November 8, 2011

• The art of the unexpected

  

  How should I start? Should I start by telling you that I had one of the most memorable trips so far in Europe but that it was also the most nerve racking? Or that I had an awesome time figuring out myself more but then I feel quite tired and mad about why I act so negatively in certain circumstances to either the situation or person? But either way maybe I should start by telling you briefly about the “incidences” or “would be incidences” that occurred during our trip and how lucky we were the whole time until we came back.

  1. From Lund station to Malmo airport, me and Rebekah arrived just in time with five minutes to spare before the gates were “supposed” to close: We agreed that we didn’t want to take the earlier flynnagen bus because that would mean we’d arrive 2 hours earlier at the airport. I guess that was the only really wise decision we made in terms of transportation wise because…

  2. The air flight got delayed by 4.5 hours: We were supposed to leave at 12:10 pm but because of the fog at Gdansk airport in Poland, the airport closed down all landing for the couple of hours so Wizz Air made us wait until the sun set down and they could see through the fog better and see the tracking lights on the airport floor at night. So the whole air craft just sat there waiting…the plane was there, the crew was there, we were there, but we had to wait until there was no sun. So much for wanting to spend some sun light in Gdansk on the first day.

  3. From Gdansk central station, we basically looked for an hour before we found out which platform and train to take to Malbork castle. I searched online beforehand but none of the sites told me which train, it just said there would be a train. Turns out there are the blue and yellow trains, the regional trains, and of course, the trams. Not very hard to figure out but still a bit troublesome for the two of us who knows no Polish and people don’t speak very good English either. Not to mention the fact that we were almost always the only two Chinese people everywhere. People stare at us like strange creatures throughout our whole trip.

  4. This isn’t an incidence or would be incidence but just in continuation with my emphasis on how “strange” we are to the Polish while we were walking away from Malbork castle a bunch of teenage boys stared at us and three of them tried to imitate us talk and whispering to each other that we were “Chinske” or something like that. I wonder how Chinese people survive living in Poland actually…do they ever get used to this type of stares and gestures? (And on the train ride this little girl looked at us so curiously the whole time like she’s never seen a Chinese before)

  5. We almost missed our Polski bus at night towards Warsaw when we assumed that 1.5 hours would be enough to get from our hostel to the city centre to the bus station. Turns out transportation systems in Poland aren’t that reliable either. The buses come every hour or so and you could actually miss them because they don’t come. So me and Rebekah kept on waiting and waiting and eventually got to the central but then had to run around asking people where the tram was and then finally getting on bus realizing that it takes 30 min to get to the bus station…which meant we’d either make it on time or 5 min after the bus leaves. Thank God we arrived with 5 min to spare.

  6. The bus ride from Gdansk to Warsaw was approximately 6 hours, so we arrived quite early at 4:45 am in the morning at one of the bus stops. I got off first to pick up our luggage and I thought that Rebekah was right behind me. I had to put some things back into my bag but when I looked up afterwards, she was nowhere to be seen. That freaked me out because the bus station was the size of Coquitlam’s station except I looked everywhere and couldn’t see her. I wasn’t quite as worried about myself as for her as I dragged everything with me and had all the money and directions. I was just worried she got kidnapped on the spot or something since it’s so early in the morning. Turns out she walked right into the train station because she looked right past me and thought that I went into the train station already. Pretty funny but pretty scary at the time.

  7. When we finally arrived in Warsaw’s central train station and got out, we tried following the Hostel directions but couldn’t find it and started feeling quite irritated (we were hungry and tired because of the bumpy bus road but at the same time tried to stay alert because Poland is known to be not really safe). But then a man in business suit came up to us while walking from the opposite direction, talking on his phone, and offered to help us out. “where are you two from?” he asks and Rebakah replied “Singapore”. I practically stayed silent the whole time because I kept on having second thoughts “is he safe?”, especially when he talked on the phone to ask his friend to help us and then two other men comes up and the first man walks up to the two to ask for us…couldn’t help but think that they were a group. But turns out he really was helping us and eventually we found our hostel.

