Studying Med in the White and Red

Monday, May 16, 2011

Almost Done

So the weather has been pretty good lately which has been quite nice. It was actually nearly 80 last week and should be around 80 this week. It only took about a week or so for the plants to bloom entirely, quite a spectacle. The last 2 weeks was spent getting prepared for the dreaded biophysics final exam, on which I did well. Each of the last 2 weekends we went to a concert in the Eskulap (dorm) club. The first was this dubstep DJ named ….Pavilion. For those of you that aren't familiar with dubstep, it is basically the sound of the deceptacons transforming but amplify that by 1000 and add some breath sucking bass. It was actually pretty awesome. Fil and I had never been to one of those shows before so it was fun to get into that scene a bit. The week prior a bunch of us went to an ATB concert at the Arena down the street from the school. ATB is a DJ who is ranked about 5th in the world. That show, in comparison to those at club Eskulap, was enormous. Valerie and I met some sweet polish people and spent a good while hanging and drinking with them when we got tired of jumping around. A couple days ago we all went to see Beardyman. He was the guy that Fil, Mikloj, and I went to Warsaw to see in October and it was funny that he was playing not only in Poland again, but in our school dorm club.

Speaking of beards, I have been growing my playoff beard. No, I'm not growing it for the hockey playoffs because the Ducks are out and I don't support any other team, but it is the playoffs for the school year. We have our anatomy second and last exam next week, along with our histology practical. After those are done, we have 2 weeks before the histology final and that is basically it. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It shouldn't be too difficult as the long hours I spent during the year is definitely paying off. It is also pretty sweet that the hours of light during the day is different than I am accustomed to. The sun rises around 0415 and it gets dark at 2130.

On Friday, Michal came into my room and asked if I wanted to be in a school video. I said sure and threw on one of the wild shirts I had joined. It is basically a promotional video for incoming students. They filmed us doing various things from simply walking to studying in a dorm room. It was quite funny when they filmed us studying. My grabbed my friend's anatomy book and flipped it open and they guy started filming. Of course I had flipped it open to the Levator Ani muscles. The anal muscles that form the floor/base of the pelvis. As their name suggests, on contraction they raise the pelvic floor and are part of the anus. So there will be me studying anal muscles in the video. After that they wanted us to go to the Rynek for some more filming. I was quite tired and wasn't too into that but then they said that if we went they would buy us beer so mind quickly changed. We walked around for a while and then got a beer at one of the outside restaurants. Later we went to this other bar where they were giving free beers to those who attended this conference. We didn't go to the conference but the red wrist bands we had on said otherwise. Post free beer we got sushi and basically called it a night since I hadn't slept for a couple days for that biophysics exam. During the shots down at the Rynek I changed shirts to my Lakers jersey. I had a sweatshirt on but had it unzipped enough to see the top half so it would be easily recognizable to those who knew.

I had a Polish test today and it went quite good and later a biology quiz.

month ago

last week.. pretty cool

typical Tim dinner, colorful

Rynek

Outside patios open

Michal getting interviewed during the filming of our video, funny

the camera crew

Michal and clock tower

Filip

Yum

In the Men's bathroom

Toilet paper?

"I am an old lesbian"

In the 'old movie theater bar'

Free drinks

Cool fountain

sorry fil

Fil and Ola when the power went out

Dinner with the crew

Ola tackling the Bunny, too bad it was hard plastic

Christer dancing with a creepy old man

Before ATB

Drink tent at ATB

Asbjorn

ATB

Polish couple that were hilarious. Val and I hungout with them quite a bit. I think here he is saying, "fucking Iphone.. I have a nokia!" He was a bit jealous.

Warm day

A legalize marijuana march

See the pretty leaf?

beardyman

Dubstep show

My class is just to the left in this picture. this is taken in the eskulap club during the dubstep show.

beardyman

Polish class in the gardens.. nice to walk around and get out of the class for a bit

warm!!

