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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND AND CZESTOCHOWA

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Engineering and Informatics faculty at Polytechnika Czestochowa

Upon arrival in Poland (25th Sept. 2002) Duddaz and I spent 2 nights in a Warsaw hotel. This was merely to give us a taste of what Polish life was like and to give us time to figure out timetables and to book tickets down to Czestochowa.

On the line south from Warsaw toward Czestochowa there are no sizable cities, towns or even villages. In fact in the dark of the polish night there's nothing at all out of the window. Every 2 miles or so, we'd pass a worn down barn, or old farm house just visible in the moon light. We really didn't know what to expect from Czestochowa. We didn't know how big the city was, we thought we'd be living in a ruined farm house in the middle of nowhere for the next year, we really had these terrifying thoughts going through our heads.

We were so nervous, we thought the train was taking us into nowhere. 3 hours later we arrived in Czestochowa. The area outside the window just lit up in an instant and there we were, on the platform at Czestochowa central station.

There was no one to pick us up, so we got a taxi to the accommodation we'd been told we were staying in. Once booked in we moved into our rooms. They were actually completely the opposite to what we'd expected. In every room there were 2 beds and a high speed internet connection. They were well furnished and even though expensive by Polish terms 100 Euros per month isn't too bad at all.

"We were so nervous, we thought the train was taking us into nowhere"

View from the train on the way to Czestochowa

I noticed there was music coming from my neighbours room, so I knocked on the door, and out came the 3rd and final ERASMUS student, Dave from Italy. He'd arrived a day earlier than us and had already been on a tour of the halls surroundings.

Even though it was dark, we still decided to go and find out what was outside waiting for us to see. We walked down to the University, and there were local kids drinking and making a mess outside the building. It was the last day of the summer holidays we found out later, and this was their final party.

We thought the place was lawless, we were obviously wrong. Czestochowa thankfully turned out to be a really nice place, with a lot of nice people. It didn't take long for our first impressions to be proven wrong.

"It didn't take long for our first impressions to be proven wrong"

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E mail: sean_devonport@lycos.co.uk