my first carved pumpkin

If you drive to our house from Warsaw you will most likely pass through a small town where most of the Warsaw expat community lives...No wonder that right next to the road we encountered a store selling seriously overpriced pumpkins. I would have never bought a pumpkin for carving but we had two American experts in the car with us so we ended up with a pumpkin. One way or the other - the little monster ended up looking great. He  should have been awarded the pumpkin of the village award. All those traditions related to death are quite perplexing. Halloween a day before Saints day and then to top it all we went to see The Tibetan Book of the Dead. One thing is sure - until now for billions of years nobody has ever managed to escape the cycle of being born and dying. At least in that sense we are all very equal. Including the poor pumpkin (more pix in our flickr gallery).

Still alive and kicking in Szczecin

It almost feels like our life stopped - at least from the posting point of view. It took me over two months to get my act together and post. I guess our new or actually old lifestyle kicked in. The corporate job deprives you of everything except some money.

Last year I read at least 20 books. Nowadays I cannot concentrate enough to be able to finish the second book. Last year we used to go out - nowadays we come back home and think only about going back to sleep to recover energy for yet another day. Last year we were faced with amazing landscapes and sights every day. Nowadays I see the same things on Discovery Channel TV from time to time...In other words I get all those things in a transformed easy to digest McDonald's sort of way, through some media instead of living them.

All this just makes me think that our decision to travel last year was probably the best decision we have ever made in our lives!!! Check it out - travel around the world for a year and then turn on Discovery. See how it feels :)

I must say that the fact that one needs to work at least eight hours per day is kind of totally out of balance in comparison to what one gets out of it. I think that working five hours per day would suit me perfectly. I would feel that I have a life. It is amazing that the whole world is fine with giving up their almost entire life to work. Especially that we probably live only ones. I hope that the next step in development of socities will be to give people more free time to enjoy themselves...

I guess that even our camera got upset with the fact that we do not use it and broke...

Anyway it ain't that bad - we still travel every other week somewhere or we get visitors to Szczecin - Berlin is amazing for the weekend and London anytime. Rita's cousing gave us a great excuse to go there. As hoped our kid will have a playmate :)

Motorbike driving license

After criss-crossing Nepal and Thailand on motorbikes we decided to legalize our motor biking status and signed up for driving school. We liked the feeling of riding a motorbike so much that basically it was just a question when we could do it.

We have a couple of favourite destinations where we want to ride the bike and doing it with a driving license made more sense. Especially from the safety point of view (getting a driving license should have in theory helped). Anyway we have Brazil as one of our favourites. There is no question that we are going to do it again in Nepal. India is also quite tempting but I am not sure we are ready for that. The highlight in that region could be though Bhutan. I have just read in a German motorbike magazine about tours there. This could probably me the highlight !!!

As to the driving license - obviously it costs one fifth of what we would need to pay in Germany or anywhere west from Polnad. We are more than half way through and we finally understood why people in Poland drive like crazy. I would dare to say that they basically have no idea what proper driving is supposed to look like since nobody ever taught them about it.

The theory lessons instead of at least 10 hours took us around four hours and to large extent had nothing to do with riding a motorbike. Rita had to sit there though she did not understand a word - nobody was concerned - most important thing was the fact that she was physically there. Our practice lessons are of the same quality. We are told what we need to do during the state exam and basically left alone to practice. We have never heard the word technique or safety. It is seriously a joke. It costs next to nothing but also provides you with nothing. As Rita summed it up - we have learned more in Nepal during our half a day course with a Dutch instructor than during the month of the "Polish" driving course.

If everything goes well we will have our motorbike driving license by the end of September - in terms of skills however we will stay where we were. Unfortunately. Some things seem not to change in this country...