Okay, I've neglected this blog for a very long time.
Anyhow, relaunching it under it's own domain name over at: twowheelgeek.ca
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Time flies when your working non-stop
Yikes, started the following about a week ago. Finally getting a chance to post it now. I'll add some pictures later.
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Okay, it’s safe to say I love it here in
I could definitely live here. But ask me that same question after the winter hits and I’d probably sing another tune. Of course, I’d want to be making the same wages I make at home; otherwise it probably wouldn’t be as enjoyable. I overheard one of my coworkers talking to a waitress and asking about the wages, not good as a server in a restaurant. You’d definitely need to depend on your tips.
My other complaint would be the smoking everywhere, smoking sections move round with the will of who’s lighting up at the moment. Oh well. We’re definitely spoiled in that regard in
Otherwise, it’s been an amazing trip so far, good group of people to work with, very few language difficulties; I’ve had some people around to translate for me during the working day – after hours I’m on my own! Luckily I’ve been fairing quite well.
The food has been good, amazingly so. I’ve been trying to not eat at the same place twice, experience as much as I can. The only time that’s failed was last night when I fell asleep for an hour or so after coming back to the hotel and woke up quite late. Off to the Indian Restaurant around the corner. Well, it’s mostly Indian, it’s also Chinese and Thai too. Was a real disconnect for me to hear an Indian person speaking polish to his staff. I’m so used to being in an Anglophone country that it throws me off sometimes.
Memorable meals:
- definitely put the TGI Fridays on the list and not because it was good, but because how awful it was… UGH!
- The wine and cheese bar, Spirtus Sanctus
- A pretty fair filet mignon at Zeppelin(no, there was no long rocker hair and too tight leather pants) about a 6 ounce portion that was over-cooked but incredibly tender; served on a bed of spinach gnocchi and a mildly spicy paprika sauce. Fantastic presentation. I also started out with a very nice bowl of borscht that had apricots and raisins in it. That plus a glass of wine and my bill was about $45zl, or $15CDN
- The Chinese/Indian/Thai restaurant in a mall, Masala. Very good Indian, but a little on the bland side of the spicy scale.
- Soft serve ice cream cones done in a twist with two flavours. Much denser than the ice milk variety we have back home, almost like a gelato in texture. The chocolate is super dark and a little bitter, not sweet at all! LOVE IT!
- Take-out Thai that we had in Sopot on Saturday night. A group of coworkers invited me out for drinks and dinner at someones place in Sopot. They showed up with Thai food that rivaled the quality of any I’ve ever had anywhere. Normally being from
- OMG, just got served a bowl of Zurek, a sour rye soup. WOW! I’ve seen it on a lot of menus tagged as being a traditional Polish soup. Light broth, slightly sour and rich at the same time. With little bits of sausage at the bottom of the bowl. They like their soups here and every menu usually has several types to choose from. I’ve had three different types of borscht so far and each has been very different, the first two were light and brothy and no chunks of beets, the last had the fruit in it.
Work has been good, challenging but good. The unfortunate part has been delays waiting for things to get installed/delivered/wired. It’s really thrown my schedule off. They should have delayed moving a week to get the building in shape first. Oh well, work around the difficulties and move on right? Make the people around me happy and that’s what counts as they’re the end customer.
Here comes my dinner, more later
-- insert 20 minute delay here to chow down--
Okay, that was another memorable meal. A whole fresh from the Baltic Sea Turbot, simply fried and served on a bed of vegetables and a side of roasted potatoes. De’lish!
Friday, June 15, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I'm loving it
but not in the cheesy restaurant chain that coined that slogan.
Gdańsk is a very nice city, absolutely gorgeous. For the most part, the food has been great as well(more on that later).
I've hit a couple of local places, first night was a perogie specialty place, had a nice bowl of borscht with dumplings in it and a big plate of perogies that were stuff with wild game meat. All in all, very tasty.
The next night found me at "Spiritus Sanctus winiarina" a wine bar that specialised in wines and local deli meats and cheeses. They also had regular menu items for dinner, but I opted for a custom plate of various local cheeses(an aged goat, parmesan, etc) paired with some local deli meats and a basket of amazing breads. It was paired with a very flavourful white wine from Slovenia, I think I need to go and get a bottle to bring back. :) So far, the best meal yet.
Really, I wasn't grumpy. It just looked that way. I think I got distracted by something outside just as the shutter went off.
