{"id":1475,"date":"2010-06-15T10:35:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T15:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/?p=1475"},"modified":"2023-12-20T16:25:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T21:25:16","slug":"poland-part-16-last-full-day-in-poland-and-the-temptation-of-quiet-veronica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/06\/15\/poland-part-16-last-full-day-in-poland-and-the-temptation-of-quiet-veronica\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland: Part 16 &#8211; Last Full Day in Poland, and THE TEMPTATION OF QUIET VERONICA"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>June 29 &#8211; 12:10PM<\/h3>\n<p>Today is our last full day in Poland.\u00a0 We&#8217;re leaving for Toronto tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I&#8217;m kind of glad.\u00a0 I like Poland just fine, but I really just want to go home now.<\/p>\n<p>I slept in this morning, and then had a big breakfast of cr\u00e9pes with Jiv, Ryan, Reid, Yev and Alexi.<\/p>\n<p>With my stomach full, I set off for one last solo-tour of the Wroclaw square.\u00a0 I went into some shops I hadn&#8217;t seen yet.\u00a0 I revisited some ones I was already familiar with.\u00a0 My pen was starting to run out (my journal is almost full!), so I bought a new one and am using it right now.<\/p>\n<p>I sat in the square and listened to people speaking different languages.\u00a0 I enjoyed the weather.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a nice day today.<\/p>\n<h3>12:55PM<\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;m back at the hostel.\u00a0 This place is in really good condition, and nicely decorated.\u00a0 The beds and bathrooms are pretty nice, and a dream compared to what we dealt with in Poznan.\u00a0 The staff (a family, I believe) seem a bit rude and resentful &#8211; like they really don&#8217;t enjoy running a hostel.\u00a0 I&#8217;m almost afraid to ask for the key at the front desk, as it&#8217;s usually accompanied by a rolling of eyes and some attitude.<\/p>\n<p>Pro tip:\u00a0 hostels are a good place to donate old computers to.\u00a0 As somebody who has now been in a few hostels, I can&#8217;t stress how important basic Internet connectivity is.\u00a0 Just a thought.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;m starting to get over my cold a little.\u00a0 I seem to be over the worst of it, anyhow.\u00a0 Others in the group are starting to get sick though &#8211; it&#8217;ll be good to get everyone home and rested.<\/p>\n<p>We were going to see a Pina Bausch talk-back session today, but it was canceled due to sudden health problems (<em>Pina Bausch unfortunately passed away on June 30th, a day after this entry was written<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow is going to be a <strong>long <\/strong>day.\u00a0 We&#8217;re waking up at 6AM.\u00a0 Then, a 7 hour bus ride to Warsaw.\u00a0 After that, an 8-9 hour flight to Toronto.\u00a0 Both Yev and Jiv have offered me a ride from Pearson Airport back to my apartment &#8211; I&#8217;m grateful, and at this point I&#8217;ll climb into the first car I see.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what the best course of action is jet-lag-wise, so I&#8217;ll probably just try to stay awake for the entire trip home and see if that works.<\/p>\n<p>When I get back, I&#8217;ll take a few days to rest.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll hang out with Em and the guys.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll write a few blog posts.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll upload photos.\u00a0 Then, I&#8217;ll be back to work on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.markusproject.org\">MarkUs<\/a> (I wonder how Nelle and Severin are coming along?).<\/p>\n<h3>10:30PM<\/h3>\n<p>After hanging around the hostel for a bit, Alex and I left and walked around downtown. We chatting about the trip, and what we were going to do when we get home.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, we headed to the theatre to see a film recording of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanrepertorytheater.org\/node\/827\">Krystian Lupa<\/a> play.\u00a0 I tried my best to enjoy it, but I really couldn&#8217;t get into it.\u00a0 Like <a href=\"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2009\/08\/20\/poland-part-8-a-boat-ride-eating-videos-ajax-and-more-eating\/\">I mentioned earlier<\/a>, video recordings of plays often don&#8217;t work well at all for me.<\/p>\n<p>I think I napped through a good chunk of the film.