Before rumours start I better give a life sign!
Exams and module classes! Corporate and Business Law demand their tribute I was partly refusing to give. And now I pay the price… long days, the ever so popular short-term learning marathons and the confidence to not have missed out on too many social events - which are as it should be widely known the main mission of every student on exchange.
Thursday
It was Star Trek day… I gotta mention this because the movie made me finally proud again to be a Trek follower!
Friday
It was one of the last Juwenalia concerts, hosted by the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). Originally invited by the cousin of my cousin (met them all last week after … err three years?!), I went with other friends who also happen to study there and, surprise surprise, encountered more familiar faces from my university there. The main act was also kind of a surprise – Wawa Muffin, one of - if not THE - first Polish Raeggy Combo and ironically the only band I ever heard of before from the entire week’s concert line-up. I remember hearing a song from these fellas on a “Popolski Show” special on EInsLive to which I was listening to via Internet stream while being in London. Hooray to the blessings of Internet! Lots of fun there, great atmosphere on this fairly big concert, with the occasional Mary Jane smell in the air (stereotype conformity!) – For me the student friendly beer prices counted more 
.
Saturday
…then a bit more sophisticated, with a free Chopin meets Jazz meets Rock concert in Łażienki Park. It rained all day, but the situation remained amazingly dry in the evening. The whole event could have been also named “How Chopin defeated Communism” due to the elevated patriotism level during performance. Being already on the way back I got a sudden “You comin?” call to a flat party. The timing was excellent, the instructions very confusing (These French ^^, but you could also blame the loud busses). A text made it all clearer and the journey continued to Praga Pólnoc – kind of the equivalent of the spooky area in London (Elephant & Castle) I used to live in. A definite highlight was the presence of an acoustic guitar and the performance of awesome volunteers who played some famous English, for me not so famous French and later on also Ukrainian and Russian songs! While the girls were sighing during the play of my fellow student Adrien, it was all guys when the girl took over (all very melancholic, especially the Red Army song about Afghanistan). Another cliché about impressing the other sex with music has been reaffirmed! PRAGA Pólnoc (please pronounce it street language like!) was easy to reach by tram and surprisingly easy to leave as well as this Saturday was the night of museums and the trams have been kept on the road. So the whole event continued in a club environment of inner city Warsaw, where I have to admit the DJ pulled out a couple of goodies (a “I am horney” remix… you remember that shit from the 90s 
?!). It kind of helped to distract from the fact that the place was mostly filled with wanna-be bourgeoisie guys that were hitting amateurishly on the girls present within our bunch (One guy actually accidentally hurt his cheekbone when he threw himself into a group picture, not stopping and crashing with a girls shoulder… with his cheek… how stupid is that?!). For me it was enough to see that it was already bright at half past 4, so I retreated with a friend while some hit another bar. They made us feel old!
Sunday
Piano!
Monday
Herr Köhler has arrived, our man for Corporate and Business Law, as well as Intellectual Property Rights. This sets off the second week of intense legal teachings. Strangily I am once again hearing every once in a while about the German civil code, whilst being in a lecture room outside of Germany. I actually find it interesting, but even honest curiosity reaches its limits when you have law lectures over half of the day, starting in early morning. Nevertheless I mobilized my reserves to meet two fellow Fontys students on my way home. Both are also doing a semester abroad and came up from Nowy Sącz for a surprise visit to the capital. I had no success in explaining where Rotunda is (a distinct piece of socialist architecture), so we met by the Metro Station Swiętokrzyska, right in front of the first McDonalds that opened in Warsaw. It is actually not our first meeting, as we already met coincidently, by pure chance and with mutual great surprise in the Old Town of Kraków a couple of months ago - the best random meeting since the humble writers of this blog bumped into girls from our high school not too far away from Trafalgar Square in London. After some semi-confused walking we manage to get to the Old town (it’s somewhat separated from the city centre, a big minus of the city actually). We found a great place that serves pierogi and in brotherly agreement and adoration for this national dish we sat down in the terrace area, exchanged our impressions of the country and the life as a student here. The pierogi were delicious. I had the first time some with spinach, while Sebastian and Jakob went for an oven version. After watching a cat on a nearby tree, clearly exposing its rear as if getting ready for some rainmaking on other restaurant guests it actually really started to wee…errr rain. We wished each other farewell during the first - very rainy - summer-like storm, and I flew soaking wet to the Metro.
Tuesday
Once again it was studying til down to make up for slacking in the evening (or eating pierogi with friends on the day before). I finished up the last chapter on psychological motivation for helping or to put it into more technical terms about “human prosocial behaviour”. Armed with 60 pages of difficult to read handwriting notes I boarded the bus and learned on my way to the final exam in social psychology. Worries that I could have done more were luckily groundless as it turned out to be more of an US style pop quiz, consisting only of multiple choice and true false questions. Appears like the open questions have been deleted for us non-native speakers. 1 hour 45 minutes are much too long, 30 minutes would have done it actually too if necessary. Marvellously wrong answers on the true / false part are not count against us, which I am deeply thankful for. During my freshman year I managed somehow to collect negative points on a T/F part, beating the odds of “achieving” at least zero points.
Wednesday
During Corporate Finance I get the confirmation that I did poorly on the midterm. In fatalist laziness I had started only days before the exam, and when it was finally exam day I suffered a bad case of “never ending cold”. Ah, did I mention that my home school abolished Excel exams to return to plain pen & paper? At least I still remember from yesterday’s Psychology test that I rely on external attributions, blaming the outer environment for my failures and thus, achieve an improved self-image. Thank you Freud ! In general I decided to put the role model life aside and be a proper slacker by skipping Intellectual Property rights today. Come on! Four hours of lay-over and waiting on campus! And then ending up in a class with not even 10 people, rather half the amount, being fuckin’ tired after repetitive sleeping of less than four hours and commuting by bus, metro & tram from 7am on.. not even being able to hide behind my peers because half of them bluntly play games on their laptops, while the other half has to ensure the interactive lessons doesn’t remain a lecturer monologue. No thank you! I nearly fell asleep on the way home and actually took a nap while legal issues were discussed 10km away. This week is not typical as it is the third time within 7 days that I turn down a flat share party invitation from a bunch of guys that just returned from their trip to Southern Europe and Morocco and seem to enjoy themselves well since being back. Instead I study… despite the wanna-be-Erasmus student that I am!
Today
1410 words… if this article would only be my research paper on “Globalisation, Transformation & Development”. Then I would already have finished ¾ of it. Unfortunately I have too many words for this article and too few (replace by none if you please) for the paper. But there is still time til Wednesday right? Probably sometime between 10am on Friday, when I finish my last Law class and the Public Relations class that has been put on this Saturday and Sunday! Let the rush to the finish line begin!
Daniel
May 28th, 2009 von 
Stephan 
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