Now for the bad food part... I worked quite late last night and didn't want to go far to find dinner, so I thought I'd try the hotel restaurant. Sigh, cheesy American chain restaurant, a TGI Fridays. What a tired concept those theme restaurants are, from TGI, the Red Robins, etc. All the dusty crap on the walls, the faux americana, the bad choice of american beers(in europe and they're serving up Budweiser?!?!?! BAH I say! I ordered a 'cajun chicken sandwich' that was labeled as being quite spicy. This is how I imagine it was prepared:
- order comes into kitchen, cook takes the ticket and calls ala Starbucks to colleague across the room "one spicy chicken sandwich"
- colleague repeats order and then places chicken on prep table as far across the room as possible.
- cook then grabs 1 gram of cajun spice in a spoon and flicks it across the room, whatever makes it there by drifting stays on the chicken and is then cooked and served.
So there you have it.... lesson learned stay away from chain restaurants, they do nothing well.
Gdańsk is a very nice city, absolutely gorgeous. For the most part, the food has been great as well(more on that later).
I've hit a couple of local places, first night was a perogie specialty place, had a nice bowl of borscht with dumplings in it and a big plate of perogies that were stuff with wild game meat. All in all, very tasty.
The next night found me at "Spiritus Sanctus winiarina" a wine bar that specialised in wines and local deli meats and cheeses. They also had regular menu items for dinner, but I opted for a custom plate of various local cheeses(an aged goat, parmesan, etc) paired with some local deli meats and a basket of amazing breads. It was paired with a very flavourful white wine from Slovenia, I think I need to go and get a bottle to bring back. :) So far, the best meal yet.
Really, I wasn't grumpy. It just looked that way. I think I got distracted by something outside just as the shutter went off.
Now for the bad food part... I worked quite late last night and didn't want to go far to find dinner, so I thought I'd try the hotel restaurant. Sigh, cheesy American chain restaurant, a TGI Fridays. What a tired concept those theme restaurants are, from TGI, the Red Robins, etc. All the dusty crap on the walls, the faux americana, the bad choice of american beers(in europe and they're serving up Budweiser?!?!?! BAH I say! I ordered a 'cajun chicken sandwich' that was labeled as being quite spicy. This is how I imagine it was prepared:
- order comes into kitchen, cook takes the ticket and calls ala Starbucks to colleague across the room "one spicy chicken sandwich"
- colleague repeats order and then places chicken on prep table as far across the room as possible.
- cook then grabs 1 gram of cajun spice in a spoon and flicks it across the room, whatever makes it there by drifting stays on the chicken and is then cooked and served.
So there you have it.... lesson learned stay away from chain restaurants, they do nothing well.
New photos!
Alrighty, had a few moments over the past couple of days/evenings to prepare some photos.
I'll do a proper entry later tonight.
Enjoy!
I'll do a proper entry later tonight.
Enjoy!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
25 hours of travelling later, I'm here
Woah, long long day.
Left home on Saturday at noon for the airport to allow plenty of time to check in etc.
As I was checking in the agent said they were looking for volunteers to bump to the next flight two hours later on a charter company. Initially I said yes, usually they give you pretty good deals, etc for bumping; but after doing so and walking away to find a coffee, something wasn't quite sitting right with me about it.
Decided to listen to that little voice and went back through the lineup to check in and take my name off the bump list. My main reason was that it is a charter I was being put on, meaning flying with my knees to me chest for 10 hours, crap food, and extreme baggage limits(gotta squeeze in those extra people to sell them 15$ cheese sandwiches) . Plus my checked bag was 7 kilos overweight due to the equipment I have to take to the office here. I didn't want to pay the much bigger overage charge the charter would ding me with vs the flat fee Lufthansa charged.
It was my first time flying Lufthansa, very good service, very comfy. During mid flight they kept a supply of juices, wine and waters available for you to help yourself to at the galley, plus bin of Toblerone bars. :) What I found rather odd is all the staff would speak to me in German while speaking English to my seatmate (and she had an accent I couldn't quite place - but no matter, she wasn't very friendly, the only time she spoke too me was to get past me to head for the washroom). What was even more amusing is I'd know what the flight attendant was mostly saying to me and answer her in English, she'd answer in German and I'd reply in English. go figure... I must still have some understanding of it from when I was youngun and could speak it conversationally.
