Friday, October 10, 2008

A Home away from Home away from Home

You read that right, Matt now has a flat in Gdansk. He has taken on a new role within the company and will be in Gdansk even more often now. Actually, this started back in August/September, but I am just now getting around to posting about it. On our August trip we went flat-hunting and in early September we moved into the flat. I say 'we' only because I was there for the first week (Sept 6-12) and the housewarming party, but it really is Matt's place and I have not been there since. This is a company flat and I believe that they may keep it on even after Matt's departure. It is within walking distance from the office and Matt says that from the time he gets on the elevator at work to the time he is entering the flat building it is 6 minutes.

So, not only do we have a home in England away from our home in Colorado, we now have a home in Poland. (Our heart still lies with the one in Colorado.) It definitely makes those weekly travels easier on Matt because he has his own place to go back to after a long day at work, rather than any given hotel for the week. Plus, it is a pretty nice place overall and is a new build. In fact, the complex is a gated community and is still in development.



Matt has really fallen for Poland. Well, all we've seen really is the Tri-City area, but the people are friendly and happy, the food is wonderful, and he has a great relationship with his colleagues. I think it will be hard for him to leave next year. Hopefully we'll always have friends in the area and can return for a visit.

Okay, it is too early to get emotional about leaving, so I'll talk about our housewarming party. Apparently this is quite a tradition and some of his colleagues were disappointed that he did not have a party scheduled. So, with just a day notice we invited everyone over on a Saturday evening. There are about 100 people in his office, so we had no idea how many people would actually show up. Our flat is very tiny, as you would expect, so that was the only thing we were nervouse about. In the end, I think there were 30 or so people there. It just so happened, though, that it was the warmest night in a while and it was quite warm in the place even with windows and doors open. At about 1:30am when most of the guest were gone, the few stragglers invited us out to continue the party in Sopot. We hailed taxis and went to a bar/club in Sopot. It wasn't what I was expecting, but we ended up dancing and drinking until about 3:30am. Matt and I finally said our goodbyes and went home to sleep. We left all of the cleaning up for the morning!



I flew in that Saturday morning and we had just enough time to do a bit of grocery shopping (quite interesting), tidy up the flat, and prepare the bits of food we purchased. Of course we served Polish Kielbasa! We knew our guests would probably bring lots of vodka and wine, so we didn't purchase much of that. There is still beer, wine, and vodka left in the flat. We'll need to throw another party just to get rid of it! Unfortunately we can't bring it all back with us.

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