My school days are over
After 19 years of school attendance it is finally over. Yesterday I have
defended my thesis, passed the state exam and thus have become an engineer of
information systems. The last weeks, when I was studying and stuffing all kinds
of information to my head, were tough, but paid off. Thanks and best regards to
all the people that had to survive the time with me 
.
I still have not fully realized what I have done and accomplished, but it
will probably come to my mind when I catch up on the sleep deficiency I have
got now 
.
Sunset in Olbramice
Less than two months ago, my parents moved to the village of Olbramice, 20km of Ostrava. Since I have not god my own apartment yet, I moved too. And yesterday, I had a great opportunity to take pictures of a beautiful sunset and a rainbow at the same time there. Enjoy the pictures.
Vacations in Warsaw and Vilnius
I am quite busy lately and can't get to write anything here. Now I reserved some time to catch up and post some info with pictures from vacations.
Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw
The first vacation was just a weekend in Warsaw in the beginning of February.
We met with Alina there, because it is a good meeting point for us, just in the
middle between Ostrava and Vilnius . The program for the weekend was to relax and also
to see any museum we missed last time we had been there.
Copernicus Science Centre is a
relatively new exposition not far from the Warsaw city centre. The thing of
being new had an unpleasant sideeffect – the looong queues. On the first day
we came there, saw the queue and left. On the second day we were prepared and
armed (with hot tea and sandwiches 
) and endured over two hours in the queue, despite
signs saying otherwise (see pictures). Inside there were lot of gadgets and toys
to play with, although many of them did not sustain the flow of people and broke
down. I'd like to see it again when the hype wears off and it is not so crowded.
More of the exposition is also going to be open this spring, so it is a good
opportunity to return. Comparing to the Universum in Bremen I favour the
Universum, because the exposition was better organised, it made sense. In
Warsaw, it looked more like chaotically placed together. Maybe it is just an
impression because of the big crowd we saw there.
The vacation in Vilnius was a „real one“, the whole week free. Although
I had some work to do, I tried to have a good time. Alina pushed me to go to
the Impuls sport centre on every weekday, so I did not just lie in bed and
sleep . It was very nice there, after some workout a large
choice of saunas, jacuzzi, water massage or swimming.
One evening we also bought a discount meal in a recently open Sushi place. It was only my second encounter with sushi, so I really cannot compare the quality, but since we had to wait two and half hours to get the meal, it did not really matter, because at that time I was so starving I could eat anything.
My „traditional“ picture from the Šilo bridge
After the sushi dinner we ended up in the Skybar of the Radisson Blu hotel. The view was magnificent, the prices better than I would have expected from such place. I even tried the „Lithuanian flag“ shot, which looked good, but the taste was an interesting mixture, that glued my mouth: yellow – Suktinis (strong mead), green – melon liquor and red – grenadine.
The vacation was nice, but although longer, it went away so fast…
Photos on Flickr
Recently I was looking through my photos and decided to assemble a collection of the best ones and put it to Flickr. The photos date back to 2003, when I got my first digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 2000).
Silvester in Lithuania
Christmas holidays were over and I was on my way to Vilnius, Lithuania to
see Alina and spend Silvester (New Year's Eve) there. We had really good time:
on December 31st Alina prepared a marvellous dinner 
and we went to watch the fireworks from the
nearby hill.
Cathedral Square in Vilnius
I also met Vilius (my former neighbour back in Denmark) and went for couple of beers with him. It is a pity my stay there was so short, but it was definitely worth it.
PF 2011
Merry Christmas to everybody and happy new year!
Our Christmas tree (see larger version)
Skiing in Bormio
My mom told that we have not been skiing for some time and that we should go somewhere. She consulted the idea with her friend and they together organised a trip to Bormio, Italy. On 18th December our family and two others travelled from Ostrava to a small town of Isolaccia, where we had our accommodation.
On the first day of skiing I had to re-discover, how to do it properly,
because I have not been skiing for two years. I remembered pretty quickly and
soon I was enjoying carving the steep slopes. On the second day the weather got
perfect (most of the Europe was under snowstorm, but we had blue sky ), so I decided to take my camera. It was worth it
in the end, you can see in the picture gallery.
Me and my brother at Bormio 3000
The last two days we became tired and the weather became worse. We
interleaved skiing with visits to the bar situated directly on the slopes and
drank the local speciality Bombardino , especially on the last day when it was snowing and
raining at the same time.
During the evenings we were drinking supplies and played Activity. We also
tried to visit some Italian restaurant, but Isolaccia was the right name for the
town: nothing was really there .
On the way back to Ostrava we stopped in Livigno to buy something (read
alcohol) in the duty free shops. The prizes there are really amazing, it is a
pity there are so low export limits per person .
Long time no post…
It has been a long time since I posted something here. I have been busy lately and also little lazy and without inspiration to write something.
