Parthemores in Poland

With all the craziness of trying to move, I haven't mentioned anything about our visit to Poznan and Paris in mid-June. Our primary objective was to find an apartment, which we did, thanks to our excellent (and english speaking) realtor.

Poznan seems to be a beautiful, cosmopolitan city that has history combined with modern conveniences.

Other interesting tidbits:

1. LOT airlines -1, US Airways - 0. Our flight from Frankfurt to Poznan was on a tiny (24 people) prop plane and was 1.5 hours long. But none the less, we still got free alcholic beverages as well as a tray of food. Contrast this to the 6 hour flight on US Air from Philly to Seattle where you had to pay for food and they even ran out of that. The airplane instructions on the prop plane were in Polish, English, German and Russian. Fascinating.

2. "In Poland, you vill burn." This quote came from another real estate agent in our discussion about why their front doors are much more solid than ones in America. In the US, firemen need to be able to chop through them....not the case in Poland. He suggested we jump out the window instead.

3. Don't get there too early... In the US, its never a bad idea to get to the airport a few hours before your flight. But in Warsaw, they told us to "come back in an hour" because we couldn't check in more than 2 hours ahead of time. Note: this is after we stood in line for over an hour to get to the counter. Cheap flights in Europe = crush of humanity lines + shoddy customer service. So we just went to the beer tent next door.

4. Bad exchange rate x lunch at the airport = expensive! On the way back through Copenhagen: 2 burgers with fries and 2 cokes was $76. The kroner is a puny amount (like the peso) so it was hard to tell what we were spending. But our credit card bill let us know.