Czesc, my fellow friends. I seem to be getting quite good at thinking up alliterating titles. Are you impressed? I know I'm rather proud of myself.
Yes, so I was in Gdansk, which is I guess regarded by the Polish as the second-best city in Polska, but I think it's just as nice is Krakow. The thing about Gdansk is that it's completely different from any other Polish city. I suppose that might be because it was independent for a few centuries, and German occupied for a while, when it was caused Danzig. Sound familiar? It's significant to a couple of World Wars.
So I did a bit of random exploring, went into a couple of cathedrals, met with some other volunteers who also came up and one who has a placement there, and we took a train to Sopot, which is another mini-city about 20 minutes away from Gdansk, and we took a dip in the Baltic sea. However, I didn't go swimming. I didn't bring my togs. Even if I had brought my togs I probably wouldn't have gone swimming because it was icy freezing cold in that water. However, I paddled, and got some photos as evidence that I have stood in Baltic waters.
At the hostel, I met some interesting people, a girl from Mexico. We watched 'Gok's Fashion Fix' (Polish dubbed) together and laughed at how stupid it was. There were some girls who shared our room on the Saturday night who were from all over the place, one from Poland, one from Lithuania and someone from Bulgaria I remember. They were all talking in English and I found them quite entertaining to eavesdrop on. Later that night, we were tired, heat-struck and covered in salt (or at least my legs were), so Alana (another volunteer) and I got some yogurt and sat in the kitchen area. There we had an great conversation with a man. I don't really know what nationality to call him because he currently lives in Perth in Australia, but he was born in Dunedin and has lived intervals of his life in both Oz and NZ, so I'll just say he's Australasian. Our topics spread over Britney Spears, his travels (he's there to pick up a Polish Passport), what a great movie 'Inglourious Basterds' is, which then involved in a long discussion about World War Two, which covered just about everything that happened and why it happened, including modern day Neo-Nazis, and what would have happened if Japan had been smart enough to just leave Pearl Harbour alone.
Unfortunately, I had one less day in Gdansk than I'd hoped because I had to spend the Friday at school helping out for 'English Speaking Day', which was rather fun anyways. However, I may have the chance to go back later with my parents. I hope so. So I left today and now I'm back in Poznan. My train ride back was exhilarating. I was filled with passion and excitement and a love of life, just overwhelming happiness really, and I don't really know what I was happy about, but I can bet I was feeling that way because I'm currently reading this really amazing book called 'Into the Wild'. It's a real-life story about this guy called Chris McCandless who hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness because he was sick of the mediocrity of human society. Unfortunately, he died out there, but it's still a brilliant story, and it got me thinking that the world is beautiful, and life is beautiful, and while there's no way in hell you'd see me contently starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness, I still love the world. So anyway, I just couldn't stop smiling on the train-ride back, and everyone was looking at me. I think most of them were puzzled, some caught the bug and also became incurably happy, and some I suspect found it annoying, but they're just fun-sponges who are too mediocre for my way of life.
I have noticed that being here, on my own, doing this independent thing has made me less self-conscious. I used to care so much about what random people thought of me, but I think I've finally started to realise that it doesn't matter because I'm never going to see them again. I know that in my mid-teens, I had something of an inferiority complex that I think most teenagers have at some point, but a year or so ago, I actually realised that I'm a wonderful, beautiful person and I started to love myself a bit more. Now it really irritates me when people think they aren't good enough.
So eventually, my incurable, explosive happiness mellowed down to a nice contentment, and I just stood in the isle for the whole five hours back to Poznan with my head out the window, wind in my hair, feeling the freedom and enjoying the beauty.
Don't you just love being happy?
Well, Do Widzenia my friends.
I may or may not write soon, but there'll always be a link to whatever ramblings I decide to write down on trusty Facebook.
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