Thursday, March 27

Naa and I left the house quietly because Irma was at home today and didn’t plan on getting up as early as usual. I spent the early part of the day planning and replanning. Zurker had shut down yesterday morning and so half of the CMS course has gone missing. I also got the go-ahead for the Odense trip next month, so I had to start thinking about that.

At 10:15 I led the second session of the Social Media course. Today we looked at the results of the questionnaire that I asked the students to fill in last week. I then asked them to research various aspects of social media networks, including history, geography, and reach.

We finished at 13:00 and I made some backups before shutting down my laptop and leaving. I got home to find Irma had finished the packing and was waiting for Naa to arrive home. She was very stressed because this will be the first time we have been away since we came back from India.

We drove to the airport at 16:30 and everything went smoothly. Once we were there, we were both astonished to discover that a glass of beer costs 9.70€ and a piccolo of wine costs 15.80€. We stayed thirsty.

Four hours later we were in the arrival area at Frederick Chopin airport in Warsaw looking for the hotel car. Half an hour after that we were in room 412 at the Polonia Palace hotel. We had upgraded to a bigger room with free video on demand and free wifi, and it turned out to be a corner room with views over a large part of the centre of the city.

Now we are out looking for somewhere to eat. Irma will ask someone in the street and he will suggest Smaki, so here we are. The food will be a Polish version of nouvelle cuisine and everything will feel as though it should be written in quotation marks. The food will be pleasant enough, but not the huge portions we were assured that restaurants provide in Warsaw. It will also not be cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

The next table will be occupied by four ambitious shoe salespeople. They will talk continuously about their adventures in international shoe retailing and we will learn a lot about the importance of the right display in the right ambience.

Once we have learned enough we will return to the hotel and fall into disturbed sleep.