Djen dobry
Wow, what a crazy couple of days its been. I'll get to the rest of the story, but the punchline is that I'm stuck in Krakow for one more night and may be going back to Eugene in the morning instead of India.
Friday started off innocently enough, I went to work like usual and tried to get some work done. It was a bit frustrating, my mail kept cutting out, and LLP couldn't use Jira or QA6 all day long. Did another code review and I finally got all my documents over to Photon via FTP.
Everyone wanted to take me out one last time and they were making plans for me, but wouldn't tell me where we were going, saying it was a surprise. I was into whatever they came up with. Maciek, Szymon, and Artur wanted to take me to race go-carts right after work before we did the late night thing too. Everyone seemed really reluctant to send me off and wanted me to come back. That made me so happy, and I definitely would like to visit again.
Go-carts were a blast! I feel bad that I forgot to take pictures while we were there. It was a decent sized indoor racing track. The guys did their best to explain the rules to me and what the different colored flags meant. Right out of the gate they were blowing me away. I got lapped like 10 times by each of them. They were good. The little cars were hard to control and by the end I had given up and was just going for a leisurely cruise around the track. The track had a camera that recorded your lap times and summed it all up for you at the end. I think Szymon had us all beat, but Maciek argued with him over whether it was the best average time or best single lap that counted. Good times.
Maciek and Artur took me back to the hotel and I got some room service for dinner, probably the worst meal I've had in Krakow. Around 9 I walked down to the Teatre Bagatela and met up with Artur and Gosha. After hanging out people watching for a bit they led me to the surprise night spot we were going to, Szisza Club. Its a hookah bar! I thought I was in India already, except that the belly dancers were all skimpily clad tiny polish girls and it was just tabacco in the water pipes instead of hashish, but still it was pretty darn cool. Anyways, I was super happy at the turn out for the night. Looks like I managed to maintain the Friday Field Trip tradition even when abroad. Maja is LLPs pint marshal apparently because she picked the place and knows all the hot spots.
Yeah, I never smoke, but when in Poland... Actually, the water pipe made the smoke not so irritating and they added apple and mint to it so that you got this nice flavor aftertaste, I was surprised and impressed. Still not going to be something I do on a regular basis. While we were there we met a really cool English guy, David, who was alone and said it was his first night in Krakow. Paul and I were happy to hear another native English speaker so we chatted and pulled him into the group and he fit in nicely. We all talked and smoked and drank and laughed for a couple hours and caught a couple dances in the main room. Then we started planning our next destination. David was up for more and everyone was talking about the Lubu-Dubu debauchle so his interest was piqued. So we packed up the group and headed that way around 1 am.
The bars don't close around here until 4 or 5 am. My flight to India wasn't scheduled to leave until 3:15pm the next day so I was set for a night on the town. We wandered down to Lubu-Dubu chatting all the way. David got to see it and agreed that it was a bit cheesy but still a good time because it was crowded everyone was dancing. We did a few rounds of shots and got down on the dance floor. I got to dance with a nice looking Polish girl for a little while, but I couldn't understand a word she was saying to me. I just smiled at her and kept dancing. I think she got frustrated with me and went off in search of easier conquests. I wasn't torn up about it.
Around 4 am I called it quits, to protestations from the crew, but I held strong and David and Maja also decided to leave with me. We grabbed out coats, said our final good-byes and headed out. It was sad to say good-bye to David and I hope he is having a great time here in Krakow.
I remember getting back to my hotel room and getting ready for bed this time. And then Saturday from hell began...
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