\u00a0 Eventually, it ended, and I caught up with Alexi and Yev as they were leaving the theatre.<\/p>\n<p>And it was absolutely pouring out.\u00a0 Buckets.\u00a0 Torrents.\u00a0 Huge rainfall.\u00a0 I was scared to take out my camera for a photo in case I damaged it, so I can only describe it:\u00a0 lots of rain.<\/p>\n<p>We went back to the hostel to rejoin the rest of the group, and then purchased tram tickets for the next (and final) theatre piece of the trip:\u00a0 The Temptation of Quiet Veronica.<\/p>\n<h3>THE TEMPTATION OF QUIET VERONICA (or KUSZENIE CICHEJ WERONIKI) directed by Krystian Lupa<\/h3>\n<p>Maybe it was the exhaustion.\u00a0 Maybe it was the fact that my body was starting to rebel against this trip.\u00a0 Maybe I&#8217;d just seen to much theatre these past two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the reason, I just could not keep my mind on the show.\u00a0 The only remarkable thing I can think of happened just as the play was beginning.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sitting in between Ryan and Alex.\u00a0 The stage is still dark, and the audience is buzzing.\u00a0 Ryan looks at us and says, very seriously, &#8220;I swear to god, if I see one more naked person, I think I&#8217;m going to flip out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The house lights started to dim.\u00a0 The stage lights lit up.\u00a0 And guess what was standing there, spread-eagle in the middle of the stage?<\/p>\n<p>You guessed it.<\/p>\n<p>For the rest of the show, all I could really focus on was Ryan&#8217;s hand, gripping, white-knuckled, on to my knee.<\/p>\n<h3>The Last Supper<\/h3>\n<p>It was our last supper together in Poland.\u00a0 We decided to head back to that same place we&#8217;d eaten at after <a href=\"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2009\/07\/06\/poland-%E2%80%93-part-5-exploring-wroclaw\/\">seeing CLEANSED<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2009\/07\/18\/poland-part-7-an-official-tour-of-wroclaw\/\">what our tour guide called &#8220;the oldest restaurant in Europe&#8221;.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[simage=572,288]<br \/>\n[simage=575,288]<br \/>\n[simage=576,288]<\/p>\n<p>It was an important dinner.<\/p>\n<p>This trip marks the end of an era for me. I&#8217;ve known the people I&#8217;m traveling with\u00a0pretty intimately for about 4 years.\u00a0 We&#8217;ve acted together, studied together, sweated, presented, and complained together.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a tight group, and when this trip is over, it will signal the end of my time studying at the UCDP.<\/p>\n<p>[simage=577,288]<br \/>\n[simage=578,288]<br \/>\n[simage=579,288]<br \/>\n[simage=582,288]<br \/>\n[simage=584,288]<br \/>\n[simage=593,288]<br \/>\n[simage=594,288]<br \/>\n[simage=600,288]<\/p>\n<p>Glad to go out with a bang, though!\u00a0 We bought Tamara a cake with an explosive on top:<\/p>\n<p>[simage=589,288]<br \/>\n[simage=590,288]<br \/>\n[simage=591,288]<br \/>\n[simage=596,288]<br \/>\n[simage=595,288]<\/p>\n<p>It was a good dinner.\u00a0 Afterwards, we all headed back to the hostel and went to bed.\u00a0 With layovers, tomorrow was going to be a 20 hour trip home.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/06\/15\/poland-part-17-homeward-bound-final-entry\/\">Click here to go to Part 17: Homeward Bound, Final Entry<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/06\/14\/poland-part-15-back-to-wroclaw-suzuki-fragments-and-nefes\/\">Click here to go back to Part 15: Back to Wroclaw, Suzuki, FRAGMENTS, and NEF\u00c9S<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 29 &#8211; 12:10PM Today is our last full day in Poland.\u00a0 We&#8217;re leaving for Toronto tomorrow. To be honest, I&#8217;m kind of glad.\u00a0 I like Poland just fine, but I really just want to go home now. I slept in this morning, and then had a big breakfast of cr\u00e9pes with Jiv, Ryan, Reid, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[273,9,4],"tags":[758,757,286,751,754,756,749,750,755,1216,752,759,753,277],"class_list":["post-1475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poland","category-theater","category-ucdp","tag-cake","tag-food","tag-hostel","tag-krystian-lupa","tag-kuszenie-cichej-weroniki","tag-last-supper","tag-leaving","tag-long-trip","tag-nudity","tag-poland","tag-rain","tag-sparkler","tag-the-temptation-of-quiet-veronica","tag-wroclaw"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prmTy-nN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}