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So we managed to make it to Poznan from Gdnask, after waiting on the wrong platform for some time. This time we packed a lovely squished lunch of pastries and pizza-like breads.. yum. We had to share our compartment with lots of people; none of them attractive and most of them overweight. At one point I managed to lay down and pretend I was asleep in order to keep some seats fat-free.
It took another 5 hours to get here but we made it. The hostel was about a 20 minute walk from the station - the detailed directions (involving trams) that I was emailed by the hostel were cleverly ignored. Our hostel is very nice but very different; it's on the main 'high street', through a little scuffy alley way and up a squillion aging stairs. It felt like I was entering a posh mansion via the derelict servant's entrance! But once inside (the heavily padded door with about 4 different locks on it) it's very homely. All of the rooms are painted a different solid, bright colour. Ours is yellow, the common room is red and the bathroom is green. All but one of the people working here are very friendly; the miserable one has the early shift so it's understandable.
After arriving last night and settling in we set of in search of adventure (mostly food). We found the main square in minutes (God Bless Adams internal GPS) and after watching some American Indians do a bit of singing and dancing (There is a very strange mix of lots of different cultures here) Adam decided upon a restaurant. I promtly ignored him and insisted we take a walk around the square to find a nicer place; 15 minutes later, after seeing more craft market stalls that you could shake a stick at and buying some English novels to pass the next train journey we sat down to eat in the restaurant Adam had chosen. (Fairly average food and below average service, I win.. haha!)
Afterwards we set out in search of the huge cream-loaded waffles we'd seen everyone eating but got bored in the queue and - after watching a man play the didgeridoo (?) - started to head home. We read our brand new (the 'new' part being debatable; we got them from a toothless market woman) books for a few hours whilst listening to the excited chatter of other British travellers (by 'excited chatter' I mean irritating, noisy babble and by 'british' I mean chav-like) and then sank into our beds (I got top bunk!) at about 10!
This morning I woke up really early - mostly because the dorm next to ours did - and so we were dressed and breakfasted before 9. We headed out to the nearby shopping centre to get out of the pouring rain and spent a few hours looking around some fairly normal and some fairly eccentric shops (one had large stuffed penis' that danced when you clapped near them). I bought a small MP3 player and a few CD's because mine has broken and train journeys in crowded cabins mean that conversational entertainment is limited.
We then headed back to the square to find something of interest to do. Poznan has lots of churches and a few museums (and two Zoos!) but we'd seen churches, the Zoos were in the rain and because it was Monday (the Polish version of the Sabbath, apparently) none of the museums were open!
We had a pizza-lunch in a tiny little restaurant off of the main square, where the customer next to us (the only other diner in the place) spoke more English than the waitress. We managed to order fairly simply translated things (carbonara and a pizza) and got what we ordered. However; my carbonara smelt a little odd, and after eating half of it I was more than aware of why: it had about half a bottle of wine in it! I'm not much of a drinker and I ended up rather sloshed, to say the least! We went for a walk down some back streets and found a few pretty churches and an ex-jesuit school that is now a ballet school (?). It was quite nice actually, it had an open-air stage in the middle of the building; it looked like the area used to fight in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and I wanted to do some pirouttes but due to my intoxication and the fact that the stage was covered in rain water, Adam politely lead me home.
Boring, I know, but the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting in front of this computer ripping music from my new CD's onto my new MP3 player. Adam sat with the patience of a God whilst I tried to convince the 18th century Linux-using contraption that it did know how to do it. It took about 4 hours, I think, for 2 cds. Dear, Lord.
After this we followed our grumbling tummies on a walk through some interesting back streets to find a restaurant called Madagascar. I went in at first because the main room was done out like a cave, with excellent plastering and lighting.. it looked really cosy and interesting. Then we followed the 'cave' through to a sweeping set of stairs and an even larger room, also full of tables and decorated with artisting ivy in all of the corners and creeping over the walls. It was gorgeous!
There wasn't a single customer in the place, but the staff seemed friendly enough so we sat down and struggled our way through the Polish menu. In the end I went for a 'Polish traditional meal' of (directly translated) "Pie Salmon Stuffed" and Adam simply said 'ask the chef to recommend something Polish' (He ended up with the meat version of mine). They were both delicious and Adam learnt how to say so in Polish; he said it to the waiter who thanked him and then marched into the kitchen to loudly explain it to the chef. Adam found it very embarrassing but I'm certain they were both chuffed to bits.
We both had some interesting deserts too; Adam a fruit-ish thing served in a martini glass and me a chocolate pancake-like thing.
We're now back at the hostel and ready for bed; we have a relatively early train tomorrow so we must sleep! So, goodbye again!
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