First Impressions

Well, before I started writing, I woke up today and sat down to my computer.  As I was typing I noticed that my computer, a Macbook Pro, was rather unstable on my desk.  At first I thought that there was something under it, like a pen or another random thing, so I lifted it up to see.  My fucking battery was warped all to shit!!!  No wonder the thing couldn't stay unplugged for five minutes—despite being fully charged— before shutting down.  A new one is going to run me $130 or so (and my computer is only about thirty months old!)

Anyway, this is a tale of my very first visit to Poland all those years ago.

Actually, it's a tale about the first three minutes of me getting off the bus (for the first time) in Warsaw.)

So, K had picked me up from the Airport (this was before T2 (heh, heh, great movie) opened up.)  We rode the bus on the extremely gray day to Srodmiescie and then took a tram to K's apartment block.  It's such a wondrous feeling arriving in a foreign land such as this for the first time.  I was carrying a huge frame backpack, per usual, and I exited the tram carrying it in my hands.  I started to struggle to get it onto my back when a fellow came up and started to help me.  Well, he helped me get it on and then refused to let me go, giving me great big hugs while chatting some words off in Polish (this was when I first started learning Polish; I didn't know what the hell he was saying.)  K told him I was an American and could not understand Polish.  That made him ever more jolly and drove him to hug me even more while welcoming me to Poland and wishing me a good trip.  I got the dubious pleasure of smelling his fermenting breath, which he was expending to K, talking to her about beer.  She handed him a five Zloty coin and he thanked her profusely then hugged me some more before wandering off.  K went on about how that's not really a usual thing to happen, which is a shame really.  I could have used a few more hugs.