We kick-started the holiday with beer, ridiculous amounts of food, McDonalds’ ‘Modern China Burger’, mooncakes, and discovering new parts of the city (Part One can be found here). The second part of the holiday had similar experiences but also a few days to chill out. One day was spent catching up on Doctor Who and finally getting Mitch into Utopia. No matter what country you live in, you still need those chilled days.
In January this year, Mitch and I packed our bags and flew to Albania. Why would we do that? Low season: it’s cold, places aren’t open, cities lack atmosphere, and hostels are practically empty. All these things are true. We had days where it was bitterly cold we couldn’t stay outside long, days we were rained in, restaurants closed, places where buses didn’t go to at this time of year, so many hotel/hostel owners saying, “Come back in July! You can see this, this and this.” I would love to go back to all the places in the summer. You know …
Warsaw. We spent a lot of time here in small chunks but I still feel like I didn’t really see it. It was the city we got picked up in for our numerous Angloville programmes. The day before the programme we had a complementary walking tour of the city, participating in three programmes meant three tours. “Why go on three?” I hear you cry, well, it’s nice to refresh your memory, but also, they gave us free lunch afterwards and as budget travellers, we would never say no to free lunch. It was a great opportunity to meet fellow volunteers before the programme …
We were drastically running out of money but had one week off inbetween our Angloville courses. There were so many places in Poland we wanted to visit, but knew with limited time and money there was one place which was top of the list: Krakow. We found a super cheap hostel in a great location and settled there for the week. It wasn’t the liveliest of hostels but that wasn’t a problem as we managed a mini Angloville reunion.
As you may have previously read, Mitch and I did some voluntary teaching in Hungary through the Angloville programme. We signed up for one more of these teaching programmes in Poland, but somehow ended up doing three, and a weekend style programme. It worked out well for us though because we were running very low on money and Angloville provides you with accommodation and food for the week, all we have to pay for is alcohol (and it’s not exactly expensive in Poland). You can read all about the programme here from my post about it when we did it in …
It had always been our intention on our trip to do some work/volunteering as we travelled. It’s not only a great way to save money and elongate the trip, but also a wonderful way to meet people and immerse ourselves in the culture. Unfortunately, due to travelling in low season, the opportunities were far between. We had planned another week’s worth of English teaching in Poland due to start in April but before then we were crossing Slovakia from Hungary. We took this opportunity to try our luck on help exhange once more.
