Palace of Versailles

My last day in Paris today! So off to the Palace of Versailles! This is a place that used to be the King's castle and parliament house. Impossible to finish the place in one day unless you walk for like 6-7 hours. And majestic doesn't even begin to describe the place.

Guide to Paris Beauvais Airport

A small airport with no free Wifi, not one of my favourite airports to be honest.

Once you land, look for the booth below. There, you can buy the 16 euro bus ride that goes from the airport to Porte Mailot metro station. You are recommended to buy two tickets, one for your to and one for your return. The bus ride takes 1 hr 15 mins. After you reach, just head for the M sign that looks like a Mcdonalds logo. Ask around if you are lost as most of them speak English. Be very careful of pickpockets here.

Warsaw 101: Everything you need to know to live at Sabinki

Groceries
Firstly, there is a Carrefour express down the street. Walk out of Sabinki, turn right and head straight for 5 minutes. You should see the sign shortly. But that is pretty small, like an fairprice express if you have been to one.

Another one to go is at Central. Take the tram towards Centrumm. The stop is near the university.

Take either 17, 33 or 41. It only takes 8 minutes to stop at DW Centralny. From there, walk downstairs, turn left, head down, turn left again, past the train platforms and head straight down. There is a Carrefour market at B1. It is about the size of the old Carrefour at PS, but just the market section, not the pots and stuff.

A third one that I know of is at Arkadia. This is a 15 min tram ride with the same trams as above. Stop at first Rondo Radoslawa because there are two. 

From there, just head for the word Arkadia. You can't possibly miss it. At Arkadia, there is a huge ass Carrefour that is bigger than the Giant at IMM, if you have been there. It is just massive.

Apparently, there is also a TESCO at the end of the line, but I do not know if it is the tram line or the metro line. Most likely the metro line. It takes 30 minutes to travel there and I don't really see myself travelling there for a mall, even if the prices there are cheaper. 

Internet

Wifi in Sabinki totally sucks. Your iPhone can't connect, and even if it can, you can only go google and your apps don't work. Your laptop takes several tries to connect, and your best bet is the LAN port in your room. However, there is only one port (the other port is a telephone line port), so you have to share with your roommate. Alternatively, you can bring a router so that both of you can have Wifi, but routers are hard to configure. I spent one whole day configuring mine to no avail. 

Since your iPhone can't connect, you need to buy a prepaid sim card. Don't buy from Play (a telco). While the 5 pln sim card that gives 450 mb sounds cheap, you can only use it for 7 days, even though the 450 mb has an expiry of 3 weeks. That is because there is a prepaid card expiry and 3g expiry. To extend your prepaid card expiry you have to keep topping up - 5 pln for 5 days, 10 for 10 days, so on and so forth. So you have to keep topping up your card just to use your data, and the amount that you top up is locked in the card since you will not spend that much on 3g anyway as 1gb for 30 days cost only 10 pln.

Thus, you can consider buying the 5 pln sim card every 7 days, which costs 20 pln a month. Or you can take the Heya card that is in your orientation package from the university. There is a preloaded 20 pln value in the card, and you can go to T-mobile (in Central/Arkadia) to get them to purchase 1 gb for a month at 15 pln. 

Transport

Once you get your student card from the school, you can use it to buy a 3 month transport pass for 150 pln (or is it 110, can't remember). It covers metro, bus and trams. But I am a cheapo so I didn't get it even though my friends did. What I did is that I jump the metro, bus and trams, which can be rather risky.

Money Changer

You can go to Warsaw Central to change your money. Most money changers will be ok, since the difference in their rates is normally zero point zero something, so it is a few cents difference unless you change a few thousand euros into zlotys.

Citibank

If you are planning to open a bank account, the best would be to open one with Citibank. There are several Citibanks around. One is in Warsaw Central. The other is at Galerie Mokotow, which is a 10-15 min bus ride away. Or you can walk about 20-25 mins to another Citibank. Maps for both are below, direction of the bus is also indicated. 

Guide to Warsaw Modlin Airport from Sabinki

To get to Modlin airport, you can go by taxi, but it is a waste of money.

There are two affordable ways to go to Modlin airport.

Method 1: 15 pln
First you have to go to the Pole Mokotowskie near the dorm. Buy a 20 min student ticket which costs like 1.7 pln per ticket. Near the ticketing machine look for the sign Centruum and follow it and walk up a flight of stairs. Then hop onto any of the tram (17,32,33,41) and take a few stops to DW Central, which is the Dominoes sign below. On the tram, you have to scan your ticket. But I usually ignore purchasing it and just ride for free. If the tram inspector catches me I will just speak Chinese and act very confused.

