Are You Ready for Some Schnitzel?

For many guys back home in the States, the tradition of Monday Night Football is something that has always been close to our hearts as something to cheer us up a bit after surviving the drudgery of another dismal Monday working day. It’s been a part of American culture for as long as I can remember anyway, which is getting longer as each day passes. For 16 weeks a year there is always Monday Night Football. That means during this period there is always a chanced to escape and relax a bit after the short weekend. However, if you’re a guy in the states, it’s too bad you don’t live in Poland for Monday night schnitzel and beer night at U Szwejka (at Szwejk’s) in Warsaw. Here it's not only about escaping, but it's like getting another weekend evening getting added to our life. Sorry, but Mondays in Poland are better for the guys (and girls too).

Read the following information with caution. May cause hunger!

Imagine, cutting board sized Vienna style schnitzel steaks coated in bread crumbs, with fresh lemon juice, a side of sour kraut, red cabbage, served with French fries, for a mere 15 zlotys (five dollars). Sound good? Then come to Warsaw on Mondays. If you’re not convinced yet(and shame on me for not mentioning this yet,) the best part is that the beer is on special on Mondays. One liter of Czech Pilsner Uriquell, or Polish Tyeskie, will only set you back 7.50 Zl. (two dollars and fifty cents). You can procure a full liter on Monday nights for less than a half liter will cost you in other pubs. If you come to Paris for the proverbial romantic weekend getaway, make a stopover in Warsaw on your way home.



The Czech style restaurant is fashioned in tribute to the Hasek novel “The Good Soldier Sviejk,” which is partly a World War I satire centered around the tribulations of the central character Svejk. When reading the novel, Svejk immediately might seem harmless and fun loving to the reader, which in a way characterizes the restaurant’s fun and gregarious atmosphere. A friendly place, which offers a cozy and convivial setting that would impress the grandest of Czechs-even Svejk himself.



It’s crowded though, so don’t expect a free table on arrival. The plethora of servers whizzing around bringing giant beer mugs to tables are friendly enough and will help you find a table if one is free. Normally though, be ready for a bit of a line outside the door. However, we’re usually sitting in a table in ten minutes tops after turning up.






By the way, some of us teachers have started a little club. It’s called the Szwejka Monday Night Schnitzel Club. This is no April fools joke. It's no ruse. We’re on facebook. We have members. We’re growing in numbers. We mean business. We can all attest to the fact that it’s better than Monday Night Football as well. Give us the Pepsi Challenge. We unanimously choose Szwejk over NFL on TV on Mondays. Join us. Come for the Schnitzels, and stay for the beer(s). Oh and by the way, girls are welcome too. They also have 10zl (three dollar) strawberry margaritas.

367 Days and Counting

In just about one year Warsaw won’t only be the capital of Poland accommodating close to 2,000,000 residents, but the city will also play host to European Football Championship. From today in fact, the kickoff will be in 367 days. This means, well a lot. More specifically though, it means people of all European walks of life, all shapes, sizes and beer preferences will be traveling here to root for their respective nation’s football club. As a reminder to myself, I plan to stay out of their way. Anyway,it means that in addition to the normally hectic pace of life around these parts, and as a foregone conclusion thousands of football fanatical tourists will be struggling to find a hotel room and a bar seat on lively Nowy Swiat. Oh, and yes, the brand spanking new national stadium is also expected to be open for business.

Seating 55,000, boasting 4 mega restaurants, a massive glass roof to protect the bellowing fans in the winter, close to 900 restrooms, and an ultra modern design showcasing a 100 foot tower reaching out into the sky, the soon to be finished stadium will rival any other major stadium built in Europe. Of course it just has to finish before June 2012. According to Sports and Tourism Minister Adam Giersz, it is the Symbol of the Euro 2012 project, which is being co-hosted by Poland and the Ukraine.

It’s no secret. Rising out of the sky as one traverses by tram across the Vistula River, the stadium under construction will catch the attention of any curious or out of town passenger. The construction site now looks as if something truly grand might just grace Warsaw with a truly magnificent treasure any time soon. It just has to finish before kickoff for the opening match in June 2012. Go to the website and chart the progress for yourself. The website is chalked full of interactive gadgets to keep you busy for a while, and you can even check out my video from a week ago.

http://www.stadionnarodowy.org.pl/index.php?lang=en

A Kafkaesque Experience

What is a Kafkaesque experience exactly? I’ve read The Metamorphosis, and to me I got the impression that one goes through a process of feeling less and less significant and relevant as time passes. Then you finally you get squished and no one cares. That’s life. Luckily, this wasn't what happened to me when I went to Café Kafka by the University library last week.

