- Gotten my new Work Permit. Apparently it was just as easy to apply for a 2-year extension as a 1-year extension, so for contingency purposes my work permit is good through the end of July 2014.
- Received my Polish Residents Card. So I now have an official Polish ID. This takes the place of the visa I originally had, and also means I don't have to carry my passport around with me. Like the Work Permit, it is good through July 2014.
- Signed a lease extension with my landlord, ensuring I don't have to move and try and find a new apartment just as the hordes of college students decent on Poznań for the start of the new semester.
- The only paperwork left to ensure the continuing stay is to extend my official residence filing, which Move-One will be helping with in a week or two.
- I have done a terrible job of trying to learn Polish. It's just too easy for me to get by with English between my co-workers and most of the folks in the shops (who are generally younger) speaking English. I am resolving to do better, but we'll see.
- Poznań is a pretty good place to live. It has lots of young people, so lots of energy. The only downside that consistently bugs me is the water, which is so full of minerals that it consistently dries out and causes minor irritation to my skin and leaves a residue behind on everything. The dark grey / black sink in my kitchen is pale grey from the deposits in places.
- The Polish people are generally tremendously outgoing and nice. I can only think of one time in my whole year here when I got even a bit of dirty look from someone for not speaking Polish. Try going a day in the US without someone being nasty to you if you don't speak English.
- Accepting the offer to come to Poland has to be among the best choices I ever made. It's given me opportunities I probably never would have had otherwise, even if I am not taking advantage of them to maximum possibility. Strangely, I think that in many ways the biggest change has been in a work capacity where I have had a chance to work on things that were much more interesting that what I was doing in the US and kept me much more interested in my job. The location stuff has just been a major benefit.
- Being able to work a schedule that generally runs from 11am or Noon to 7-8pm really has been as nice as I thought it would be.
- Living in an apartment still sucks just as much as I remembered it did. ;)
As for what I'm doing right now, I'm hoping to try and take one more trip in Europe before I head over to the U.S. for my visit and before winter sets in. Hopefully in the next 3 weeks or so.
Given that the NHL is in a lock-out and some San Jose Sharks players are playing in Europe right now, I'm thinking of trying to catch a hockey game somewhere. Logan Couture is playing for Geneva in the Swiss League, and Joe Thornton is playing for Davos. So if the lock-out is still going on towards the end of October I might try and catch the meet-up of those teams on October 27th. Jason Demers of the Sharks is playing in Finland, but for a team in the far north. That may be hard to reach on a 4-day weekend. Maybe I'll luck and they'll go to Helsinki sometime soon. Or Tomas Hertl, the Sharks top prospect, is playing the Czech league, so that offers another option.
Or if I can't find a hockey game to go to, I'll try and visit another city on my list. Depending on the weather at the time I am looking at Helsinki, Copenhagen, Zurich, Dusseldorf and Cologne (just a short train ride apart), or possibly Amsterdam. The situation in the Southern Europe has made me decide to stay away from there right now, even though there are places I would like to go.
So sorry for the lack of update for the last month. Hopefully I'll have more interesting news soon.
Enjoy!
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