Saturday, May 21, 2011

Journey to Lublin, Poland

I took a trip to Lublin, Poland over the past couple of days. Lublin is a city in the very eastern region of Poland, near the borders of Belarus and the Ukraine.


My friend and colleague, Stan Dylak, from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan had to attend a student's research defense at a university in Lublin on Friday, so he arranged for me to do a guest lecture that morning at the Maria Curie Sklodowska University. Stan's graduate student and a good friend, Mateusz, joined us for the trip, and was so helpful (as always) with arranging the travel and organizing the meetings. The train took 7 hours, leaving Poznan in the late afternoon on Thursday, and arriving at around 11 PM. After my lecture on Friday morning, Mateusz and I had a few hours to explore Lublin, including the Lublin Castle and Holy Trinity Chapel -- one of the few remaining well-preserved examples of Russian Byzantine art.



It is a beautiful city, with lively central square and interesting architecture. We ducked into a quiet cafe to escape the heat of the mid-day, which must have been approaching 90 degrees (30 C). There are many outdoor bistros lining the streets of central plaza, and the one where we choose for a late lunch featured local Lublin cuisine. Coicidently, our waitress turned out to be one of the students who attended my lecture earlier in the day! She kindly offered us a discount on the meal (though I doubt if my talk that day was worth much ;)



We were a bit late getting out of the restaurant, and literally had to run to catch our train out of town. Another long  7 hour train ride back to Poznan on Friday evening, but it allowed the three of us to enjoy long talks and to relax.

No comments:

Post a Comment