  8. We didn’t tell our hostel that we would arrive so early in the morning so the two of us sat first in the kitchen of the hostel to sleep and then went down to the couches in the lounge and just laid there flat until 10 am. Never in my life had I felt so deprived of sleep. Not even from airplane rides. Quite an experience though I must say.

  9. The whole experience in Warsaw was just plain full of small mistakes here and there…going to the wrong stops, walking on the wrong streets, going to museums that weren’t even open that day, but also full of fun in that way because we got to see other interesting things like going into Thrift shops, market places, and interesting restaurants and milk bars. Oh and we were going to visit a palace near a lake inside the park, but when we went there it was already dark and the pathway leading into the forest was extremely dark. Feeling quite annoyed that we spent so much time trying to go to this place and cannot actually go in, I told Rebekah we should try so she got out her torch and we walked together into the forest. But halfway through down the hill her torch burned out and it was pitch black. Rebekah said we should go back but a part of me had this stubborness that goes back to my Tofino trip where I was also stubborn about another pitch dark event. So we walked down a bit more before I suddenly felt quite irresponsible towards Rebekah and said we should go back. I felt quite bad that I was making the both of us go through something that could be adventurous but also risk taking at the same time. Because what if some thief came out of the bushes around us and attacked us? There were no people around to help us because by then we were pretty far into the forest. So we ended up not seeing the palace and not seeing some other monuments in the park either.

  10. This morning we woke up at 7 am and were supposed to grab breakfast and leave by 8:20 am. But when I woke up I suddenly realized that we don’t even know what time the bus leaves for the airport so I went quickly to check the time schedule only to find that it would be really tight if we make it for the 8:35 bus, so we actually needed to take the 8:20 am bus, which according to our observation the other day should’ve been 5 min. We got out at 8:05 am but when we started walking we found out that Rebekah mistakingly remembered one bus stop for another and the one we needed to go to was near the city centre, which was a 15 min walk. So by that time I was in my panic mode and was half running half speed dragging our luggages…and I finally kind of exploded in some sort of irritation mode by keep on saying “omg omg omg”. And it kind of killed me how we first had to walk down some stairs underground and walk up some stairs to go to the other side of the road because there were no pedestrain cross walks on the main road itself. we did that 3 times because we kept on going into the wrong directions. Up down up down. My arms were sore by then. We finally got onto the 8:35 am bus and was stuck in traffic jam…which wasn’t that bad but still bad enough to make us seem “just in time” for the check in at the air port. Funny thing was…once we got to the airport, we didn’t even know which terminal to go to. But everything worked out just fine and we got through the gates and onto the flight.

  11. The only problem was, after we came back from Warsaw, we lost our luggage. I tell you the truth, by then I just felt like I had enough “interesting things” happening on my trip that I kept on swearing under my breadth. On the one hand I was quite upset but at the other hand I was even more upset why I was upset. The irony of everything was I felt quite bad for my rude attitudes and irritated feelings whenever something went wrong. Just the other time Jon shared about how Christians should have faith that isn’t affected by the things that happen in their lives, and it really sticked to me in the sense that I really wanted to aim for that…but when I realized how I lost the luggage, I also kind of lost it and felt quite weak in my faith. Rebekah, on the other hand, kept on trying to assure me that they would find the luggage and give it back to us within the next few days, but I just didn’t trust in anything and anyone. What was lost seemed lost to me forever. Just like a lot of things in life that I’ve lost.

  So that concludes my descriptions of the incidences that occurred to me. But while everything seemed to be out of order and unexpected, I think its God’s way of teaching me and Rebekah because quite frankly, the best ways to learn something is always hands on experience and just being free to make mistakes. After we got on the bus from the airport to Lund, we both agreed that we learned quite a bit for our trip. We learned that we both needed these experiences so that in our future trips we would know more about how to take care of each other. I learned that we should never assume we would have enough time and figure things out the last minute. But I also learned that down right planning and scheduling everything doesn’t always make everything perfect either because incidences do occur. You never know what to expect the next moment and that’s the art of the unexpected. So to achieve the maximum of both, there should be an equal balance between planning and going with the flow. I also learned that perhaps I should have more faith and stop worrying so much. I tend to get irritated by circumstances that I neglect to care about the people around me. For example, while rushing towards to central station I totally did not care about Rebekah who was walking far behind me. At the time I was actually wondering how I could be dragging the luggages, have my backpack, and still walk faster than her while she walked at a normal speed. But now that I think back the guilt comes back to me because I forgot about how her feet was hurt a month ago and how she might not feel comfortable walking too fast. And the time when we were leaving from the first Hostel and I just took care of my own things and didn’t look out for Rebekah to see if she left anything behind. She ended up forgetting her scarf.

