Merry Christmas!!!

My favourite food from the Christmas Eve dinner - my Mum's pierogi :-) We made almost 150 of them this year... mniam!!!!

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luggage - long way home

Already long story of this year's travel home for Christmas continues...
My luggage was delivered yesterday. But not to me!
The courier company delivered it to a company that has exactly the same name as my surname and is located 200m away from my parents' place.
This company was expecting to get a big parcel delivered so they signed all the papers without checking what is inside until today. They were pretty surprised after unwrapping the big box...
Fortunately my luggage has two tags with my name on it and just by a chance the owner of that company knows my Mum....
I must admit that I was pretty stoned when after a short phone call this morning my Mum told me that she knew where my luggage was!!! My God, she really knows everything (best)!!!! :-)

Probably today is the first day in my life when I am very grateful to my Mum for her talkativeness and 'knowing everyone' around :-)  Thanks Mum!!!!


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third time lucky :-)

Finally at home !!!! :-D

My luggage isn't here but I was probably the happiest person in the lost luggage office...

I always though that winter is a completely unnecessary season... and now I am sure about that!

Good luck to all the people stuck on the airports!!!!

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Chaos part 2

I should be somewhere on the way from Warszawa to my parent's place right now but here I am, sitting at home (in Bergen) and writing...


I got up at 4am to catch a bus to the airport and be on time for the flight to Frankfurt at 6:45. No problem with check-in this time, but around the boarding time they announced that the flight would be delayed and if we take-off at all, it would at 11:12... Right..waiting again... at 9:30 another announcement: The Frankurft airport is closed !!!!


I believe that I beat my personal speed record when running to pick up a number at the ticket counter :-) After half an hour (business class served first) I got the new ticket :-) 


Let's see of I can fly through Copenhagen tomorrow morning....






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Chaos

I should be somewhere on the way from Amsterdam to Warsaw right now but here I am, sitting at home (in Bergen) and writing...

Schipol was closed yesterday due to heavy snowfals but most of the planes scheduled for  today in the morning took off without any problems. I was quite optimistic...

I got suspicious already around noon when I could not check-in online but the vague message - please contact KLM service desk at the airport - did not say too much...

On the way to the airport I got stuck in a traffic jam for around 30 minutes. Apparently most of the people in Bergen still do not have Xmas gifts and they all decided to go shopping to the Lagunen shopping centre placed next to the main road to the airport.

And when I finally reached the airport I was told that Schipol is not accepting any transfer passengers so I need to pick-up a number and wait to get a new ticket... |Right... I picked up a number (207) at 15:10 while number 95 was being processed. The photo below was taken at 16:30.

 I was finally able to leave the airport with a new ticket at 18:50!!!

Almost 4 hours of waiting (only people from the flight to Amsterdam were served at that time)!!!! Wrrrr!!!

Fortunately there were some nice and talkative people around with a good sense of humour :-)  

Let's see of I can fly through Frankfurt tomorrow morning....

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Friday full of surprises

Last Friday was full of surprises. Fortunately most of them were positive:

• after 3.5hours of sleep Friday morning was even more chaotic and stressful then we expected, 
• regardless of the stress level TBBE was more fluent in his presentation than during all the practice speeches,
• playing a role of the interpreter for S. I was allowed to attend the debate and voting of the university  scientific board (normally only for the board members) after the TBBE presentation,
• the board's enthusiasm about his work was even larger than in the public part of the defence so TBBE received his PhD degree with a distinction :-)
• the lunch with the board members was less stiff and official than expected,
• only little hangover on Saturday morning :-)

Without surprises:

• good time with S.,
• S. paid 50PLN instead of 25PLN for a taxi to the airport only because he doesn't speak polish,
• good party on Friday evening,
• drTBBE charged his batteries :-D and is very similar again to the good old relaxed TBBE!

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TBBE, PhD !

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Dobra robota, Panie Doktorze!

You owe me a beer!!! :-)

Warszawa is greeting the new doctor :-)

P.S. For those who do not recognize this building (an example of an architectural style called: cold brutalism :-), that is Palac Kultury i Nauki in Warszawa.

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one day to go!

Oh yes, I can already see it:

original image

:-]



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2nd snow

It started to snow (second snow this winter) just when I was coming back from the airport.

TBBE is already in Poland, getting ready for the final defence :-) and I am flying there in 2 days.

This is how I feel about that:

The big plan is to spend a lot of time with my family and celebrate the 3 new symbols (Dr.) in front of the 'TBBE'. I guess it has been a long time since I was last so happy about flying home...

Coming back to the snow: I hope it will stay like that! Since there is only a couple of centimetres of the white powder it is still possible to walk (forget about people de-snowing side walks next to their houses!)  and the city looks pretty nice :-)
I guess I start to feel the Christmas spirit already...

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