Visit to the Parliament

I'm sick, feeling dizzy, with a wonderful headache, with the cold inside my bones. Right now, I'm wearing gloves, scarf, and a blanket on my shoulders, with the appearence of a lost vampire walking in circles inside the room.

I know is too repetitive to talk about the weather, but you can't imagine! I have been to the Patagonia in wintertime, and it was the Bahamas compared to Warsaw, those days. And we are expecting -30 º for this weekend. Great, what a party. I mean, do you remember in one of my first posts, that I was affraid of the possible minimum of -17 º ? Let me explain that at -17 is when we say: "oh, is not so cold! Lets try to have a walk."

However, today, a risky group of adventurers went to the Polish Parliament. We had a guided tour, with some surprises (like meeting the lider of the Samoobrona Party (Self-Defense Party), Andzej Lepper, and the candidate of the strogest opposition party, Donald Tusk for the Civic Platform, in the corridors of the building).

Just a little introduction about politics in this country (I'm not an expert at all!). In the last Poland's elections on 25th of September 2005, the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) won first place, with 26.99% of the vote, closely followed by the liberal Civic Platform (PO), with 24.6% (even if in the first round Tusk was the favourite candidate, and the PiS one the second).

PiS was set up by the Kaczynski twins, the now-a-days President Lech, controversial former Major of Warsaw, and Jaroslaw. For some days the possibility to have both in the head of the Government and State was open, quite funny taking in to the account that they are as equal as drops of water. Finally the Prime Minister is Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. One of their propposals is to bring the death penalty back.

Both parties, PiS and PO are right-wing. Historically, the deputies sat down from left to right in the hemiscicle depending on the wing of their group. I would say that in the present situation this have been a tough task, as it is difficult to say who is more or less righ-wing.

Our friend Lepper, in the little screen of the picture, is the leader of the agrarian party, catch all and populist one, eventhough populism is something in vogue between the high personalities of this country. A lot of movement in the corridors of the Parliament.

Our first try to have hot chocolate ended up having a nice soup in a French restaurant, to recover the normal body temperature. Soupe de Poisson for me, Soupe d'Oignon for Álvaro. Mmmm... And a fantastic taxi to return, alive, to the campus.