Day 54 -- My first all-European business meeting

Last night I returned from three days in Warsaw, Poland for a clinical hemophilia conference -- or haemophilia, as I am now forced to spell it.  Flying from Copenhagen to Warsaw was a wonderful experience.  The airport is a 20 min metro ride away, with the metro dropping you off literally inside the airport.  It does not get more convenient than that.  I did not have to remove my shoes at the airport which is always a nice touch, and also did not have to show any ID at any point during my time at the airport.  The flight itself was about an hour.  Probably ranks up there as one of the shortest flights I have ever been on....I look forward to Berlin in a few weeks.  Once we arrived in Warsaw, a group of us shared a short cab ride to the Westin where sadly my room would not be ready for a few hours.  But that gave us time to walk around a little and have lunch.

Warsaw is pretty much how Collin described it in a previous post.  An odd mixture of old-style quaint village in the appropriately named section of "Old Town" along with a combination of very modern, glassy, skyscrapers and grey, 1950s era communist/eastern European cement block building.  I know Collin already shared this picture taken from my hotel room but there were tons of this exact building all around my hotel.

although they do look a little better after a day long snow storm

 The Westin is one of the more modern buildings with a large elevator system that is actually on the outside of the building surrounded by glass, so you can see out as you travel up.  It was a bit disconcerting when we traveled to the 11th floor

Views from inside the elevator looking out on the left and trying to look down on the right

A shot of Old Town

A combo of old and new buildings

During our walk we also decided to explore this odd bit of road on the map.  It was pretty impressive to look at but didn't turn out so well in the photo; I needed to be above it more.

That little blue corner on the upper right of the map is the Vistula River.  We were going to walk to it but it was really cold and starting to snow, so since we could glimpse it from this part of the road, we decided that was good enough.  Unfortunately you can't see it in the picture.  

Another point of interest that we visited was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I enjoyed reading the Wiki page as I prepared this post since there was no description of any sort by the actual tomb.   Because it was freezing though, it was nice to see the soldiers were standing on what looked like heat pads with what I can only guess was hot air blowing on their legs.

  

We did warm up in a Starbucks.  My Danish comrades seemed very happy to see it.  I was surprised, seeing how Denmark only has one Starbucks and it is located in the airport.

Warsaw also had a surprisingly lot of buildings that were sadly in need of repair.  Don't be fooled by the plaque, that was for the building itself and not the disintegration.

Also, I was not able to get a picture of the guy checking me into the hotel without looking like an idiot, but he easily was a dark haired doppelganger of Collin's good friend Chris Potaczek.  In fact, there were Potzies everywhere!

The conference itself was fine and uneventful.  My Danish colleagues claim American conferences serve way too much food but I think this one gave them a run for their money.  I did have some "authentic" Polish pierogi, but I still prefer my grandma's Slovak ones.  I  also enjoyed paczki as we were fortunate enough to be there on "Fat Thursday", a Polish variation of Fat Tuesday.  I also enjoyed seeing my name tag for the conference, as I am now no longer from America!

The flight home was equally easy except we did have to remove our shoes at the Warsaw.  And I learned I could take a cab home and charge it to the company which was really nice. However, once we move to the new apartment in March we will be so close to the metro I don't know if a cab will eve be worth it!