Halloween- Newcastle and Sunderland

This past weekend I spent in England. I stayed in Sunderland with Erin at her boyfriend's house. It was an enjoyable time. We visited Newcastle on the first day that we were there and it was pretty great. It was a very nice city with a lot of museums and things of that sort to look at. We wandered around with one of Erin's friends, Sam. He took us to this vintage store and we tried lots of things on. I realized I really like high-collar old lady dresses. I want one. In black. I bought a green barrette instead. The Baltic art museum was really nice. We went there and looked at stuff. There were activities for little kids like pumpkin carving. I was really excited about it but they didn't let us carve things with small children. I was sad.

When we were back in Sunderland we went to this park that had a walrus statue. I really like walruses so we

sat on it and took a

bunch of pictures. I think

it was one of the

high lights of Sunderland. Erin also showed me the school where she studied at 2 years ago and I got to see the dorms and the studios and I got to hear about all the shinanigans her and Corey got up to back in the day.

The following night we worked on our wonderful Halloween costumes and then we went to a Halloween party of one of Gary's friends. I was a dead scuba diver! It was pretty great. I really liked it because I made all of it. Scuba tanks, flippers, weight belt and all. Erin assisted Gary with gluing on extra facial hair. She was being a good girlfriend. He was being one of his friends for Halloween and Erin was a sailor doll. The party was really fun and everyone had really good costumes. Drinking with English people was fun. One boy was Alladin and Erin and I kept following him around and singing to him all night. The songs and motions got more entertaining as the night and drinking went on. We ended up ordering pizza once we got home and were very very disappointed with the speediness of the delivery service. It wasn't, and that

was the problem. We also tried toffee apples at the beginning of the night that we were very excited for. They were red and candy looking but weren't nearly as exciting as they looked. I just wanted them to be caramel apples but they definitely were not.

So yeah that was about it. It was a really fun time and Halloween is my favorite holiday so I was very happy to spend it with fun people in a foreign country. Yep.

Poland things.

I spent last weekend in Poznan, Poland so I think I should probably write about it...

Visiting Poland was a really great experience and it was also my first solo traveling experience so it made it that much more exciting. Poznan was decided on mostly based on the fact that it was very last minute and flights were reasonable. I also heard that Polish people are very friendly and I've never been to poland so it seemed like a good place to go. Poznan is located on the middle western side of poland and was once the capital so it had a lot of good old things to see. Before I left I managed to learn several key polish phrases such as 'do u speak english?', 'how much does it cost?', 'thank you' and 'hello'. They worked surprisingly well. The most difficult part was getting to my hostel from the airport. Signs were in Polish and unfortunately I didn't get it. After finding some young people to pester in English I managed to get a bus then a tram to my hostel. I stayed at Frolic Goats hostel and it was really nice. Plus I really like goats so I was fond of the name.

I saw a lot of old buildings and looked at several museums which were nice. The town is very into goats because I believe there is an old story about how these two goats saved the town. One of the main attractions was the city hall in the old market square or stary rynak.

At 12 everyday these two metal goats come out of the steeple part and bu

tt their heads together 12 times. It was enjoyable to see a town that likes goats as much as me. They have rectangular pupils, what's not to enjoy? I also saw several old churches that were really beautiful. There were also some nice gardens/ parks and a polish market that I visited. One of the really nice things was that flowers were sold everywhere. Even though it was cold out people were still walking around with bouquets of flowers. It seemed pretty great.

I made a friend at my hostel, Kamal, which

is probably one of the reasons I

had such a good time. He had been staying in Poznan for a few months and had a good Polish friend circle and was I was able to tag along and go out with him and his friends. I made it to some polish bars and clubs, which were fun. The main difference besides the whole language thing would probably be the amount of techno music. Two of Kamal's friends that I met, Magda and Alex, were really great and we hung out with them a few times. They were a lot of fun and their english was very good so that was nice. It was really random because Alex had actually lived in Minnesota for several years when he was younger, so it was interesting to meet someone that knew about WI and the midwest. On Sunday night I got to go to this arabic party and it was a really great time. There was a lot of arabic dancing, hookah smoking, and discussions which I gladly participated in. The dancing was a lot of fun and the polish/arabic girls were great and showed me all of the wonderful dance moves. All of the people there were so interesting and talking to them made for great conversations. The hookah smoking was wonderful as well as it made me think of summers in madison : )

On the last day I basically just wandered around parks and the city while eating baked goods. I needed to spend all my change so I ate Polish bakery till my tummy hurt. I enjoyed the treats though. As most should know, I am always up for trying new candy or bakery.

I really enjoyed my experiences in Poland and would recommend it to anyone. The people I met were very interesting and enjoyable and there was a lot of historical buildings and architecture to see. It was definitely a good first european trip and I had a wonderful time.