Krakow

I went to Krakow for a long weekend trip with Lukasz between 4 June and 8 June. We went there to go to the Selector music festival and to visit Paulina, Kuba and Dominika. Unfortunately, there were no longer direct flights from AMS to Krakow, so we had to fly via Warzawa. After five hours of traveling, Paulina picked us up at the airport.

At 20 past eight in the evening, there was a celebratory drink to celebrate 20 years since the fall of communism in Poland. We did our part, and had a couple of celebratory shots, while a slideshow of "Solidarnosc"-pictures was playing on a big screen TV in the bar. I missed some singing of the national anthem or something like that. Or...maybe they did. Maybe "Na zdrovje" IS the national anthem of Poland... Later on we had a nice dinner at a traditional Polish restaurant at the main square, where we also linked up with Dominika. We spent the evening boozing it up in some cellar clubs in the center.

Lukasz and I spent most of Friday hanging out with Dominika, drinking wine and vodka at various downtown cafes. We met up with Dominika's friend Ula, and together with Paulina and Kuba, we made our way down to the festival area - Krakowskie Blonie. Kuba had this idea that we should stay away from the watered down beer at the festival, so he bought some bottles of wine, so we could get properly drunk before entering the festival area.



It was a nice festival area, with almost no queues. The only exception was the beer area, which quickly became very crowded. There were lots and lots of Norwegians there, and I found it very strange to hear so many people speak Norwegian at a random festival in Poland. They were probably there for the Røyksopp-concert. We first saw Fisherspooner - a very artsy electronic act with lots of interpretative dance and strange video stuff. Next up was Franz Ferdinand, who played a very good concert. Their set was also very long, more than one hour and 30 minutes. I was mostly waiting for the Røyksopp concert, but I was pretty disappointed when they finally started playing. Their presentation was pretty messy, they seemed unprofessional, and for the singing parts they brought Anneli Drecker. She couldn't really pull off some of the songs, and she missed a lot of notes, so it sucked pretty bad. We left early, went back to the apartment and sampled some other Norwegian culture instead - Norwegian Viking Fjord Blåbær (blueberry) vodka.

Saturday we spent the morning hanging out at various bars in Kazimierz, having dinner at an Italian place. Kuba was making fun of me, as I was not entirely present. I had come more or less straight off an exercise to this trip, so I was pretty tired and backed up on sleep. Somehow after a few good chugs of wine on the way over to the festival area, I started waking up, and suddenly I was teaching various people how to shout "Visa pattarna!!" at concerts (I told them it meant "good concert, play more!" >;-)

The first band we watched was a Brazilian band called CSS. Next we rocked out to a DJ set by a German duo named "Digitalism" - it was pretty good! We tried to go to the chillout lounge, but it was overcrowded, so we tried the next tent where some crappy DJ was playing (I forgot the name). We didn't want to hang around for the last band, so we went back to the apartment for some more blueberry vodka. After a couple of shots, things got weird. Details shall remain classified, but they include the ritual spilling of coke zero, Schnappi - das kleine Krokodil, exotic underwear, large quantities of vodka, listening to Max Raabe and Franek Kimono.



Sunday morning Kuba got up at 10am to go to a wine tasting. We thought he was just kidding the evening before when he mentioned this. Where do you get the stamina to go to a wine tasting at 10am after drinking until 4am the night before? Respect!

The rest of us were in no shape to follow him, so we didn't get to the wine tasting until 12 or so. Nothing like being slightly hung over and put in a room with lots of upper class people doing a very formal tasting of Hungarian wines. Also, the wines were pretty bad, but I'm picky about wine. Also, I think drinking large quantities of vodka the night before did not do wonders for my palate. After the wine tasting Paulina & Kuba went off to vote in the european elections. The rest of us were rebels and chose to drink instead (not to mention that I am not eligible to vote).



Apparently this was a Hungarian day in Krakow. We were tasting Hungarian wine in the morning, there were various stands at a square letting you taste Hungarian wine from various producers, and they also had a stage with various performers playing Hungarian music while some dancers were doing some traditional Hungarian folk dances. To top it off, we had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant.
In the evening we went to see Terminator- Ocalenie (Terminator Salvation, thankfully they didn't dub the movie in Polish, they only had subtitles. It still sucked, though) .

