HollyŁódź

My day in Łódź was a lot of fun, especially when the weather would agree with me. :-P Before my trip, my program's assistant director gave me a great map to the city: http://www.use-it-lodz.pl/ [comes from this website, which has other places: http://www.use-it.be/europe/ since we also have a great Warsaw one: http://www.use-it-warsaw.pl/] that was very helpful. Łódź is a nice place for a shorter trip (or even longer if you have the time) since the train ride is a little over two hours there (so under five hours total travel since the trains tend to be late arriving when I board or disembark) and a lot of the main places for food, shopping, visiting, etc. are along one main street or not too far from it; this street is Piotrkowska [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street]. There is more than one train station in the Łódź area and the one I arrived at and departed from (Łódź Kaliska) was not bad at all (better than Torun, but not as nice as the main or central ones in Wroclaw and Warszawa, but those have more construction; it also had small kiosks, stores, vending machines: food, HOT DRINKS - I love these (for me, they're more for soup and tea) and the US needs more of them, and cold drinks). I walked along this main street and I went to a fantastic commercial spot called Manufaktura: http://www.manufaktura.com/ It was created from a former factory and became multi-purpose: a mall, bowling alley, museums - such as about the factory's history, galleries, restaurants, a movie theatre, and more. It was probably one of the nicest malls I have ever seen and it is so cool how the exterior factory-look was maintained. It was there that I had lunch at my go-to food chain (everyone else on my program tends to go to McDonalds wherever they go, but I like the Polish vegetarian food chain Green Way: greenway.pl and I just tend to select different menu items when I go - this time Krupnik soup: http://www.kwestiasmaku.com/kuchnia_wloska/krupnik/krupnik.html, a croquette filled with cabbage and covered in a mushroom sauce:http://greenway.pl/pl/katalog/dania_glowne/krokiet_z_kapusta_i_grzybami, with salads on the side: shredded carrots, shredded beets, a coleslaw-like other one); I am in a very Catholic country and it must be the leniency - authorized by the Pope - on meatless Fridays during most of Lent (mainly Good Friday as the one to be meat-free) that allows more Poles to be lenient themselves. I am one of the main people I have seen who stick to every Friday being meatless when I can, so many a Pole can be seen at KFC, kebab stands, McDonalds... Later, I walked around the mall and a few stores, such as grabbing some drinks, gum, and snacks at a real: http://www.real.de/real-startseite.html - a European supermarket and then went to a small market called Alma: http://www.almamarket.pl/ because it began to rain while I was inside the main part of the mall and I wanted to stall for time... but ended up walking in some rain anyway. The tough parts about rain are the loss of peripheral vision with a hood and the fear of being poked by umbrellas. Plus, it was very windy, so I saw some difficulty with using umbrellas when they would fold the wrong way. It was cloudy when I left Warsaw, sunny from the train window, and then cloudy, windy, and cool when I left the train until it began to rain when I was inside the mall (stopping sometime later before starting again). I walked along Piotrkowska Street (it stopped raining for a bit and began again shortly before heading to the train station as it began to darken earlier from the lack of sun and abundance of clouds) and I even stopped inside of some neat stores: a Polish folk store - full of Krakowiaka dresses and painted eggs and Polish stoneware - and this interesting market with one floor a grocery (with a candy/alcohol counter ;) ) and the upstairs a weird market considered a "Chinese Market." It simply had a weird hodgepodge of items and made me have that "where am I?" feeling. There are even some "stars" along Piotrkowska (http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleja_Gwiazd_w_%C5%81odzi), a la Hollywood's Walk of Fame, but this one is smaller (only a few - not many - blocks on both sides of the street) and for Poles.

Not my picture ;)

I really liked this city a lot and I was glad to go, although it would have been cool to see the Corning, Inc. establishment there (since then my parents could tell their coworkers that their daughter had seen/visited an international location :-P). It would have been fun to stay longer since there were some sites left to see, but it was a pleasant trip. :) I did not see any of the museums or some places (ghetto, cemeteries, forests, some parks, some monuments, some important buildings/sites) farther from my train station, Manufaktura, or Piotrkowska Street. There also was an IKEA at a mall nearby. :-P ;) So, a longer time there could have been spent.

Pictures on Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kab1221

Since the weather is not-so-great (a bit windy, cool, cloudy, and drizzling on-and-off), I will not go out too much. I may wait and see how the weather is tomorrow before making definite plans (also because of it being the Smolensk anniversary), other than going to the classical performance at 6pm. I have been interested in seeing a movie, so there is a chance I will do that tonight or tomorrow. I also have a little homework to finish up before Monday or Tuesday. There is also an episode of "Castle" I have yet to watch and a new show called "The Borgias" that might fill the void left by "The Pillars of the Earth" (which I still might read one day).