This is what my Kafkaesque experience was like. To start, unlike visits to Starbucks and other mega-coffee houses, I was treated like an anonymous customer, which was a pleasant change. There was no chirpy Starbucks banter greeting me as I approached the cash register, no ultra-clean Coffee-Heaven Uniformity, and no there were no prices on the cakes in the display case. I went inside, as one of the handful of available mellow employees while calmly, almost surreptitiously took my order, and invited me park myself in a comfortable seat where I would be served a welcoming cup of coffee by another amicable, yet reserved resident coffee maker. I got nothing spectacular, just a simple coffee. Or a cup of Kafka with a small flask of warm milk. For a coffee house these days simplicity was a pleasant surprise.

What’s interesting though is the atmosphere. A wall of books (which are for sale by the kilo,) a random wall of antlers, furry bar-stool seats near the window, a disorganized colorful chalkboard menu, a pile of board games, cartoon posters, and black and white tile floors, which in sum gave me the feeling that I was back in Berkeley in the mid 90’s before average Americans got the infections coffee bar buzz and before everything got all corporate.

It was almost like everything had been recycled. Café Kafka is a testament to all those places that don’t exist anymore in America, and will slowly be erased by the mega-coffee franchises globalizing their way to a neighborhood near you. If you want a quiet place for a chat, bury yourself in your book or lab-top or want an escape from the typical coffee scene in Warsaw, then metamorphisize yourself and opt for something simpler.

Out For Some Air!

After a spell of an unusually cold and snowy introduction to the winter, there was a brief pause in the frigid temperatures this weekend. As a matter of fact, It was just brief enough to pop out for a stroll down Novy Swiat and on through the old town in Warsaw to see Christmas lights and other ornate decorations in all of its phosphorescence.

Most of the Downtown of Warsaw is strung up with Christmas lights, and it's hard not to notice the large array of shiny decorated lights everywhere you walk. If you're feeling cooped up from the recent cold temperatures, a good way to confront the loneliness is to bundle up and step out for some fresh air in the old town, and to have a look at the well decorated streets in all its Christmas glory. The best way is to start from the Three Crosses Church, and continue on Nowy Swiat and down through Krakowskie Przedmiescie past the Presidential Palace. From here just follow the crowd to the Castle. Check out the gargantuan tree flashing as you approach. From there it's just a few steps to the home stretch on the square, where you can warm yourself with some hot wine from one of the kiosks at the Christmas Market. Have a look at my video from the journey!

How to Go Back to School When You Are Old

There is one word I often associate with myself, and those who know me probably associate me with the word too. That word is naive. Case in point, despite graduating from a relatively esteemed University in Northern California, I have to admit, going back to school after a ten year proverbial lost weekend has been a lot more challenging than I could have ever predicted. Despite reading enough books over the past ten years to fill a small apartment, and having more than enough motivation to pursue a graduate degree, I’ve encountered a few problems coping with the first year back in school. Getting back into the groove of school wasn’t easy. It would be naive to think it would be.

Why was I naive? I can give you two reasons. The first was that I thought my life experience would overcompensate for the fact that I wasn’t the best student during my bachelor’s studies. The second reason is that I didn’t have any clue on how to study effectively when I started last year. I was too ambitious and I tried to read everything required for the course, but I wasn’t able to focus on the most relevant themes or ideas. Additionally, since I didn’t consider changes in technology over the past ten years, I wasn’t able to save that precious time that could have been saved by consulting the internet.

This is not to say I have been completely unsuccessful. I am still managing high marks, and maintaining a pleasant and quite informal rapport with my classmates and professors. As a bonus I seem to get along with everyone. In one sense, having old school manners helps in some respects, it’s one of my advantages. It is true, my likeableness has always been a plus, and that is one of my good qualities. Even better, on another positive note; currently looking back at the first year, I have evolved into a more realistic and effective student. After a daunting first year, the second academic year feels more breathable, and I should manage to finish with decent enough marks

Nevertheless, in the beginning, the first year of coming back to school for me was a wake- up call in several aspects. So if you’re mulling over your inner voice calling you to pursue a two –year master’s degree after a decade or more long break from school, then don’t fret! For now simply pay heed to some simple advice to make the beginning less problematic for you, so you won’t find yourself as lost as I was.
Of course, the most important change over the last ten years has been the speed and availability of the internet, and everything that goes with it. Ten years ago, I had (barely) an internet connection, but I wasn’t connected in today’s sense. The Wiki-world ten years ago it wasn’t. Doing research ten years ago back in the late 90’s required a little more leg-work. Therefore, searching for knowledge took a bit more effort. For technophobes like me, it sometimes seems counter-intuitive to just search whatever is being researched on the net. To make a long story short, I have learnt to embrace the internet instead of shy away from it. Everybody else is doing it, you should too!

