Burrito West Blog

A BLOG POST BY PETER!

Hello ! Lisa has agreed to give me a cameo on her blog so I can spout some stuff about my experience during this trip… so here it is. I’ll divide it into 3 parts: 1 Costs (because people sometimes give us funny looks when we say we’re taking a year off … this might help). 2. Some of my favorite moments, and 3. A little summary of what I thought would happen vs what actually happened.

So Part 1 Finances of a Year Abroad

(note: it really bothers me that I can’t do properly indented and numbered headings!)

Housing

First a little context: We are staying in a large studio apartment with a sleeping annex/alcove, I’d say its roughly 500sqft, which is pretty large for a studio in Poland. We are a 3 minute walk from the main square, the #1 destination for tourists and locals. I’d say that the location is about as prime as possible, there is a great café in the bottom floor, a pizza place across the street, and another 2 doors down, and basically 80% of the cafes, restaurants and pubs in Wroclaw are within a 2-10 minute walk. The décor is sparse but brand new and uber modern (Germanic influence in Wroclaw).

I would say that the equivalent Vancouver place would be something like $1500/mo with heat and power (not quite sure where this Vancouver equivalent would be since there is no equivalent to the main square in Vancouver … picture a place that is adjacent to Granville St, Robson St and Granville Island simultaneously, but the mountains have been flattened, and there are more nuns ??). Anyway, our apartment in Wroclaw costs on average 1900zl per month, or about $633 (CAD), with heat, power and water (yes there is a water meter). 

Food

This is a little tough to calculate. We spend 590zl/week on food, so roughly $790 (CAD)/month. This includes my super special dedicated beer fund. It’s the amount we set out at the beginning of the trip (ya… actually !!, crazy eh?!). We could do it for less, but because eating out here is so much cheaper than Canada (seriously… eating out in Van is steep, you can find cheaper food in London!) it seems silly to not splurge a little. Here are some examples:

• A large pizza from across the street is $6.50 with 3 toppings. 
• A trough (no really) of meat of all sizes and shapes, together with a side of fries and some sort of salad (purely psychological I think), designed to feed 4 people (or 2 bikers according to the description) is about $35 [chopper bar]. 
• A good Polish meal (some sort of pork or fish, potatoes and a coleslaw like contraption) is $10 including tip and a half liter of beer [chatka przy jatkach].
• There is a buffet a few minutes away that charges by weight and Lisa and I can both get a great dinner for a total of < $10 for the two of us [bazylia]. 

Finally there really are tons of little cafes in lovely heritage buildings, as well as great patios (in the summer), so its really a shame to not eat out. One odd thing about Poland is that the all incentives are aligned towards beer; a half liter of beer is 10zl, which is the same price as a medium quality cappuccino, or a 250ml bottle of water (can’t get tap water, sorry). A few times in an attempt to show Lisa that I’m not an alcoholic I didn’t order beer when eating out … and it's infuriating, also inefficient… so I drink beer because I have to, yes, that’s it!

Anyway bottom line, for $790/month I’d say we can eat out about 50% of our dinners, and hit at least 1 café per day [side note: our favorite café is Vinyl, which is right at the base of our building (Kotlarska st), they not only serve great coffee, but provide a great space and play music that makes you feel like you’re growing as a person just by listening]

OK… somebody might care how much groceries cost, … it varies, canned goods and imported fruits/vegetables are comparable to Canadian prices, but everything else, particularly cheese, meats and local veg are about 1/3 the price.

Bits and Bobs and Bills

This part is lame so I’ll just go quickly: Cell and high speed internet ~ $70 CAD/month for high speed internet at home and 2 cell phones. You could do it for a little less, and the customer service is absolutely horrid (we’re with Orange… they Suck!)… but we signed up for a plan and now its too late. Medical insurance: we use Medicover, because my uncle, who has many fancy titles on his door at the hospital he works at, said we should. Its $120 CAD/month for the two of us, and includes some sort of travel insurance… for something. We haven't actually used this for anything (knock on wood).

Cool Stuff

When we decided to take a year off the plan was to try to somehow improve ourselves, our original plan of becoming expert ballroom dancers hasn’t quite panned out (see next post), but nevertheless we’ve been taking lessons, and they are cheap ! Eg: private ballroom dance lesson = $30 CAD (for both of us), group class = $7/each. Private boxing instructor (tried it briefly, great fun at Adrenalina boxing club): $14/hr.

Travel

There’s not much to say about travel costs, anyone can look up flight and accommodations costs on line. We basically plan our travel to try and stay on a budget of ~ $800/month or so. A couple of unexpected realizations: 1. Ryanair flights are cheap ($30 one way from Wroclaw to Venice), but you need to count about double that, because there is always a $15-$30 bus connection from the Ryanair airport to someplace a person actually wants to go. 2. If you do fly somewhere it takes about 6-7 hours, (1 hour to get to the airport here, 2.0 hrs at airport (includes bus buffer), 2 hr flight, 1.5 hrs from airport to destination on the back side) , and its pretty miserable, so if there’s an option, an ~8hr train journey is preferable to flying in most cases. 

2. We started out using hostels, but realized that we can't sleep in dorms and for the price of a private room in a hostel we can usually get an apartment on AirBNB.com. In some cities, and for short stays AirBNB doesn’t work, so we use booking.com. So far the most we’ve ever paid for accommodation is $90/night (Amsterdam). 

3. Random factoid: In the 1800s when soldiers of the Prussian army were stationed in Poland they were allocated 100g of meat per WEEK, and 2.5l of beer PER DAY. Think about that…

Bottom Line

We spend about $1600/month for living expenses (excluding travel). We were lucky to rent our apartment in Vancouver for $100/more then what we pay in rent back in Vancouver (because its furnished !). So the Poland part of the trip has/will cost us $15000 (10 months X $1500). The other travel averages out to about $800/month.

How do Polish People Survive?

I have no idea! From talking to relatives and some others we've met it seems that an after tax salary of roughly 2500zl = $833/month is fairly close to average for Poles who live near cities. So a Polish couple both working full time could live here… but … if you live here you need to save for retirement, pay for your commute, pay for clothes and furniture and deal with the years where you may not be working, so I think it's really tough. One thing to note is that we pay for housing and food, which are heavily discounted, but things like clothes, cars furniture and fuel are all AT LEAST as expensive as they are in Canada. In fact based on our experience, all electronic goods and new clothes are more expensive here….(except shoes… shoes here are cheap ! ). 

OK, that’s it. Next post will be my favorite moments in during the trip.

Peter