A Week in Warsaw

After a very successful competition in England, we flew to Warsaw for a short training camp. The US Olympic Committee has an agreement with the Polish Olympic Committee that allows us to train in Poland for free. There are three major pentathlon training centers in Poland, we decided to camp out at the one in Warsaw.

Warsaw is an interesting city. As my uncle so aptly put it last when we were discussing it “Warsaw had the distinct disadvantage of being destroyed by the Germans, who are known for their efficiency, and rebuilt by the Soviets, who are known for their inefficiency.” As a result, there are precious few buildings still standing from the old city. What remains now are soviet era apartments that the Polish have gone to great lengths to re-decorate in an effort to dress up the city. Because it has been a couple decades since communism ended, Warsaw looks much more like a city in Western Europe than an Eastern Block country.

Our “hotel”, more like a youth hostel, had wireless internet which made it a substantially nicer stay. I was able to talk to Cami daily on Skype as well as conduct some other business that would normally have been prohibited if I only had phone cards.

The biggest problem we had in Poland was electrical. We like to travel with an Xbox, projector, and speaker system (I know, not really roughing it, but it’s good to stave off the boredom and get in some rest between workouts). Despite a very good transformer, our Xbox met its’ fate after about 10 hours of use. It went out with a loud pop and a billow of smoke. We were not really sure why the transformer failed, but the result was unmistakable. (I forgot to mention on my last blog that we blew up an Xbox in England also, so this trip claimed two gaming systems)

Aside from frying electronics, there’s not much else that happened in Poland. We trained a lot and slept a lot and did very little else.