Warsaw...this time for business!

Outside of Teresa's house in Warsaw..

Warszawa, our first stop into Warsaw was supposed to be strictly business. We had to arrange for our Chinese visa to enter China later in September. SO, the first day after checking into the hostel, we simply walked around the town for a quick overview of Ewa’s favourite streets and hangouts from when she lived in Warsaw back in 2001-2002. We also stopped in to visit with Teresa, Wlodek, and Asia Ewa’s Aunt, uncle and cousin. They treated us to a wonderful night with a great table-top BBQ, some picture shows and great conversation. We had to cut short the evening as we had a busy day the next day, and with us returning to Warsaw later, we knew we had more time to catch up later. The evening ended at 2am ha!

That night in preparation for the busy day trying to get our visa we bought our train tickets from Moscow to Beijing. While surfing the website for the train tickets, we found that the train ticket agency would be able to provide visa service over night for China once you get into Moscow. With this new knowledge we went to bed and decided to sleep in a little, thinking the stress of the visa was quickly over.

After a lazy morning, we checked our E-mails to find out that the visa service in Moscow is only for Russians and UK citizens, not Canadians. Now the Panic was on! We spent the next 5 hours frantically trying to sort out what we would do and trying to find a FedEx office. In the end we sealed our documents, applications and visa forms to a visa service company in Vancouver. 16:30 in the afternoon, passport-less, we both needed some time to recover emotionally and physically, a little space, so Ewa went for a haircut (Funny enough they cut my bangs with a electric shaver!) and some shopping to find an outfit for the wedding coming up in Znin, and Chad headed for an ice cream and some time on the internet to sort out more plans. At the end of the night we were exhausted from the stress and hectic pace of the day and we just stayed in and hung out in the hostel. It was interesting that night as we had left some laundry to be done at the front desk of the hostel. In the morning as we were leaving they returned our clothes and our money. Somehow, they managed to ‘dry’ our clothes, but had forgotten to wash them. I have no idea how one does this, but they did, because the clothes were much more wrinkly and tight!

Outside of the entrance to the university in Warsaw