Final Weekend in Lublin

Saturday 

Saturday was a relaxing day.  I spent some time in the hotel room in the morning updating this blog. 

Then we crashed a wedding....  

... ok we didn't really crash the wedding, I just took a picture; it was at the Trybunal building right across from where we had lunch.  Lunch was at Trybunalska;  I had to try a burger and fries while in Lublin.  This one came with special sauce made out of beet root…. Not bad.

 

and I finished with a cappuccino.  

Dinner Saturday evening was at “The Devils Hand” restaurant.   

Pork chop, over potatoes and sauerkraut

 

 A picture from inside the Devil's Hand restaurant.

Sunday

We had an early meeting scheduled with our client first thing Monday morning, so Sunday morning began in the conference room;   

Our Monday morning meeting was another big milestone meeting, this was to review the deliverable with our client.  From our team meeting we feel the deliverable is taking shape and we are on the right track, but still some work to do.  We also have a scheduled meeting with the Mayor of Lublin on Monday afternoon, and of course we can’t lose site of the final presentation on Thursday.  Still lots to do!!

After the meeting it was back to finishing out the weekend.  Several team members and I decided to visit the Lublin Castle museum and Cathederal.  So off we went. (20 minute walk to castle... it will become obvious later why I am including walking times)

 The Lublin Castle museum and Cathedral were very impressive.  So many pictures I will share some of my favorites.  And remember in weekend 1 we visited the castle grounds and I took pictures from atop the castle tower, so if you haven't read that blog entry its worth going back to see those pictures.

 

 

 The Cathedral ceiling is painted with so many scenes from the Bible, that you receive a handout with a legend and map of the different scenes.

 

 

This shows some of the clothing worn in early periods in Poland.

 

 

What a great time at the museum and Cathedral. And now time for lunch. 







Some of the guys from the larger team called us from Perlowa, which was not too far away (15-20 minute walk).  Perlowa became a favorite of our team as this was “Stop 1” from our day 1 meeting with our customer.  We enjoyed lunch, beer, desert, replaying some fond memories of our trip thus far, and took a few more group photos

A lunch favorite, Perla Porter, sausage and potatoes. 

  Chocolate cake and ice cream.

 And another very reasonable bill.













This is the tale of a long day and a long walk.  Hint: Pay attention to walking times listed. 
As it was getting later in the afternoon now, it was time to decide whether we would attend the Chopin piano concert in the evening or not.  

 The information we received was we would need to purchase tickets at Radio Lublin since it was the weekend, and the hall where the concert was going to be held only sold tickets during the week.  So we headed toward Radio Lublin (25 minute walk from Perlowa).

   
We reached Radio Lublin and this is where the fun began.  Keep in mind we had left the hotel around 11 am and it was now about 3:45pm… it had already been a long day.  The security guard at Radio Lublin did not speak English, and to be fair here, none of us spoke Polish either, but we were fairly certain he was communicating "Can’t buy tickets here"!

 
 Teammate Calixto was able to reach someone by phone to help with translation (thanks Majik).  The news was we could not buy tickets here, but we could buy them at the concert hall (25 minute walk), assuming they were not sold out.  The good news is, we had to walk right past the hotel to get to the concert hall; though no one said it, I think most were thinking “this will be my chance to bail out” and finally sit down.

We began the trek, and not even 5 minutes into the walk we saw 2 taxis.  There were 7 of us at this point so we would need 2 taxis, how convenient.  Just as our group approached the taxis, away they went.  We are still unsure what happened (they were on a break they wanted to continue, got another call, or maybe it was they saw 7 of us from 7 different countries walking toward them and they decided they didn’t want to stick around to see what would happen next).  We have had nothing but great experiences with the Lublin people this entire trip so we chalked it up to maybe they just didn't see us, and we kept walking.

We reached the hotel around 4:10pm, the concert started at 5:00pm.  We still had a 15 minute walk to the University. It was the moment of truth, whose in and whose out?  The Whatsapp votes were in, and there were only 3 of us left (Rafael and Simon (two accomplished musicians) and me).  The worst case scenario was we walk 15 minutes and find out the concert is sold out and have to walk back. 

What kept me hanging in you ask, I asked myself the same question.  It would have been easy to bail out, but here was my chance to connect more with Rafael (Brazil) and Simon (Canada).  Rafael reminds me of a Brazilian version of my younger brother, and was the teammate I got to learn most about during the pre-work leading up to the trip, as I got to meet with him, learn about what he liked and introduced him to the rest of the team. I knew that Raffy loves the piano, and specifically Chopin, and he was going. And of course Simon was on my immediate project team, and through several conversations I knew about Simon’s love for music, and knew he would be going.

We made it to the University by 4:30 and purchased our tickets.  When the doors opened we made our way into the concert hall only to learn that our seats were front and center in the second row.

Yulianna Avdeeva is a Russian born pianist.  She is the first woman in 45 years to have won the Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, and only the fourth to win this title.

What a great time, and great seats!! So glad I hung in there for this experience.  But we're not done walking quite yet.  Now let’s walk to dinner.   Off to Magia (20 minute walk from the University)

The highlander salad -sheesh, I can’t even order a salad without feeling like I am going all out.  The beautiful “garnish” on the plate surrounding the salad is toasted French bread, with ham, feta cheese, and raspberry jam.

 
 

After leaving the hotel shortly before 11am, and walking almost 10km (about 6 miles) we can now  jouney back to the hotel.

One heck of a final weekend in Lublin!!