Western “Standards”

This week, the laundry room got “upgraded”.

Instead of paying a deposit of 10 PLN at the reception desk… getting the laundry room key… washing our clothes… then getting back the deposit…

NOW you need to have coins with you… you ask for the key to laundry room… you put in your clothes… you put 3 PLN coins in some machines that control the electrical power to each washing machine…

& they are supposed to give you electrical power for 90 minutes, afterwards the machine stops.

My situation, this evening

Mathematicians

This very last weekend I went to Krakow again. I came back. I waited for the 57 bus from the train station to the dormitory.

I had no ticket and so I hopped in the bus, and went to the driver to buy one.

A 30 minutes bus is 1.50 PLN.

I told him “jeden studencki bilet… trzydzieści minuty” and put 1 PLN and 50 grosze on the table near him.

He said something in Polish… I acted like I don’t understand.

He was going for his tickets… and I said “pfiu…solved!”.

He gave me back a ticket of 10 minutes and 40 grosze back.

Brilliant!

Patio Restaurant

We’ve been trying out the Patio Restaurant, which would be like a cafeteria inside the university, where they also serve some hot meals.

But, I really don’t think that we will go for anything else, other than pizza.

So far we’ve had some cabbage with mushrooms and macaroni, in the same dish!!! Quite Ok, yet yucky! Then a snitzel with some smashed potatoes. Again, just Ok. Then some cooked mushrooms, with “frykydelka” - freaky! :p

But anyway… it’s not that the food is horrible, but if you take some meat and a bottle of water as well, you reach about 15 PLN. With 15 PLN you eat better at Ramzes, or at least the same!!!

So… until another pizzeria we’ll be tried by us, I think I’ll have pizza just at the Patio Restaurant on Wednesday, when I have a window between two courses, and on Thursday, after we meet with Piotr.

Unemployment in Poland and Romania

OK. This Piotr (the teacher of Corporate Finance Management) has the upper hand on me, so to speak.

I’ve been reading and analyzing today’s information for more than 2 hours now.

I’ve been collecting some data like unemployment rate/real unemployment figures and the inflation rate in the last years for both Romania and Poland.

I don’t know how it works, maybe I’ve done some mistakes but it turns out that Poland has only 15 millions of active individuals (rough estimation) out of a total of 38 millions inhabitants.

Romania has 10 millions of active individuals out of 22 millions inhabitants. Doesn’t it sound weird?!

Home Dinners

OK. This is getting too weird.

For a week, after we came here, we ate almost every day at Ramzes Restaurant, paying around 20 - 25 PLN for a full dinner (first course/main course/desert/drinks - every time 3 of these).

Hmm… might I say that 6 EUR for a chic meal on the main street, in a cosy atmosphere, is not at all that much?!

But for an every day meal, it can get to you.
So we decided to start cooking indoors. Bought a pan, a pot, etc.

Two days ago… we had chicken with rice and vegetables
- two chickens - 18 PLN
- rice and vegetables - 4 PLN
= 22 PLN divided by 3 ~= 7 PLN ~= 2 EUR each

Today we had some French fries with some fish fingers. All in all 9 PLN = 3 PLN each = LESS than 1 EUR each.

And I say… what the fuck?! Pardon my French!

Official “party”

This evening we were invited by the Erasmus office of WSHE to a restaurant and a pub.

Let’s see if the restaurant beats Ramzes =)

Ramzes so far has proved marvelous, except for their pizzas. I don’t know where they learned that pizza should have bitter cheese, but this is how they do it. Plus the vegetables are quite raw, not cooked.

Other than that, you can have my favorite - chicken breast in horse radish sauce, with salad and grilled potatoes. And 1L of Tyskie ;) All in all 25 PLN

Unfortunately, beer is not as cheap as in Czech Republic :( But we can manage :p Debowę is also quite good. We haven’t tried the other ones so far, but there’s a lot of time to it.

And, the trick to all this official party restaurant -will the waiter speak English?! :D

Arad, Romania

Logical Glossary: I was (until 1 hour ago) in Arad, Romania. Cătălin’s hometown (you may often see his name as Cătă). Since I’m from Galaţi, Eastern Romania, we decided that I should get to Arad and then both get on a low-cost flight from Budapest, Hungary.

It was my first time in Arad. Stayed there for 1 day after a 13 hours trip by train from Galaţi.

It’s a weird combination of old and new. But anyway you put it, I brought the sun into that town :p (it rained until I arrived). And the amazing thing was that there were quite many nice girls. We were wondering around the town in search for camera case for my new digital camera, and we cannot resist to gaze at some girls =)

Time definitely passes by in a different manner 1000 km West of my hometown!

All in all, I look forward to get back to Arad in summer, on my return from Łódź! (the girls I’ve seen will take care of my enthusiasm until then :p )

Just so you know - the flight Budapest-Warsaw is only 37euros. I’ll pay 10 euros extra for the second luggage =) But still very cheap!

PS: writings of the trip to Budapest

BRD GSG* Romania / ING Bank Romania

* = Banca Română pentru Dezvoltare (Development Bank of Romania) Group Société Générale

Today was a very weird day!

First of all there was a “funny” event at my bank. Today was the day when we received the money from the Erasmus Scholarship and the Phrase programme. Romania currently has a bid in order to gain more money for the Erasmus students that get a scholarship as well. So, for example out of 1050 Euros for each month, that I get, 425.01 Euros are given through a Phare End-User Support Programme meant to make the financial gap smaller for Romanian students.

The funny thing was that the ING Office in Arad had a problem with the Internet connection. Thus the Self Banking machines weren’t working. The connection went dead while I was checking my accounts, so my card got blocked. Only one comment: how is it possible that a bank has only one Internet connection, and also what was the point of the Office Manager to call to the emergency number in Bucharest and tell that guy that there Internet is down?! Don’t answer it. Retoric question!

Then, there’s another “funny” (killing funny!) thing with BRD GSG.

Our university has its accounts with BRD GSG, so they are taking care of all the tranzactions to the students’ bank accounts.

I don’t know yet why, but every student that had the EUR account with another bank misses 40 Euros per transaction. So with each transaction you loose 40 Euros! It’s a huge loss, considering that there will be 4 transactions (we are getting the money two times, but each time there is a transaction from the Erasmus scholarship account, and another one from the Phrare bid account. So… I will lack 160 Euros.

And I ask myself… WHY??? Why weren’t we notified about this? This is by far not a “normal” bank fee for a transfer!

So… I wonder if the National Agency or the European Commision knows how European money is spent! We are at least 12 out of 16 Erasmus students with scholarships this year at the Romanian-American University, so… 12 * 160 = 1920 Euros going to BRD GSG Romania! Pretty nice sum!

I will have to inform my university about this, and seek a way out of this for the next money transfer, but I will go through with my will to inform everybody about this! Everybody means every level of administration that was involved in this financial situation.