However, be forewarned. With the internet comes all the information you would ever need-and don’t! Joseph Nye has a famous quip called ‘the paradox of plenty,’ meaning that there is a swarm of information infesting us these days that you need to pay heed to legitimacy and academic appropriateness of it to do proper research. With an overabundance of information, your source can be more important than the material itself. For this, simply googling something might not be enough for gathering materials for thesis writing. The main search engines such as Google and yahoo are more often used for commerce, but building scholarship can be difficult through these engines. I have discovered places like J-Store and Pro-Quest search engines, which are solely academic sites, and are more trusted with doing research. The University Libraries should have these installed in their computers. Regardless, the best advice is to always consider how reliable your source is. These days with the internet everyone can pass as an expert!

Yet, as you know not everything you learn will exist over the internet. One will eventually have to read a book or two. Recalling my first world politics class, I can attest that I had to read a plethora of them. The reading comprehension wasn’t the difficult part. What really tortured me were my weak time management skills. For me, everything is interesting, yet when learning academically, one really needs to know what is relevant and what isn’t. As was the problem when I had to read a lengthy article and give a short presentation on one main idea. My fault was that I read the article and summarized every single idea the author had written. My task was to give a short analysis on Kissinger’s reasons for the end of the Cold War.

What my result was to say the least-different. The professor wanted a short and sweet, albeit direct summary of the fore mentioned topic, alas I presented my fifteen page summary of the entire article which consisted of me giving a boring lecture of every treaty and meeting between the 1970’s and 1980’s between the USA and the Soviet Union. The problem was that in reading everything, I wasted a lot of time, and wasn’t able to pin-point the main idea clearly, which is kind of the point in academic life-getting the main idea. We all have ideas, but to study someone else’s ideas you need to understand them.

I had a bumper sticker on my car once that said; ‘the truly educated never graduate.’ I consider myself educated, I can’t tell you how truly although I’m still learning. What’s truly interesting though about learning, is peeling away some of the layers, and understanding that the learning process is educational itself. Regardless, I tell everyone that if I won the lottery, I’d always study. Learning is important. For what end, it’s hard to say. We’re all different. Maybe I’m naïve, but learning isn’t really a bad thing.

Below is a short interview with a couple of my younger but more successful classmates!

An Early Winter

Author and New York Times Foreign Corespondent Thomas Friedman in a recent article called our current epoch of radically changing weather conditions 'global weirding.' For me it's an honest expression, without any political connotations. It doesn't imply much, other than the fact that hey, weird things have been happening with the weather.

Take Warsaw for instance. Maybe it isn't exactly weird for you, but for a Californian boy, it's odd to see so much snow before December. In my own bemusement, I spent a cold afternoon documenting some of this weirdness in Warsaw. Winter has come early here.

My Fair Lady of Warsaw

Warsaw is a city that has no shortage of symbols. Chopin, Copernicus, and the historically appreciated statue of General Pilsudski stoically standing guard near Plac Bankowy are just to name a few. They are all appreciated and iconic in their own right. Yet, none seems to grace Warsaw with their presence in such a refined and graceful way as Syrena the Mermaid.

The legend of the mermaid is normally attributed to the sea, however in Warsaw it is another matter entirely. Syrena the fair lady of the capital resides permanently in numerous locations. For example she can easily be recognized on the square and on Swietokrzyski Bridge near the University library. Her permanent stature there wielding sword and shield is a symbol of beauty and guidance. Moreover, in a more transitory context you can see the permeating beauty of Warsaw on busses and trams as you guide your way around the center. She will also be the symbol for the 2012 Euro Football Championship, which will be co-hosted by Poland and the Ukraine.


The legend is that she helped Prince Kazimierz find his way during a hunting expedition by firing burning arrows into the sky. After finding his way, I hope he thanked her. Regardless, the original statue is in a museum, where the model for the statue was actress Krystyna Krahelska.