#ph.d. student

After three and a half days of conferencing, it was finally time for a little break and holiday before diving head-first into the mountain of Ph.D. work that I had waiting for me back in Barcelona.

Sunday was spent relaxing at my friend’s house in Lesser Poland. It was a nice break from all the commotion of big cities and the conference, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about what I will do on Monday and Tuesday–my days of holiday. Also, I can’t forget that we did take a little trip to Tarnów to get some ice cream! 

Monday – Kraków & Wieliczka

Monday started with a stop in the Kraków city center. In the main square of the Old Town, there is part of the original Kraków town hall. This remaining part is a tower in which you can climb to the top and get some nice pictures of the city. On Mondays, in particular, this attraction is free. So, naturally, I waited outside the front gate until they opened at 10:30AM.

The climb to the top was quite a trek with some different exhibitions in rooms that are on your way to the top. Once you get to the top, though, the views are incredible. I snapped a few pictures, while in competition with everyone else around, but then eventually made my way back down. Once I got back down, I grabbed myself a cappuccino freddo from Starbuck’s–I’ve been obsessed with these lately–and made my way to meet my friend.

  My friend and I had some lunch, followed by ice cream (of course!), and then we headed to Wieliczka.

In Wieliczka, there is a salt mine that consists of 9 levels of underground tunnels and shafts. We took a 3-hour tour and only saw about 2% of the entire mine! It produced salt until 2007 and was the worlds oldest operating salt mine at that time. It is one of Poland’s Historical Monuments and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The tour is described on their website as follows:

Magnificent chambers chiselled out in rock salt. Amazing underground saline lakes, majestic timber constructions and unique statues sculpted in salt. Almost 3 kilometres of meandering corridors, 800 steps to climb of which 350 have to be descended to reach the depth of 135 meters underground. Thus it is no surprise that till now, the Tourist Route, the main visiting route of the mine has been visited by 41,500,000 tourists from around the whole world in search of adventures.

I do not even have words to express how beautiful and amazing the chambers and tunnels in the salt mine were. Not to mention, I even licked the wall (like millions before me) just to confirm that it was salt! At any rate, check out some of my pictures from the salt mine below.

After touring the salt mine, I returned to Kraków by train to see a little more of the city before going back to my friend’s house. Of course, this meant that I grabbed myself a Starbuck’s cold brew coffee–YUM!–and walked around the city. After wandering aimlessly around the city just taking in the sites, I met my friend’s husband to get a ride back to the house.

Tuesday – Kraków

On Tuesday, my friend’s daughter accompanied me by bus to Kraków for the day. We took a bus at 8:30AM and arrived in Kraków around 10:00AM. The bus dropped us off right near Wawel Castle, so the first thing that we decided to do was to walk the castle grounds.

I snapped a lot of pictures, probably too many, so I won’t share them all. As we walked around, I remembered that I had visited this same castle with another friend of mine just last year. We were lucky during that time to see the castle at sunset, which made for some beautiful photos! The photos I’m sharing now are from the morning hours, but the lighting was good and the clear skies made for some nice snaps.

After touring the castle, we made our way towards Kraków Old Town to visit a Harry Potter-themed cafe, called Dziorawy Kociol.

It was magnificent! Upon recommendation, I ordered an iced Butterbeer and a muffin called “The Muffin Who Lived”. After having our snack, we continued to walk around the city, exploring the Jewish Quarter before going to a museum.

The day before, I had booked a ticket to the museum in Oskar Schindler’s factory. The museum was very interesting, giving a very detailed account of the “Kraków Battle” and what the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków was like during the Second World War. I was taken aback by all of the things that I learned during the museum tour. Not to mention the importance of the work done by Oskar Schindler in order to save the lives of so many people. If only there had been more people like him in during that time might more lives have been saved.

After going to the museum, I had some lunch before deciding to take another walk around the Jewish Quarters. This is one of favorite parts of the city, and I really feel that the history and culture of this area is very special. While in the area, I stumbled upon a great tea shop that I had visited the year prior. To conclude a long day, I ordered some tea and settled in to read my book for an hour. It was very relaxing!

Wednesday – Back to BCN

Wednesday was a fun-filled day of traveling. I had a morning flight out of Kraków airport, so I arrived early and had myself some breakfast. By recommendation of my friend, I went to a restaurant in the airport that had delicious scrambled eggs. I ordered a chocolate croissant, scrambled eggs with ham, and a black coffee. It slipped my mind that it was going to be a super strong espresso drink instead of what I’m sued to in the USA as a “black coffee”, but it was still good.

I arrived back in Barcelona around 4:00PM and got a lift from my Spanish family back to the house. Overall, I had a great time in Poland, but I am happy to be back in Barcelona now to do some work before going back to the USA in about 15 days.

I’m not going to lie… I love my time here in Europe, I always do, but I really do love my house, too. It’s not even just a house, it’s a home with everything that I have there–my husband, my kitties, and the doggos, too. Don’t worry, I’ll enjoy these next two weeks that I still have in Europe!

Until next time! Dakota

P.S. I haven’t yet mentioned that I am going to London! I’ll be spending the next eleven days in Spain, then I’ll go to England for a quick trip (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) before flying back to the USA on Friday, June 8th. So, if you have any recommendations, or things you would like to see me try/do, let me know!

Grad school update:

1. Got accepted to APL-S

2. Got accepted to APL-S for a paper

For non grad students, a paper is considered more "prestigious" than a poster, though I honestly think it's cool to get accepted at all. I'm more just excited they thought it was good enough to be a paper because I was pretty sure it was going to be a poster. And I'm also nervous.

Yay!(?)!

I love starting my morning by spilling coffee all over my sweater.

(Disclaimer: this story actually  has nothing to do with being a psychology student and is just about a silly grad student thing)

So if anyone thinks that undergrads will do anything for free food...they obviously have not met a poor hungry grad student. I signed up for a Q+A session with the office of grad studies just b/c they were offering free pizza and I was like, "Hey, free dinner!" Except then when I got there it was super awkward, because the theme was "candidacy", aka people who have finished their 3rd, 4th, etc years, have finished their dissertation, and are trying to figure out the paperwork stuff. 

But I still earned my pizza, b/c I still have a sense of shame about taking food from nice people. So I asked questions even - hey, hopefully I'll be achieving candidacy one day!

Anyways, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for earning my (3) slices of pizza, when halfway through the session literally 20 international students walked in, loudly talked to each other while the woman was presenting, and ate the rest of the pizza. Out of all those people, only one of them asked a question.