By the time I arrived in Gdansk it was close to 9pm, our flight was delayed leaving Frankfurt due to a huge thunderstorm moving in on the airport. We saw some pretty impressive lighting strikes not far from the tower. Apparently they closed down all but one runway, so it meant close to an hour delay on the tarmac.
LOT is a nice airline too, good service on-board, even for a two hour flight. Drinks, snacks and friendly staff.
Overall a good trip here, only glitch was my hotel room. It was booked locally for me and they took my departure date from Vancouver to mean I'd be here the same day, when I lost a day on the way. Sadly I didn't catch that when I saw the reservation, and when I tried to check in they had nothing on me. They'd canceled my reservation and all their rooms are now full for next weekend. I'm only booked here until the 14th now. I'll have to ask someone at the company to sort this out for me today.
Anyhow, gotta get my butt to work. Hopefully I'll get some pictures today, I didn't get any yesterday(was way too tired by the time I arrived, 31 hours awake will do that to you).
Left home on Saturday at noon for the airport to allow plenty of time to check in etc.
As I was checking in the agent said they were looking for volunteers to bump to the next flight two hours later on a charter company. Initially I said yes, usually they give you pretty good deals, etc for bumping; but after doing so and walking away to find a coffee, something wasn't quite sitting right with me about it.
Decided to listen to that little voice and went back through the lineup to check in and take my name off the bump list. My main reason was that it is a charter I was being put on, meaning flying with my knees to me chest for 10 hours, crap food, and extreme baggage limits(gotta squeeze in those extra people to sell them 15$ cheese sandwiches) . Plus my checked bag was 7 kilos overweight due to the equipment I have to take to the office here. I didn't want to pay the much bigger overage charge the charter would ding me with vs the flat fee Lufthansa charged.
It was my first time flying Lufthansa, very good service, very comfy. During mid flight they kept a supply of juices, wine and waters available for you to help yourself to at the galley, plus bin of Toblerone bars. :) What I found rather odd is all the staff would speak to me in German while speaking English to my seatmate (and she had an accent I couldn't quite place - but no matter, she wasn't very friendly, the only time she spoke too me was to get past me to head for the washroom). What was even more amusing is I'd know what the flight attendant was mostly saying to me and answer her in English, she'd answer in German and I'd reply in English. go figure... I must still have some understanding of it from when I was youngun and could speak it conversationally.
By the time I arrived in Gdansk it was close to 9pm, our flight was delayed leaving Frankfurt due to a huge thunderstorm moving in on the airport. We saw some pretty impressive lighting strikes not far from the tower. Apparently they closed down all but one runway, so it meant close to an hour delay on the tarmac.
LOT is a nice airline too, good service on-board, even for a two hour flight. Drinks, snacks and friendly staff.
Overall a good trip here, only glitch was my hotel room. It was booked locally for me and they took my departure date from Vancouver to mean I'd be here the same day, when I lost a day on the way. Sadly I didn't catch that when I saw the reservation, and when I tried to check in they had nothing on me. They'd canceled my reservation and all their rooms are now full for next weekend. I'm only booked here until the 14th now. I'll have to ask someone at the company to sort this out for me today.
Anyhow, gotta get my butt to work. Hopefully I'll get some pictures today, I didn't get any yesterday(was way too tired by the time I arrived, 31 hours awake will do that to you).
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Europe in June!
Specifically Gdańsk, Poland!
I was just hired to do some work over there that will last for about 3 weeks. Looks like I leave this coming Saturday! Yikes, that's coming up wayyy too quickly. But, I'll be ready. Unfortunately I'll be missing Tanya(aka Netchick) birthday party on Saturday night.
Looks like a beautiful city based on the pictures over at Flickr. I'll definitely be taking lots of photos.
Oh yeah, I hope to post some photos from my recent trip to Alaska soon too. Keep an eye out for those this week.
I was just hired to do some work over there that will last for about 3 weeks. Looks like I leave this coming Saturday! Yikes, that's coming up wayyy too quickly. But, I'll be ready. Unfortunately I'll be missing Tanya(aka Netchick) birthday party on Saturday night.
Looks like a beautiful city based on the pictures over at Flickr. I'll definitely be taking lots of photos.
Oh yeah, I hope to post some photos from my recent trip to Alaska soon too. Keep an eye out for those this week.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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