Poznan: Garbage bins

Conveniently located garbage bin

In Japan there are almost no garbage bins. You can find some that are for recyclable goods, like PET-bottles. Other ones are difficult to find, though you can often find some when you find a convenience store. This is one of the few things that are somewhat inconvenient in Japan. According to my older friends in Japan, Japan also used to have garbage bins everywhere, like most normal countries in Europe. Then someone put sarin gas in garbage bins in Tokyo and killed lots of people. After that, they removed all the garbage bins. And to be fair, no one has gassed people to death since then, so in that sense it worked.

In Poznan, there are of course garbage bins everywhere, so you do not have to carry all your garbage all the way home with you.

Poznan: Pizzas and toilet paper

My colleague is not happy with pizzas in Japan. Pizzas are usually very expensive and when they are not, they are not very good. Some of the expensive ones are not very good either. So whenever he goes to Europe he as a rule has pizza at least once. Since we are going back to Japan tomorrow, today was pizza day.

We asked around at the meeting for a good pizza place and the local people told us that "da Luigi" is a good pizza restaurant close to where we are staying. We went there but it was full. My colleague went inside to ask when they expected to have seats for us, but they said they were fully booked for the entire evening...

We found another pizza place around the corner which seemed nice, so we went there instead. I ordered a pizza with salami and some banana juice (the weirdest drink I could see on the menu). The banana juice was not very good, but the pizza was very nice.

Also, the toilet of this restaurant had toilet paper that was quite similar to normal toilet paper (though still not quite as soft as Japanese toilet paper)!

Poznan: Second hand sweets?

I noticed a sign with a Swedish flag on it. It said "Second hand", but did not specify what type of second hand stuff they sold. The only things being sold nearby were sweets, which would not be great to get second hand... But the sign turned out to tell you to go to a store around the corner, upon closer inspection.

Poznan: Proletaryat

Not only are there bizarrely named clubs and restaurants in Japanese in Poland, they have absurd names even in Polish too. Naming a club Proletaryat and having Lenin in the window is pretty funny.

Poznan: Sweden

When listening to the history lessons on Poznan, there were many mentions of Swedish people coming and plundering the town. The "Swedish flood" meant the Swedish army coming from the sea (we are just across the sea from Poland), flowing all over the country down to the southern border, then withdrawing and lugging all the wealth with it leaving only devastation in its wake. This apparently happened often enough to make Polish people invent a special expression to describe it...

Today I bought a post card to send to my parents. I asked for a stamp that would cover sending the card to Sweden and then one of the women in the information center where I bought the card asked if I was Swedish. She gave me a brochure on Poznan written in Swedish. Very good Swedish, but not Swedish a native speaker would use, so it is probably written by a Pole with good knowledge of Swedish.

As it turned out, it would actually have been cheaper to bring the card back to Japan and send it to Sweden from over there. Despite the Japanese yen now being very very strong. Japanese postage is ridiculously cheap.

Poznan: Da Vinci

My (barely liquid) drink

The same, but with some whipped cream on top...

My cake

My colleague wanted to go to a cafe called "da Vinci" so we went there to have some sweets after the meetings were over. The place had a very nice atmosphere, with da Vinci drawings on the walls and the menu items being named things like "Mona Lisa". The stuff they served was very good, but it felt like being on a highway to diabetes. I tried hot chocolate, which seemed to be a chocolate bar that they melted and put in a cup. Very good, very thick, probably not very healthy. My colleague ordered the same but with a mountain of whipped cream on top...

Poznan: Super computers

We are at the Poznan super computing center for work, and today we also got to step into their super computer room. They had a lot of very cool hardware, though it does not look very cool physically. They have a single machine with 16 terabytes of RAM, though. That is cool. They also have a cooling bill in the order of 10,000 Euro per month... Endless racks of server booths.

This machine has 16 terabyte of RAM

Absurd amounts of GPUs

Not sure what this was doing here...

Poznan: Embroidery done large

In the Poznan super computing center where we are working, they have huge embroideries hung on the walls. They are nice and absolutely huge.

Poznan: Another lunch

Unsurprisingly, we had lunch today too. It was good.

Poznan: Ghost house?

The building next to where we are staying looks like a ghost house. Some windows are boarded up, some are broken. It is a bit dirty and run down, and always very dark.

Poznan: Free dinner!

The second day of the meeting had the project meeting dinner. This was very nice. We first had a ten minute walk around the Old Town with a local guide. Then we were let into the Poznan archaeological museum were we had dinner. The dinner was very nice. I had pork with potatoes and pears. My colleague for once selected something I had not ordered, and he had tuna.

We were eating around this obelisk

Poznan: Japan in Poland

In Poznan there are lots of sushi places and restaurants serving "Japanese" food. Many of them have Japanese names. There are also other places with Japanese names. We saw a shop called "Samurai" that sold karate and judo clothes and things like that. Here is a music club called Tokyo Underground, written correctly in Japanese.

Poznan: More lunch

The second day of meetings was slightly more interesting than the first day, but still most of the time was boring.  The lunch break was great, though. Same restaurant, different food.

Poznan: Polish toilet paper

Here in Poland, every toilet I have seen so far has toilet paper that seems to be made by combining cardboard with sand paper. At least it seems very ecological, since the coloring makes it quite clear that the paper is recycled paper.

Poznan: Dinner

Chicken, spinach, cheese, potatoes, and a blood orange

We found a very nice place serving Polish food and went there for dinner. They had tables made from heavy wooden slabs put on top of old sewing machines, and chairs made out of old barrels. There were even seats made by putting saddles on top of wooden bars. And they had some kind of animal close to our table.

The food was excellent. I ordered a mixed set of dumplings (meat filled, cheese filled, Russian style), and some kind of chicken dish. My Swedish colleague again ordered the same things as I did... The spinach that came with the chicken was heavenly. The chicken and the dumplings were also great.

Some kind of animal

Dumplings

Poznan: Shopping

Shopping mall

When the meetings of the first day ended, we rushed to a shopping mall that we were told has some interesting architecture and art. The stuff that was sold was pretty much what you would find in Sweden, so it was not so exciting to go shopping, but we did have a lot of fun in the food market. It is always interesting to see what fish is being sold in a country you have never visited before etc.

Also, since Poland seems to be very Christian, there was lots of Easter preparations.

Easter bunnies galore

I like the name "Bookarest" for a book store

More Easter bunnies

I bought something that I do not know what it is, and a bar of chocolate that looked like it was designed in the Soviet era. 

Even the Swedish brand H&M had a big store 

Poznan: Stockholm in Poland

In a booklet on restaurants in Poznan, there was a separate heading for Swedish cuisine restaurants! There was only one restaurant listed, though. It is called Stockholm, and it is close to our guest house.