  I know that I’m fully capable of looking out for myself and taking care of myself on trips now, but I think its time for me to really act out more on my faith and stop worrying so much and getting irritated and mad at people and things. I should also start taking care of other people too because I feel like thats what we’re meant to do for each other, to look out, encourage, and support each other. I’m so thankful that Rebekah was my partner for this trip because together we learned so much and had a good time finding things out ourselves.

  Now for some good things about our trip =] :

  1. The night we arrived in Gdansk, we went to this restaurant that I searched up called U Dzika and the atmosphere and food was fabulous. We had Poland’s famous Roasted duck and Polish dumpling (pierogi) where one dish was stuffed with cheese and the other with salmon. We also had a sausage soup that was searched in a rye bread bowl. Mmm mm good. That night we walked and bussed back to our hostel feeling quite stuffed but happy. We aso laughed at how adventurous we were because the hostel we chose, called “Mama’s and Papa’s” was actually quite far from the center and had to go through a bit of a dark street. But we also loved it there because its such a family based hostel where there really was a mama, papa, and son serving us and papa was a hippie looking guy who couldn’t speak english very well but who took care of us very well, taking us to the bus stop in the morning and putting some music on for us to listen during breakfast time. I really miss the hostel now even though it was just one night =[.

  2. The Marlbork Castle was really amazing I think. The largest castle in the world there were so much to see and walk around to. Each hidden door seemed to symbolize something...and just walking through the corridors made you imagine how life must've been during the medieval ages when there were still knights and churches inside of castles. Really interesting.

  3. The old town in Warsaw is just beautiful. Yes, I know, most old towns are beautiful but there was just something about the one in Warsaw that words can't explain. Maybe it was because we went during sunset so the lights flickered brilliantly on the building's exteriors, or maybe it was because of the walk down the pathway of the castle nearby at night...whichever reason, it was totally worth it.

  4. The shopping. The shopping was really good. The food too. In Warsaw we went to this milk bar our hostel recommended us, (speaking of which, the hostel we stayed in, called Oki Doki, has one of the most artistic rooms you can find anywhere at such a reasonable price...but the hot waters weren't that good =P), and we found the pancakes there very very wonderful, especially after a long walk through their nearby market place (I bought boots, but oh dear they're in the lost luggage right now). We ordered a rasberry pancake, an apple pancake, and a chicken pancake. And of my believe me, I loved their ginger ice tea. I wish I knew how to make it (I will search for it =D).

  5. And last but not least, after I came back home, and after my depressed moments, I decided to go to our university's (by now I'm already referring to Lund as my home) international club and we baked cinnamon buns together! It was so much fun kneading and playing around with the dough, and by the time we finished we just sat in a very long table, and one of my professors, her mom, and twenty of us students just sat down to enjoy coffee and our own home made buns. I packed a few away so I still have some to eat tomorrow morning =] .

  Life is too short for regrets. Rebekah is right. You can be a pessimistic person and tend to have negative thoughts but you can also choose to not thing negatively. I’ll stop thinking about my lost suitcase now. Jesus please give me back my suitcase tomorrow or the day after. Thank you very much. Amen. =]

  P.S: I want to come back to Poland again in the future…several years later with a person who I love. Maybe my mom, a friend, or …but either way I’d like to go back, be able to recall my experiences, and just share it with the person I love. It would really mean a lot to me. Probably better than spending time in Paris or whichever beautiful city that everybody tends to over rate.

  • 5:06 pm
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