If it’s not the cold of Warsaw then it’s UK fog!!

Firstly let me explain the above title before my main text . . I had the chance to return home for a weekend at the end of October due to public holidays here described below, I attended the University Graduate recruitment fair at Salford and of course caught up with friends and the city of Manchester. My low-cost carrier flight to Warsaw was due to leave Liverpool at 0815 on Sunday morning, so after managing to get up at 5am, get to the airport in thick fog, check-in, pass through security into departures and see the incoming aircraft arrive you can imagine the scene at Liverpool to be told that the flight was cancelled as it could not take-off with this level of fog. I managed to get on the next flight to Warsaw . . . on Wednesday!! Did I manage to have a few days extra holiday, seeing friends, out late at night, and not surfacing until mid-afternoon you may ask - the simple answer is no as my academic Dad insisted that I did some research work for my Economics presentations due next month. Of course I told him that I was going to do this anyway!!!

I guess that having now been here since September I should report something on student life – not in the content of my lectures but in just being here as the first Salford University student to do so. As I have previously said the language is very difficult but once the phonetically based alphabet is mastered that any word can be pronounced and the School provides language lessons every Monday afternoon. In this group are some German students and a guy from New Zealand also studying at the University for this first semester. I am the only British student on campus.

Compared to the life at Salford it is much quieter here perhaps because it’s not Manchester but also because there are not the same type of students to share free time with. Talking about sharing the standard University accommodation is all shared, including four people to a bedroom and as such offers no privacy or “own space”, whilst this accommodation is remarkably cheap I have decided to rent a small apartment in walking distance to the University or just one stop on the metro. The cost of this is the same as my room in Eddie Coleman at Salford and comprises a small kitchen, lounge with bed /settee and bathroom within a Soviet style apartment.

When it comes to books for the course it is really difficult to get the ones I need in English language and so use Amazon via the internet for them. At the end of October was a two-day National Holiday, Poland has 12 public holidays throughout the year with this one having a main focus on All Saints’ day when people visit their family gravestones to tidy them up before the Winter period, this holiday is also known here as the Day of the Dead . . . now that’s more spooky than Halloween masks and pumpkins!!

To return to the title the temperature as dropped significantly, from the early September days of people in shorts and tee shirts to now everyone is wearing hats, gloves, scarfs and layers of clothing, typical day temperature are around 2 to 3 deg c reducing to below freezing at night.