I don't even know where to start.

I won the Poland trip and seeing as I couldn't take my husband, and my mum and my brother were busy -my mum was on holiday in Demark and my brother has just started a new job, so I couldn't really take any additional days off, seeing as he's already going to Mallora with his girlfriend this week- I decided to take my friend. I needed someone who would drive and not complain about having to get up at 4am, so that ruled out a lot of people already.

I asked them repeatedly to buy us train tickets, but their travel agency said it would be faster by plane (BIGGEST B/S ever! If there's one thing I know something about it's travelling from whereever I am to Warsaw) and they went with that. Our plane left Dresden at 6:30 am, so to be at the airport by 5 I had to leave the house at 4am.
Which wouldn't have been half bad, had my work not decided to have a group event on Wednesday. We rented a rubber boat and spent 5 hours getting back to Dresden, after which we went to a pub with board games (I won at concept! Yay!) and beer. When we were walking from the beach to the pub I realised I had forgotten my keys that morning. I called Olek, who was already on his way to the station (because he was also going to Warsaw), so I RAN to the nearest bus stop, wished the bus to driver faster... and still didn't make it to the station before Olek's train left.
Fortunately he had given his keys to the lady at the kiosk, where I could pick them up

So I could throw some random items in my bag, go to sleep for three hours and wake up fresh and well-rested (haha!) to start my trip to Poland. We had a stopover in Munich, before we arrived in Warsaw at 10am. A woman from the organisation that paid for our trip waited for us, handed us a prepaid credit card, some random stuff and helped us pick up the car.
We then went to the centre in Warsaw to meet up with Olek and show Moritz (my friend) around the city. The weather was PERFECT Warsaw weather. Warsaw is like 100 shades of grey and the weather just added MORE shades of grey. Awful, but it fits the city so well.

I love this photo. It's adorable and I could look at it for hours. If it also had my brother in it, I would probably spend whole days looking at it.
We had lunch, dropped Olek off at home and left for Podlasie (in the east of Poland). The hotel they had booked for our first night was in the middle of nowhere and driving there was a bit scary, but we eventually made it. We had a quick dinner and went to sleep, because we had both been up since 3 (Moritz hadn't slept at all) and we were supposed to be up at 3:30am again!
So the next morning we met with our 1st guide, she handed us tons of warm clothes even though it was pretty warm, gave us binoculars and we went to look for moose.
I had already been to the place we went to, two years ago, but seeing it at sunrise was BEAUTIFUL.


And we even saw three moose, two cows and a bull and an otter who crossed the street right in front of our car! And lots of cranes and other birds. I'm not really a bird fan so I can't even remember their names (and we've been told in three languages, so you'd guess I'd at least remember one, right?!)
At 8:30ish we got back to our hotel, had breakfast -I had apple pancakes and they were fantastic- and went back to sleep for three-ish hours. At 12 we were supposed to meet with our guide in Tykocin . We were a bit late, but it was really warm and sunny so I didn't feel so bad about making the guide wait. When we arrived and he realised I spoke Polish, he went an talking pretty much only to Moritz the whole time Apparently I'm not an exciting western foreigner anymore. He also thought that we were a couple and when I said something about my husband and we explained that Moritz wasn't my husband he looked at us weirdly and said "Oh, erm. Well, I'm not one to judge."
Anyway. We walked around Tykocin and then Bialystok. I hadn't been to Bialystok before and I was surprised that it's really a real city Varsovians tend to have this idea that there are no other cities in Poland apart from theirs and evidently it has rubbed off on me.
We were supposed to go to the theatre to see some obsucre Polish-German-cooperation play, but when we went to pick up the tickets at 7pm it turned out that the play had already started at 6 (it said 7 in my plan!).

Before all the beers!
We weren't too sad about it (although Moritz had specifically brought a button down for that occasion!) and went for beers instead. Our guide had recommended a pub and it had about 100 different kinds of beer! So we had some Polish, Lithuanian and I don't remember what beers and went back to the hotel.

Saturday we went to see a Tatar Mosque, where Olek called me just when the guide was talking about their prayer services or something (OOPS!)

There's a funny story about the two Tatar Mosques in Poland. The Polish king had invited the Tatars (as soldiers) and the locals were supposed to build them mosques. Seeing as they were Polish and not really sure what a mosque is or what it's supposed to look like, they simply built something that looked like their churches. I think it's kind of a cute story.
Then we went on to Bialowieza, which is very close to the Belarussian border.
So we were driving this dirt road in the middle of nowhere when all of a sudden there was a HUGE traffic jam. It was pretty surreal until I figured it was a border crossing. There was kilometre long (our guide later told us it gets up to 20km) line of trucks, one after another. Apparently it can take them up to a week to wait to cross the border! Man, I do NOT envy them. That's a pretty shitty job!
Then we went to a reserve, the guide showed us some bison and wolves, we went for an awesome dinner in a Russian restaurant and had some Russian beers in our hotel room.


Sunday morning we went back to Warsaw -our plane left at around 5- and visited an orthodox holy hill on our way. Orthodox church service is pretty neat with all the singing, but three hours of standing?! They must be really dedicated.
I almost forgot to give back the GPS when we returned the car (I wonder would they even have noticed? We didn't even pay a deposit) and I was finally home at 0:30am. Moritz lives closer to the airport AND to my work and was this close to asking him if I could sleep on his floor, but my bed just seemed like a better idea.
Monday all I really wanted to do was sleep, I wonder how I managed to stay awake at work, buuut
my ex-roommate and her husband were coming to visit. They live in western Ukraine and had been travelling through Poland the past week. I really wanted them to visit, because she was the best roommate I've ever had and I love and we last saw each other in 2012. They weren't sure they could make it to Dresden, because due to obvious reasons, their money is worth close to nothing right now But they DID make it and even though Olek (who arrived Monday night) and I were pretty busy and tired during the two days they stayed with us, it was still awesome.
I spent Wednesday after work and all day Thursday satching up on sleep! Sleeping has never felt so good.

I really need to prepare my thesis defence now and I have about 100 other things I need to work on (correcting papers for my prof. Papers that he should have sent me LAST summer and that I really don't have time for right now. What an asshole). Oh, well. Tomorrow!