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Gdansk and Kolobzreg

This spring break most of the friends here in Poznan left to go home. I really wanted to go to some town in Poland to see more of this country. I talked with Valerie and she loves driving trips and wanted to rent a car and she also wanted to see the Baltic sea. We made the arrangements and got things in motion. First, we drove to Gdansk. Valerie's roommate went there the week prior and said it was very fun. Gdansk is a port town on the Baltic and it was destroyed numerous times throughout its history. It was a very important maritime city thus the appeal to take control of it. It's official history starts back in 997. We arrived and decided to check out the Dom Muzyka. It is a really nice hotel, which is part of this music university. We spent that evening/night walking around, getting our bearings, and finding some food. The next day was spent doing some touring. We went to a couple museums (archeology, Gdansk history), St. Mary's Church, amongst other things. We left that next day and decided to go to Kolobzreg. We initially had a thought of going to Hel, which is a town in this peninsula but the town seemed a bit boring off season. Kolobzreg used to be a seat of the Polish Bishopric in 1000, putting it on par witrh Krakow and Wroclaw. It is a fairly small seaside town and most people were 50+. It still had some life, even though everything closes around 8pm. We spent the time there relaxing and getting massages. 70zl for a full body 1-hour massage is a great deal and it felt great too. We also used the pool and jacuzzi that was also part of the spa resort. The hotel was called the Maxymillian and was the tour book's "author's choice." It was quite nice, but they didn't have shampoo... even after we asked them for some. Strange. Driving was really fun. We rented a manual Fiat, quite small, butter color, and had no problems with it. Valerie even took a turn and learned to drive stick for a couple miles.

Back to the real world now with the next 1.5-2 months being filled with tests and endless studying.. FUN!

First attempt at manual, not soo successful, but she did get it!

Some scenery

Drove through a TON of tiny towns like this one, pretty cool to see places like this

quite nice

stumbled upon a monkey zoo attached to a gas station

the road temperature

took a detour on one of the many 'death roads' and found ourselves in the middle of a nice forest

good place for a little leg stretch

sign washing

Garmin took us through some wild towns on dirt roads. I think she was set to shortest way, not necessarily best way, but it was fun!

Hotel room in Gdansk

Dom Muzyka

Evening over the tributary

Another

Cool ships, including a pirate ship

the Dlugi Targ, the main market road that the visiting kings would travel down once they went through the Golden Gate

First dinner, I had some fish, Valerie had some rice. Nice view sitting outside.

Gdansk at night, used my new camera and the shots turned out great

On the left you can see a destroyed building that has yet to be rebuilt

Arrr

The main street

Clock tower was where the Gdansk National History Museum was located

A nice tribute to NASA, fairly strange but cool none the less.

great mustache

Pictures of Gdansk when it was destroyed

Dlugi Targ

Creepy statue, being mimicked by Valerie

St. Mary's Church, the largest brick church in the world.

Astronomical clock

Stairs up to the top, second highest building at 86m. The stairs were numbered. This was oddly similar to the Blarney Stone!!!

Halfway there.. 400 steps in total.

200 round staircase steps and 200 like this up through the top.

Beautiful

Met some elder English people who were visiting and they were nice enough to take our photo. Not sure how the woman made it up and down, she was quite unsteady.

Ulica Mariacka, one of the most unique streets in all of Poland. It was rebuilt after the war exactly how it was before, using the pieces from the rubble to construct it perfectly. Each building had a terrace, pretty cool looking. In Gdansk, there is tons of amber for sale as Poland (especially these seaside towns) was the center of the amber trade, bringing it down from the Baltic Sea.

Ul. Mariacka

Haha, nice one Valerie.

Burrito in Gdansk? The restaurant was called Burrito. They even had Cholula hot sauce, it wasn't too bad.

Snuggie

Hotel in Kolobzerg

Stands selling tons of things on the boardwalk.

The monument for the Marriage of the Sea and Man.

The lighthouse

Towards downtown

Downtown. We met a bartender that lived for 18 years in Poznan. Later we met this other guy who worked at the Italian restaurant and his girlfriend lives in Poznan and works at our medical university, small world.