A story about Poland

It's been a month since I came back from Poland and I haven't shared anything about my experience there in my blog.

It was a long trip to Warsaw - by bus for thousands of kilometres. I was travelling abroad alone for the first time and I felt quite strange. Moreover, I didn't know anyone there except from a few people from e-mails before the conference. At one point I felt so far away from everything I was used to before. But it's amazing how human consciousness works - step by step, the more country borders I passed, the more inspired I felt about the experience I was heading to.

I arrived in Warsaw in a sunny afternoon on the 15.03.2006 with a large and heavy suitcase (thanks, Tan4e, for lending me your big suitcase). The girl from the OC team - Zuzanna - was waiting for me at the bus station and drove me to the hostel I was supposed to stay for a night. I enterd my room and - surprise - another delegate, a German guy, was sleeping there. :) There were also two Belgian guys who weren't members of AIESEC. So it was quite a funny experience - sharing a room with three guys :-D The day ended with a quick city tour and a quite good Polish restaurant where we ate traditional pierogy (hmm, I think a few nations might argue about whose traditional meal pierogy is:) ).

Next day - 16.03.2006 -> first day of the conference! I travelled in the bus with Serbs on the back seats. Wow, quite a funny Balkan gathering :-D If they were speaking in Serbian, they were saying curses and the funniest thing was that I was the only one who could understand what they were saying and I almost fell off my seat :))))

The conference itself - Invest Yourself Conference - was a part of the Finance Learning Network initiatives which the Polish LC SGH in Warsaw organizes. It was very inspiring to meet more than 40 people interested in finance - just like me! :) I was happy to get to know more about good case practices in finance in other countries and to meet such nice people. Well, it wasn't the best ever conference, but it was a good start - this conference is the first even conference under FLN. So in a way it was a success. I gathered really good ideas and knowledge both from some sessions and discussions with members.

After the conference. I was supposed to stay in Warsaw till Tuesday, 23.03 when my bus was leaving for Bulgaria. The first night I spent at the SGH dorms in the room of a girl from LC SGH. There was something like a small party for her birthday and some Polish boys were there as well. They turned out to be so funny :))) I understood from them that one of the most popular drinks among Polish students is a Bulgarian wine - Sophia Sakar :-D Which I've neved heard of before :))))) And they also brought some kind of alchohol made of cherries which tasted like fizzy wine with cherries :))) They told me some moments from Polish history, about cities in Poland, and some hot issues from their society. Then I tried to read some articles in Polish and I did pretty well compared to a Polish guy who tried his best to read an article in Bulgarian but with no success. The most ridiculous part was when someone tried to explain in English the word "lokomotiv" (the Polish word for this is pronounced in almost the same way) - like: this is a part of a train, this one which is the front part of the train. And I said: Ok, I see that the Polish word for this is totally different from the Bulgarian one. And they were pretty anxious to hear the Bulgarian word, and when I said "it's "lokomotiv", at first - SILENCE, then: LAUGHTER :-D

To be continued...