New Year, New Home – benmurphy.org

I’m glad the Christmas and New Year holidays are over. Having just relocated to a new country where I don’t know anyone and I don’t speak the language, I definitely got the holiday blues this year. Being so far away from family and friends made me feel quite lonely at times, especially around Christmastime. It certainly didn’t help that I played Kenny Rogers’ and Dolly Parton’s Once Upon a Christmas (the greatest Christmas album of all time, FYI) several times, with all its nostalgic associations with the magical Christmases I experienced as a child in the 1980s.

But I did do more than mope around and reminisce as I passed the holiday in Poland. I checked out Poznań’s impressive Christmas market (see my last entry), I celebrated New Year’s Eve out in the streets (again, pretty lonely, but the fireworks were great), and I joined in the mob following Poznań’s Three Kings procession.

Poznań welcomed 2019 with a bang (or hundreds of bangs, to be precise). If I go next year, I’m buying safety goggles. The do-it-yourself firework and firecracker scene is very big here, and several small incendiary devices went whizzing by my head, set off on the street or thrown out of windows. A helmet might not be a bad idea either. The locals warned me to beware of flying bottles, too. I saw plenty of smashed champagne bottles and flutes the next day, but can’t verify if they were ejected from open windows or not (1 January 2019).

Poland brings its Christmas season to a symbolic end with the Trzech Króli (Three Kings) festival in early January. It’s basically a nativity parade. But with bad guys! Early in the procession, some devils (I guess) emerged in a big puff of smoke and said something in Polish in a deep, scary voice. Unfortunately I couldn’t get close enough to them to get a good photo. (Unlike most American parades, here the crowd doesn’t pick out a spot and stay there for the whole thing. They follow the action, resulting in a sort of family-friendly stampede.) Instead, above you’ll see, from left to right: angels, old men in funny hats, cherubs, and, on horseback, the three wise men (6 January 2019).

Sightseeing aside, I’ve been settling into life in Poznań in 2019. Most importantly, I found a place to live on a semi-permanent basis. Last week (the week of 31 December 2018), I contacted a couple of local foreigner-friendly real estate agencies and a handful of Poznań Airbnb hosts about finding a place to rent for the semi-long-term (6 months). After some haggling, I chose one of the latter (Airbnb has the advantage of letting me pay my “rent” via credit card). Having stayed in three Airbnb apartments in Poznań (two this trip, one last July), I knew exactly where in the city I did and did not want to live. And on 3 January, I moved into my tiny apartment in Poznań’s stare miasto (Old City).

My apartment is in a brand-new (2017) building. And that is fine with me. I like to look at old buildings, but I prefer to live in shiny new ones (5 January 2019).

My new home for (up to) six months. My host/landlord told me I’m only the third guest he’s had. So I’m enjoying a brand-new apartment. New floors, new furniture, new sheets and towels (what a difference they make!). I normally hate sleeping on futons, but maybe because it’s brand new, this one doesn’t sag at the hinge. It feels like a nice firm mattress (3 January 2019).

Where was I? Oh yeah. New kitchenette, new pots & pans, new shower, new hot water heater, new washer… you get the idea. Heck, I love the fact that every lightbulb works. That’s rare in European apartments (3 January 2019).

And it’s a room with (somewhat of) a view. I’m up on the fourth floor (U.S. fifth floor). And unlike virtually every other Airbnb apartment I’ve stayed in in Europe, this one has an elevator! It was really great not having to haul my big heavy suitcase (see the previous two photos) up five flights of stairs (the entrance is in the basement, a.k.a. floor -1) (4 January 2019).

What’s more, my landlord also owns the apartment next door (most of the owners in the building, he tells me, are property investors who rent out their apartments for profit, as he does). It is still being renovated, but he offered (and I am very seriously considering taking him up on it) to let me move over there when it’s finished. Unlike my unit, which has a “smoker’s balcony” about six inches wide (from where I took the photo above), the apartment next door has a balcony large enough for some patio furniture. The balcony comes at the expense of less interior space, but you know how I feel about balconies. If I’m still around come spring, I will be all over that balcony.

Although I’ve signed on for six months, I let my landlord know that I might not be here for that long if I get a job offer I can’t refuse back in the States. Luckily for me, although I’m signed on through 30 June on Airbnb, the way Airbnb long-term (over 28 days) rentals works is, I pay month-to-month. On the first of the month, I pay the rent for that month. Just like a standard rental. So worst-case scenario, if I move out at the beginning of the month, I’m out the remainder of that month’s rent. I can live with that.

But, now that I’m living right smack in the heart of Poznań again, I remember why I liked this city so much when I visited last summer. During my long sojourn with my parents in the fall, I really missed living downtown and having all sorts of people and activity and bustle around me every time I walked out the door. Poznań is a really vibrant city, I think, even in cold, gray (seriously; I haven’t experienced a mostly sunny day in three weeks) January. Every time I go out, I see an enticing new little shop or restaurant.

In the neighborhood. You can’t tell from this photo (a hat is a very good idea in Poland in January), but I got my hair cut at the barber shop to the left (5 January 2019).

My favorite street in Poznań: (Mostly) pedestrianized shopping street ul. Półwiejska (5 January 2019).

And, when it’s face-numbingly cold outside, there’s always the mall (5 January 2019).

When I came back to Poland, at first my strategy was just to settle down in a cheap place, stretching my savings as far as they’ll go while I focus on finding a job, probably back in the U.S. But now that I’m back in a European city I really like, the pendulum has shifted back toward wanting to find a way to stay here.

I still haven’t worked that out. Despite my six-month soft commitment to Poznań, I don’t have any sort of visa. As an American, that limits me to a maximum stay of 90 consecutive days in the Schengen zone, the essentially border-free area that comprises most of western and central Europe. My 90 days are up in late February. I’m already planning a trip to Bucharest, Romania (conveniently not part of Schengen, yet) to clear that hurdle. But if I don’t want to have to take an involuntary vacation every three months, I’m going to need a visa, which most likely means finding a job here.

So, as I implement my 2019 New Year’s resolution (spend a minimum of 10 hours a week on my job search until I have adequate income again), I’ll be looking for local, U.S., and global jobs. And if local jobs are on the table, that means getting more serious about learning Polish (specifically, more than simply using the excellent free language-learning app Duolingo every day). We’ll see how that goes. For now, do widzenia (goodbye)!