In the end of October I took a journey to Rybnik and Gliwice in Poland to
visit my fiends Barbara and Wojtek. Although Rybnik is not so far from Ostrava,
the trip is quite an adventure – two trains per day and price like for
several hundreds kilometers ride .
We had a lot of fun there, played pool, babyfoot and darts. I even tried to
practice my rusty Polish. It was a really nice evening there. Unfortunatelly,
because of only two train connections per day, I had to wake up very early. The
day light saving time change was the thing that saved me, otherwise it would not
be possible for me to wake up after so many Lechs and Tysikes .
In the middle of November I became restless that I have not been anywhere for some time and went to Vilnius to visit Alina. It was good to be in the city again even for a short time, I missed it (especially Čili restaurants). I would like to go there again as soon as possible.
Neris river from the Šilo bridge
Weekend in Warsaw
Last weekend I spent in Warsaw and I would like to share the pictures here.
The weather was fine, gofry were sweet, Zywiec bitter and
Zubrowka green, just like it is supposed to be .
Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw
I visited the zoo, the Royal Castle and many museums, but there are much more places that I wanted to see. Enjoy the pictures.
Vacation in London
The plan to travel to London was more than year and half old, the main reason
was to push my friend Andrew to go there, because it is the place that he had
always wanted to see. But, when it should have happened, volcano on Iceland
exploded (some people say that it was just Chuck Norris barbecue, but it is
another story ) and we did not go anywhere. Since we were
determined to visit it, we booked the tickets for middle August.
Day 1
First day was our travelling day. We were supposed to fly from Katowice to
London-Stansted. Lukas was so kind and gave us a lift to the airport. Our
experience with Polish roads was horrible, I do not understand, how people can
drive there without SUVs .
The flight was all right, considering we were flying in a „bus“ with RYANAIR. I fit there ok, I could even stretch my legs a little, but Andrew did not look to sit comfortably at all. From the Stansted airport we took the EasyBus service, which we had booked in advance.
River Thames and Eye of London
The bus dropped us next to the Sherlock Holmes museum. From there we decided to walk across the whole Hyde Park to the hostel. I must say, on the map it seemed shorter, the park is really huge.
In the hostel we accommodated ourselves and since it was not so late, we went to the city to visit the Trafalgar and Picadilly Square, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament and Parliament Bridge. I took several night shots on that day, you can see them in the gallery.
Day 2
On the second day we got up early, ate the breakfast included in our accommodation – toasts and corn flakes and took underground to Tower of London, where we spent quite some time. The expositions were very interesting: the crown jewels, royal armoury and treasury, medieval palace and the famous ravens.
Crossing the magnificent Tower Bridge lead us to our next stop – the HMS Belfast. It is a ship, former light cruiser, that is now permanently anchored on the river Thames and rebuilt into the museum.
Tower Bridge
We took a walk on the riverside and then turned next to the London Bridge towards the Imperial War Museum. But before we had reached it, we found a nice tavern and had „flat“ beer. It was different, but drinkable. Andrew did not like it at all, so he got some Italian one to put away the bad taste.
The Imperial War Museum is much bigger than we had expected, several floors filled with expositions and the lobby with air planes, tanks, rockets and various other vehicles.
London skyline from Greenwich observatory
We hoped we could also visit the Churchill's War Rooms, but it was late and
we would not make it. Instead of that, we took a train to Greenwich to see the
Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory. When we reached the Cutty Sark, most of it
was not there . Posters said it is under conservation works and
will be available in late 2011. However, the observatory was still standing and
was open to public, so we can take the classic picture standing on the Prime Meridian.
We came to the hostel very late and were so tired that we just dropped to bed.
Day 3
On our third day we planned to visit Wembley stadium. It is quite far from
the city centre, but eventually we got there. To our disappointment we found out
that there was a friendly match between England and Hungary and that there were
no stadium tours taking place. That was a pity. Andrew wanted to see some
English stadium, so we went to Arsenal. But there we found out that all tours
are sold out 
. At least we got to Highbury stadium square, which
is an old Arsenal stadium rebuilt into blocks of flats.
Later we visited the Churchill's War Rooms and went to take lunch: grilled sausages with potato mash, onion chips and balsamic vinegar sauce. It looked very strange, but it actually was pretty tasty.
The evening was reserved for shopping. We came in time of major sales (like 70% or so), so it was an opportunity to take advantage of them. Most of our shopping took place in the store on the Picadilly Circus. It had six or seven floors and together with crowds of people made us more tired than walking across London.
Day 4
The last day was, same as first one, the travelling one. We got up later, had
the typical breakfast and took underground to monument, where I climbed up and
down all the 311 stairs. Then we took sandwiches at EAT. They were tasty, lot
of meat with slight taste of bread .
Rest of the vacation was just travelling: going to the airport, waiting for
plane, flying, waiting for Lukas at Katowice airport, drinking lots of Żywiec
beer and going home.