BEDA 20: Day 1 in Poland.

There were a couple of excited comments from people on my blog post yesterday saying they're coming to the YouStars event -- I can't wait to meet you guys! As for tonight though -- I've spent a whole day in Warsaw now and I am beyond exhausted.

Leaving London was the worst. I blearily said goodbye to Liam around 3:50 in the morning, left the flat with Alex and walked with him the 10-15 minutes to the bus station I was being picked up at. Luckily I am moderately familiar with London public transport, because as soon as I said my final goodbye to Alex when the bus pulled up, I was on my own for the next two hours during my journey to Heathrow.

The bus ride was relatively easy. I think my body was so confused as to what time I was trying to tell it to adapt to that it just assumed 5 AM in London was a normal time to be awake and functioning normally. I got to Paddington Station, bought my ticket for the Express train to Heathrow, and situated myself in the comfy train seat for the 25 minute journey back to the airport (it was easy to stay awake at that point because there was free wifi on the train, which meant I could spend that leg of my trip complaining about my lack of a Pottermore email on twitter with my friends back home who were actually awake at a decent time).

I didn't start really fading until I got to my gate (and also, Heathrow doesn't the same free internet luxury as their public transport). I nodded off a few times as I sat there waiting for the flight to board with my clunky black boots up on my suitcase. I was joined eventually by my new YouTube friend Dan Dobi, who happened to be on the same flight as me from London to Warsaw. The flight was only about 2 hours long, and somehow we tricked the flight attendants into giving us each two bacon-and-egg salad sandwiches (for airplane food, it was pretty good) so all in all it was a relatively painless flight. I even dozed for about 40 minutes or so before landing in Warsaw.

Once we got into the airport, I had another one of those moments where I rehearsed my speech in my head before going and talking to the customs people because I know my reasons for travel always sounds a bit fishy when it involves YouTube. But in Poland, they didn't even ASK. They just stamped my passport and sent me on my way. Why did I have so much trouble in foreign countries before?? It's been a breeze this time around.

We were greeted by our two contacts from FEEL IT Communications, the company that is putting on this whole event (two women named Karolina and I don't remember how to spell the other girl's name but we are calling her "Alex" for short). We walked outside and saw the biggest limo I have ever seen in my entire life. Picture a hummer limo? Yeah, got it? Okay, it's twice as long as that. No joke. There were disco balls (yes, plural) inside as well as one wall with a screen for playing DVDs and literally everything was made of color changing lights. Everything about this would have been a lot more exciting if I wasn't still running on fumes from Thursday at noon on Friday. I don't think I have ever gone that long without sleeping before.

Our rooms at the hotels weren't ready for us, so Karolina and Alex took Dan and I to this park where the name translated to "Toilet" in Polish. We walked around along the pretty paths and looked at statues and flowers and a big pond before stopping to get milkshakes at a little outdoor café. The Dan and I both had to use the bathroom and both simultaneously got yelled at for not paying when we left (paying to use the bathroom! How bizarre!). After an hour or two of this, I was literally dead on my feet so we headed back to the limo-extravaganza and began finally making our way to the hotel.

The next few hours were a blur because I was too tired to even really process what was happening. Between more hotel room mix-ups and getting yelled at for sleeping on a couch in the lobby, being dragged to the mall to get food while they stalled with our rooms and then getting VERY STERNLY yelled at for wearing our shoes in the pool area (I have now learned that such an activity is NOT OKAY in Poland) I just can't even tell you what a long day it was.

After the shoe-wearing-pool-debacle, I trudged downstairs and saw that Meghan, Jimmy and Cat had arrived… but I was so over-tired and grumpy and shuffled-about that they took one look at me, hugged me, and totally understood when I grabbed my suitcase and high-tailed it up to my room. The next two and a half hours were spent in exhausted napping bliss alone in my room.

I wasn't quite refreshed at that point per se, but I was at least more of a functioning member of society. I met up with the whole group downstairs in the lobby (we had since been joined by Will (thewillofdc), Corey (smpfilms), Kate (Katersoneseven), Greg (mediocrefilms) and a few Polish vloggers who'd be spending the weekend with us as well. We were then off to dinner, which we walked to, which was something like twenty minutes away in the part of Warsaw called "Old Town".

We were in a cute little restaurant called "Phucker" or something (I bet you can already imagine the jokes we made about that name) and we all sat along a single long table with candles decorating it. The menu was in English as well as Polish but that only helped so much -- I ended up ordering something that was half made of words I didn't know, but I wanted to be daring so I went for it. One of the things I ordered, a mini dumpling dish, came with something called "lovage". I still don't know what it is. I also ordered a main dish with a name like "Tenderloin in the Woods" or something, which was honestly too funny NOT to order. Kate and Meghan and I shared a dessert that was a type of pancake with blended something or other inside.. I think it was a sort of pureed nut filling. It also came with ice cream. It was delicious. We spent the evening laughing at our food, sharing bites, and getting to know each other and our new Polish friends. As tired as we all were, it was a really nice way to spend our first evening in Warsaw.

We all piled back into the hummer-tastic transport device spectacular after dinner and on our way back to the hotel, we discovered that the limo had fog machines installed inside. Fog machines. It was at that point that this trip passed "surreal" and went straight into the realm of "seriously, what on earth is my life?". When I finally crawled into bed that evening, I was more than happy. It was a really wonderful (albeit exhausting) day, and I couldn't be more happy right now to have the life that I do. :)


Flights taken: 19