Monday Lukasz and I spent the day being touristy in the center before flying back to Holland.

Pictures are here.

Cell phone issues

I'm getting pretty used to living in Holland by now, but every so often, something reminds me that I am, indeed, in Holland. One thing I am never getting used to is regular, "respectable" companies trying to screw you over whenever you sign a contract. Contracts here are often complex, and you may need a lawyer to read through before you sign, especially if you're buying something big. I'm not used to this from Norway. In Norway, a contract may be declared illegal if the company tries to violate basic consumer rights, or tries to get you to sign away rights you are afforded by law. Companies trying to do these things in Norway would be considered crooks. In Holland this kind of behavior is considered normal.

When I first moved down here, I tried to get by with a "pay as you go"-phone. That didn't work out very well, since KPN charged me about 1 Euro per minute whenever I tried to call the service hotlines of my cable company, IKEA et al. (0900-numbers). Also, I managed to run out of cash after waiting for half an hour in line at the Casema help line. I figured, the way to end this was to get a subscription.

This turned out to be easier said than done. At the Mediamarkt, the girl at the cell phone section refused to accept my "not so filthy foreigner"-card (happens a lot, Dutch people don't like foreigners, and my id card has a different color than the regular "filthy foreigner card"), so I had to go back and get my passport in order get a subscription. A couple of weeks later, I received a friendly letter from KPN stating that they could see I was a foreigner (since I had to identify myself with a passport, probably), so they refused to give me a cell phone subscription. This, however could be rectified, if I would kindly pay my subscription in advance for the next THREE YEARS!

Naturally, I didn't go for that, so I walked down the street to the Vodaphone store, which was very happy to give me a subscription right away. One thing I didn't notice until after I got the subscription was that Vodaphone was very expensive. Cell phone subscriptions in Holland work differently from a lot of other places in that you have a relatively high monthly fee, but you can potentially get some of that back in the form of a pool of cash that you can use for calling. This pool of cash is called the "bundel", and there's usually a lot of rules for when and how you can use this. Typically it can only be used for calls within the Netherlands, sometimes only in evenings and weekends, sometimes some types text messages are not included, and there are lots of other rules that may apply. In the case of my Vodaphone subscription, I had a high monthly fee, but the "bundel" went away automatically after two months. Also, the bundle was almost useless to me, as it could not be used for foreign traffic (calling abroad, being called while abroad) and data traffic. This is about 99% of my phone bill in general, so it was pretty significant. I ran up some pretty big phone bills. In Europe there are laws regulating how much the cell companies can gouge customers on international calls. This applies, of course, only within the EU, so after I came back from a trip to the US, I had a phone bill that was three times the normal amount. I decided to do something about it and ditch my provider.

First I had to wait until my contract period with Vodaphone expired. Next I went to a T-mobile shop, and they told me I could get this subscription which lets you do absolutely everything from the "bundel", which meant I would cut my monthly phone bill by about 75%. Naturally, I signed up, but getting rid of my Vodaphone subscription would take THREE MONTHS. I've never experienced it taking so long to port a simple phone number!

My number was ported, my sim card was working, everything seemed pretty good, until I went for a weekend trip to Krakow, and discovered, I could not call my sister in Norway. On every network I tried, I got a voice in Polish telling me that my phone was blocked from calling this number.

When I got back to Holland, I called the T-mobile help desk to figure out why my phone was blocked. They told me that since I was a foreigner I could not be trusted, so they had blocked my phone from making international calls for the first two months. I told them that this was the first time I had heard such a thing, and they replied: "It's in the voorwarden.". Essentially they had sold me a cell phone subscription that was useless outside of Holland, without telling me so.

But, being very helpful, they could turn off the block if I paid my subscription in advance FOR THE NEXT YEAR!!

With your sim card you get a small booklet with terms and conditions, I read through this, and found no mention of the two month blocking period she had mentioned. I did, however, find a mention of a 15 euro fee per incident if you complain too much about your phone bill.

In Holland, there is always another clause...