jaunt back across the Strait of Gibraltar and back on the buses to finish in Malaga. Here is where life lesson #2 learned in the Sahara comes in to play, no matter how many road trips you take to and from the cabin/Ohio/Colorado/Montana etc., nothing can prepare you for busing to the Sahara desert. NOTHING. After getting back to Malaga, all we really had left was our day of traveling to get back to Paris. We walked to the train station, trained from Malaga to Sevilla, took the bus from the train station to the airport, sat around waiting for the plane, took plane from Sevilla to Paris-Beauvais, then bused back to Paris, where I finally hopped on the metro back towards apartment. So after many days of traveling, finally back in Paris! Where I promptly showered and did all my laundry and then went to sleep. And the next day, right back into the swing of things.

Life lessons learned from the Sahara Desert:
1. No matter how many stairs you climb in Paris or how much walking you do in Paris, climbing a sand dune will be really hard and exhausting no matter the size of the dune, hell, just walking through the sand will be hard enough.
2. No matter how many road trips you take to and from the cabin/Ohio/Colorado/Montana etc., nothing can prepare you for busing to the Sahara desert. NOTHING.
3. Even though you might not get that many pit stops during bus travel, and thus think that not drinking water is a good idea. Drink water. Because then when you do spend a whole day out in the sun (and drink some water), you will end up dehydrated and then be miserable for quite some time.
4. Wear sunscreen. And if you think you have enough on, put more on. I ended up with some color, but mostly on areas that didn't receive 2 coats of sunscreen.
5. Take more pictures than you think you should. Spend more money than you think you should. I did neither and kind of regret it, but at least I have the memories and some pictures.

beach in Malaga

Cathedral in Malaga

Roman theatre ruins in Malaga

Tapas and Wine

Bye Spain! 

Hello Africa!

The Medina

Moon rise

Climbing the huge sand dune 

Lone Camel

Sun rise

Samuel the Cam-u-el