Amanda Comes to Warsaw

Other Amanda came into Warsaw for a night before she returned to America for a short bit. We had a great time. I met her at the train station after class. We chatted over coffee and caught up on the juicy details of life. We went back to Mokotow and did some shopping.

This brings me to two shopping related stories.

First off, Poland has the best board games ever. The first, "Kolejka," recreates communist times. Kolejka means "line" as in - waiting in line. So, it's a board game meant to teach the post-communist generation about the shortages of the communist times. It sounds fascinating. You compete to get the first ten items on your grocery list. You represent different members of your family. You have to strategically send them to wait in line at stores, but you don't know which store will get a delivery or when. There's also a black market. And you get tip cards - like getting inside information from a communist friend on which stores will have which foods when...

The second, which I don't know that much about, is "Mali Powstancy." It's about children during the Warsaw Uprising. So, you play a scout who is organizing his or her scout troops to deliver messages that will help the uprising cause. I may or may not purchase both of these board games before I return home. However, I'm not sure starting a Polish board game collection is really the smartest thing. After all, I don't know who I can talk into playing with me!

The board game I finally purchased...is... APPLES TO APPLES PO POLSKU! So, I saw this at Empik in October. But now it's all sold out. So I looked for it online, but it was completely gone. Luckily, I don't give up. So, I kept checking online. Until I found a toy store that was selling it through allegro.pl (the ebay of Poland). I couldn't use allegro, because I don't have a PESEL (Polish ssn). So I had to use some devious methods to go around allegro. The result was that a few days later... Apples to Apples showed up on my door step.

That evening, I was shopping with Amanda and Lola. We went to H&M. Back story. Back in November, I went to H&M and tried on this really cute orange sun dress. I wanted it. It was on the sale rack. But it didn't have a price tag. There were no other orange sun dresses in the entire store. Flash forward two months. Lola and Amanda and I are in H&M and the dress is just sitting there. Still on the sale rack. Still in the size I tried on before. AND Amanda speaks Polish. So she helped me ask the sales person what the price of the dress was. And I got it on super sale.

That night, returning to the apartment, Lola, Amanda, and I picked up some 6 zl champagne. And we made a night of it, watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog and drinking champagne. 'Twas bardzo bardzo dobrze.