As I alluded to yesterday, I found myself with the opportunity to visit Poland so I took it. There wasn't anything I especially wanted to see in Hamburg, and while there isn't anything I especially wanted to see here either, I realized I could rework my schedule a little to make getting to Berlin for that conference tomorrow easier by coming here. I entertained the idea of going all the way to Gdansk since I imagine it's a more interesting city than Szczecin (that's pronounced "Shtechin", by the way), but getting back would have been such a pain that I decided against it. The drive over was uneventful and boring, taking about 5 hours. Lots of wind turbines and open fields. Lithuanian guy was nice though I don't have anything especially remarkable to say about him. Apparently, driving a right hand drive vehicle has just one major drawback, which is that it's essentially impossible to pass someone on a single lane highway where you'd have to drive in the oncoming lane to do so. We were stuck behind a big gas truck for a very long time as a result.

I haven't had a chance to explore the city yet but it's already clear that this is a less wealthy area than I've been in so far. The buildings tend to look slightly run down and Soviet influence is very apparent. The quality of English around here is also very obviously lower. People will avoid responding verbally to me if I get their attention in English, presumably because they speak very little, and whatever I hailed them for gets resolved silently with hand gestures. Certainly a far cry from Amsterdam - I wanted less touristy, and boy have I got it. That said, the grocery store was quite nice (if baffling - I don't speak Dutch or German, but I REALLY don't speak Polish). I bought some chicken and beets since I actually have a kitchen to work in for the first time in a while.

My housing is strange. It's somewhere between a hostel and a hotel, and it ends being almost the equivalent of an 8 bed apartment. We all have private rooms - no bed actually, just a futon - but then our kitchen and bathrooms are common areas. Some of the people here seem to be staying long-term, and I don't think it's too bad a deal. We're right in the center of town, there's a grocery store just a couple feet away, and since it's a night to night thing you could cancel whenever you find more permanent accommodation. I don't know what everyone else is paying, but it's under my 30 euro a day target.

I'll head to Berlin for that conference tomorrow, having finally landed an affordable and nice looking hostel in Berlin that night. It was a transient entry on booking.com, appearing and disappearing as the page was reloaded and often deciding it no longer existed halfway through the booking process. After many hours of periodic checking I finally nailed it down; a huge win since it was the last bed in the whole city under about 60 euro a night (and it was under half that). There isn't a very direct train route to Berlin, but there's a relatively inexpensive bus that runs the route very frequently. I'll try to be there by mid-afternoon.