Once you reach DW Central, walk down the stairs and look for the train station. Purchase a ticket at the booth to the Modlin Airport (15 pln, check the timings here http://www.mazowieckie.com.pl/en/) and look for the platform to take it.

The train ride takes about 45 minutes and then you have to take a bus to the airport from the train station. No worries, the bus ride is covered in the 15 pln ticket. 

Method 2: 10.44 pln (my preferred way)
Take a metro (5 stops) from Metro Pole Mokotowskie to Gdanskie. There, take a train from Gdanskie to Modlin train station. The train ticket costs 5.44 pln and you have to buy a shuttle bus ticket from Modlin train station to Modlin airport for 5 pln. Check the timings here http://www.mazowieckie.com.pl/en/

Guide to a nice trip with Ryanair

If this is your first time to Europe, then I doubt that you have heard of Ryanair. It is the airline where you will find the cheapest tickets, provided that you know how to search and prepare for the flight.

In my experience, the ticket prices for Ryanair to a particular place is usually at its lowest when you book it 4-6 weeks prior to the flight date. Sometimes it may be 6-8 weeks. Naturally you will also have to account for seasonal trends like the tulips season in Amsterdam, where cheap tickets are usually booked months in advance. Also, booking via debit card saves you the credit card fee, but it usually only costs a few cents. Try not to buy your return trip so quickly. Instead, watch both the to and return ticket and buy them separately. This way, you can squeeze every euro from Ryanair.

Once your tickets are settled, there is something called online check in. This happens 15 days to 2 hours before the flight. You simply have to go to the Ryanair website and click online check in that is at the left side of the site. The earlier you check in, the more front your seat will be. Also, if you are travelling with your friends, so check in at the same time or risk getting different seats.

Because your Eurotrip frequently involves air travel, plan your bags wisely. iPads and laptops need to be taken out during the baggage check, as well as your boots. Do it in such a way that you can take off what you need for the clearance in the fastest way possible. No point taking out your iPad that is squashed beneath your load of clothes in a panicky manner. What I do is that I have a backpack and a camera bag. Passport and ticket is in my camera bag that I sling to the front, and I put my iPad in my beanie and hold it on my left hand. Easy off, easy on. Also, after you pass the security clearance, you are normally out of water, and none of the airports that I have been to so far has a water cooler past the checkpoint. Either buy it from the cafe inside or stick to tap water from the toilet.

Most importantly, make sure that your bag fits the 55x40x20 carry on size limit. The guy actually measures your bag if he feels that it is too big. And if it is really too big, he slaps a 50 euro fee on your face. Not a pleasant experience and I have seen it happen to many people.

Normally, boarding early is a good idea because you can settle into the plane as soon as possible. For Ryanair, that may be a bad idea. Early boarding means that you have to stand in the line outside the airport to wait for the plane to be ready, and it can be really cold. This is because their planes are like taxis. One flight alights, 10 minutes later, another flight boards. If your seat is like rows 1-10, take the front staircase, if its from 21-30, take the back. If you are in the centre, it doesn't really matter.

Also, bring your own puke bag if you need. Ryanair doesn't provide one. And remember to allocate about 1 hour to check in. For us, we have to check in at the baggage check in counter before we head to the security clearance point. Sometimes there can be a lot of people and the queue moves slowly, so 1 hour is a comfortable buffer. If time gets too tight, just cut the queue and say sorry and point to your departure time. That worked for me. To a pleasant trip!

First week in Warsaw

So I am finally in Warsaw! Landed at the airport at about 9.30am yesterday and my buddy picked me up. I must say that Europeans are really much bigger sized than Asians. Pretty sure that the girls are around my height and the guys are like 190cm. And cause I am quite think most of the girls look buffer than me :O

Anyway, we took a cab to the dormitory which took about 20 mins. Then I put my bags at the depository area and took a 2 stop metro from Pole Mokotowskie (that's the metro near the dorm) to Centrumm to change money. It was about 4.14 PLN to 1 EUR. Changed 1k euros there. Then we went to the post office which is like a 10 min walk from the dorm to deposit money to the dorm. 400 pln for a deposit and 5 pln for the dorm access card. I have to pay 5 mths worth of rent by the end of February, which totals at about 1.9k pln. Then I collected my bed linen, blanket and I am finally off to my room!

