When a person gets an education and goes to work abroad with big salary he is an opportunistic. Another person goes to do exchange studies in a different country. He is also an opportunistic. Third person lives in somewhat unstable country and finds out that there is a country offering an asylum for him. He takes a chance and becomes also an opportunistic.

But it happens that the third guy becomes pretty frustrated and doesn't feel too good in his new country. Strange habits, laws, language, no job and so on. He lives in a ghetto and spends his days hanging around with gangs and doing stupid things.

Whose fault? The guy who took a chance and decided to get a better life? Not really. I would say it is the fault of the country. It is totally okay to take reasonable number of refugees. Then it is totally different question whether you want and can integrate them in your society. Do not expect someone without language skills and with totally different cultural background just throw his own world view away and start following yours. Won't happen easily.

So be realistic if you want to save the world. Feel free to comment.

Washing clothes is a chore that one can't avoid. Either you use somebody's service or you do it yourself. I felt like saving money instead of my time so I decided to do myself also in Zurich.

The first issue was that there was only old reservation list in the laundry room. That didn't really prevent me but then I realized that I don't have any washing powder. The stuff I thought to be washing powder was anti-calc/limescale for washing machines and of course it cannot be used to wash clothes (no, I didn't try - I trusted the label's text). So I took a look around I found liquid dishwashing agent and with that and a bathtub I washed my first set of laundry last week.

This week I was more prepared. I reserved the machine, bought proper powder and went to the laundry room at the right time. I loaded the machine and I started to look for a place to put some washing powder. No luck, this great piece of engineering was a tumble dryer. So, clothes out and in the another machine. That was a top-loader washing machine and I even found place for my washing powder. However, this machine did not start up and didn't seem to have any life signs. I found two manuals, italian and french ones and even with those it seemed that machine is pretty much out of action. Then I saw a card reader on the wall. Damn.

I quickly rushed to visit company secretary and it turned out that I should have a pay card for that reader in order to activate machines and getting one is a little bit complex. But the cleaning lady has one and I could use it later on. However, I needed clean underwear so I took my laundry from the machine once again and dumped some of them in the bathtub.

What Poland has to do with laundry? Well, I had my traineeship there in 2003 and the second accommodation we had for almost two months did not have a washing machine but it had a bathtub...

Tomorrow there is going to be a huge event in Zurich. It is called street parade and it has been organized several times already. I don't personally mind that much about such music but definitely it will be interesting to see. Oh, and I am about to meet my swiss-finn friend whom I haven't seen since 1997 - huh!

This is the only country where dogs are allowed to enter restaurant. I have several occasions so it cannot be just one dog friendly restaurant... I wonder If I could bring my pet lynx there too - which I don't have... =(

In addition of rain and colder weather I have to take account the fact that shops actually close their doors around 20. There are no 24h shops anywhere nearby the apartment or the railway station. I met more drug pushers than bread sellers yesterday at 21:30. But otherwise this city seems to be pretty ok.