My room is 150, and it is on the first floor. However, there is a 0 floor, which is the ground floor, so technically I am on the 2nd floor. The room is quite small, but it looks cozy and I have no idea how they manage to fit so many shelves inside that place. The kitchen looks clean and they use gas stoves, so do remember to bring matchsticks or lighter if you do stay at the dorm. I ate cup noodles cause by the time I unpacked it was like 2pm and I was too lazy to go out to eat.

One thing that I realize is that the water here tastes very different from Singapore. After I boiled it, there are sediments in my kettle (I actually use a rice cooker to boil lol) and the water has an indescribable taste. It just tastes unnatural. So I ended up buying 10 L of spring water from the Carrefour express that is about a 5min walk from the dorm. 5L costs 2.25 PLN, so it is relatively cheap. (When you exit the dorm, just go right and walk for 5 min and you should see the Carrefour sign)

Looking for pans to buy, I traveled to another Carrefour that is an 8 min tram ride away. There are a lot of international shops there and a great selection of produce. However, I think that the fresh meat produce is kind of lacking. Would recommend Arkadia for that.

And this place doesn't sell any pans! What!! So I traveled to a Carrefour that is even further away, like 15 mins tram ride from my dorm.

Now this one is really big. Bigger than any of the supermarkets I have been to in my entire life. Spent like 50 SGD buying pans, bowls, etc. Afterwards, I headed back to my dorm, whipped up some lousy dinner and crashed into my bed. Got a Paris trip tomorrow and I need to recharge! 

Packing List

My trip is in 7 days! Finally. Here's a packing list that I have compiled for everyone to use. I will add more things in the future if needed.

• Maggi Mee (I like the Myojo ones but it's up to your own preference)
• Instant ramen
• Cup noodles (These are useful when you first get there and have yet to do your groceries shopping. Or if you are feeling greedy late at night)
• Milo packets (I don't think they have this in Europe)
• Green tea packets (Same for this. If they have it will be expensive)
• Cumin seed (A great condiment to add to dishes)
• Honey stars (I plan to eat this for breakfast for the first few days)
• A1 curry paste (I like this brand of curry paste and they are easy to use. Just add a tablespoon into your vegetables, meat, etc if you are craving curry)
• Pork floss 
• Bak Kwa (Remember to bring vacuum packed ones) 
• Boots
• White and black pepper (White pepper is rare in Europe and black pepper is much cheaper here) 
• Bakuteh and curry chicken from Prima taste (These are ready to cook packages that only require you to add pork/chicken. However, they are quite expensive and cost about $7-$8 a box for a meal for 4-6 people)
• Mamee 
• Mee sua
• Light soy sauce
• Dark soy sauce
• Mama lemon 
• Scotch brite (These are much cheaper in Singapore)
• Japanese curry paste
• Down jacket
• Travel pillow
• Long John/Thermal wear
• Towels (bath and cleaning)
• Scarves 
• Gloves
• Ear mitts
• T shirts
• Underwear
• Socks
• Pyjamas (few sets)
• Jeans/long pants 
• White Shirt (I pair it with a black jeans for presentations) 
• Ziplock bags
• Plastic bags (European supermarkets don't really supply these unlike in Singapore)
• Grocery bags (those tote ones that you can fold)
• Yogurt and Oreo bars (for on the go snacks)
• Camera 
• Travel adaptor (I recommend bringing about 2)
• Mini router (Sabinki dormitory has a LAN port per room. You are strongly advised to bring one so that your roommate and you can surf the net together and you can connect your iPhones, iPads, etc)
• Toiletries bag (best if there is a hook as some toilets don't have a space for you to put it)
• Kaya
• Oyster sauce
• Sesame oil
• Japanese teriyaki sauce
• Black pepper sauce
• Samba belacan
• Containers with lids (for food preparation, keeping overnight and other uses)
• Vitamin C tablets (Redoxon)
• Strepsils
• Sweets
• Medicine (Fever, diarrhea, flu, etc. Either buy it or get creative)
• Sleeping bag (For sleeping under your blanket if you are really afraid of the cold and when you crash at train stations, etc.)
• Plug extension (Everyone has more than 1 device nowadays)
• Knife (either bring it or buy it there)
• Small bottles of Shampoo and Body Soap
• Hangers (Sabinki dormitory does not have a dryer so you will need to hang in your room or something)
• Rubber bands
• Passport
• Print out Air, Train, Hostel, etc. tickets
• Passport Photos
• Photocopies of Passport, Insurance, etc.
• Credit/Debit Card
• Addresses of important places like embassy, etc.
• Spare handphone for prepaid SIM card