The trip started out a wreck, as do most things that JM and I do together. We got up at 4:30, after less than 5 hours of sleep, ate a quick breakfast, and headed out the door. We walked to the metro, took the red line two stops, changed to the blue line, took the blue line 6 stops, and got off the metro. The travel agent said we need to go to the bus station once we get off the metro at this stop, so we walk upstairs to look for the bus station. The stairs open into a huge, bright building lined with benches--the bus station. It’s surrounded by huge charter buses, so it looks like we’ll be riding in style. Way too easy. We look on the board and see our bus leaves at 6:15 instead of 6:00, so we sit down and close our eyes for a bit, since we’re about half an hour early. The bus finally pulls up and we wait in line to get on. As I walk onto the bus, I had my ticket to the driver, who is checking the tickets, and he says something in Hungarian. “I’m sorry?” I say. “Wrong bus line. You want one by stadium,” he replies, and points across the street. Dammit! I step off the bus and we look across the street to see, what is probably our bus, driving away. We go underground and across the street anyway. We come up the stairs to a dark street corner. The building that is the other “bus station” isn’t open. It’s not lit. There are no buses around. We stand confused for a few minutes until another bus pulls up. People suddenly pile out of cars and appear from the shadows, and board the bus. We are now sure that we missed our bus. We head back home and decide to straighten it out after a little more sleep.
When we get up JM calls the bus line, only to find out that there isn’t another bus going to Krakow for 3 days. He walks about half a mile to the train station near our place and books us on the night train to Krakow. We have a small lunch, nap a little, have dinner, and then, to prepare for the long train ride and to help wash the morning away, we kill a bottle of Johnnie Walker. We get to the train station nearly an hour early (we’re not taking any chances) and the alcohol has definitely kicked in. A homeless man hassles JM for a cigarette and some money. Being drunk, JM isn’t in the mood for speaking Hungarian, so he replies in English. We’re drunk, so for some reason we get a kick out of the pantomiming and five-or-so English words this guy knows. Anytime he says a Hungarian word that reminds me of an English word, I start talking to him about it in English. A girl standing near us can understand both sides of the conversation and can’t stop laughing. JM gives the guy a cigarette and 300 forint, and we get on the train. Already round two is getting off to a better start, or at least the alcohol makes it seem that way. We chat with the Aussies a couple doors down from us for a bit, and then settle into our little bunks. I must say, a train isn’t a terrible way to travel overnight, if you get to lay down. The bunks were actually more comfortable than my “bed” in Budapest, which says nothing about the comfort of the train and EVERYTHING about how uncomfortable my bed is. We both sleep fitfully¾nodding off when the train is rolling and waking up when it jars to a stop at the stations.
We get to Krakow just after 6:30 in the morning. We magically pick the right direction to walk from the train station and end up in the huge market square in the city center. It’s an interesting and unique experience to be walking the streets of a new city as the sun is coming up, and before most of the people who actually live there are out and about. We walk around the square and window-shop. We check out St. Mary’s Basilica, which is in one corner of the square. We take a small side street away from the square and come to a big park. We learn that the wide green space circles the entire city center, and is where the main wall used to stand. We walk back into the center and find a little café that is open early (7:30. Everything else opens at 9) and go in for cappuccino. Warm and awake, we head back out to start taking everything in. We hit up all the usual tourist stuff (the market square, the city center, the churches, the statues in the green space). We find a little restaurant and eat brunch (potato pancakes and goulash). We walk up the hill to see the castle and it’s church. There’s a massive marble courtyard in the middle. We walk down the hill to the Dragon’s Den. We walk along the river. I’m not going to go into much detail since I have pictures and this post is going to be massive already.
At this point it’s late enough in the afternoon that we can check into our hotel. It’s only supposed to be 4 kilometers from the city center, so we decide to walk it. JM has directions and after about 15 minutes of walking, we situate ourselves enough to head to the street we need. We walk for about 45 minutes and end up where the Google directions sent us. Unfortunately, our hotel is not there. We ask around and most people just give us confused looks. We sort of get directions from a guy who doesn’t speak any English. He writes down a new street name, so we feel like we’re back on track. We think he says that it’s just down the road about 800 meters. We get there and not only is there no hotel, but the street that he has written down for us isn’t there either. We walk around for a bit and still can’t figure it out. We find another guy who roughly tells us that we have to take the bus, but we think we should be close and he doesn’t seem too sure about it, so we walk around some more. We cover the entire neighborhood one more time before we ask another lady. She doesn’t speak English at all, but gives us very specific directions to go straight two stoplights and then go right. We walk in that direction and finally come to a part of town that looks like it might actually have a hotel. We see a taxi, give up, and get in. He drives us directly to our hotel…on the other side of the city center! The directions Google maps gave us were at least 10-15 kilometers off. After nearly 2 hours of walking, we’ve made it.
Finally at our hotel we spend a little time taking naps or showers. We kill just a couple hours there before we head out to meet up with Ewa (Eva, for all you Americans). We met her through CouchSurfing.com. She seemed very nice, invited us to dinner at her place, and said we could hang out with her and her two friends who were in town. We get there and she tells us to make ourselves at home. Already the beautiful little apartment smells like delicious food. We chat for just a few minutes before her other two friends show up; Andre from Romania, and Karolina who is from Krakow originally but lives in London. We start in on one of the four bottles of wine (we all brought some) and jump right into the conversation. Ewa is finishing preparing the meal, Karolina makes a salad and then makes birds out of the napkins for the table. After dinner we finish off all the wine and catch the last tram to the Jewish district. Ewa takes us to a bar, which I believe was called the Singer or Singers. I don’t remember exactly, but most of the tables were made out of old Singer sewing machines. It was a cool little place and was pretty mellow when we got there. They bought us hot beer, a shot of some special Polish drink that was absolutely toxic, hot honey wine, more hot beer… By our second drinks (third if you include the shot, sixth or seventh if you include the wine), there was a drunk couple attempting to dance in the middle of the bar. They were barely doing a good job of even standing up, but no one seemed to be bothered by them at all. In fact, everyone there seemed to just be having a great time. We had been drinking a lot and went from zero to drunk pretty quickly. The next thing I know, most of the people in the bar are dancing, including our group. At one point, Ewa and Karolina even end up dancing on a table. Eventually we leave the bar but I think I left my camera so Andre and I go back in. We search for a few minutes before I find it in my coat pocket. We get back outside and, somehow end up in a cab, and then somehow end up at the hotel. We stumble out, slurring goodbyes, drag ourselves into our hotel room and pass out at nearly 4am.
This is the second time in a few months that I’ve done drunk goodbyes, and I must say I hate it. The same thing happened at my going away party. I got drunk and stumbled out of there to walk home, just like I would at any other party. None of the goodbyes were very heartfelt, and I even forgot a few people because they were passed out or I just didn’t remember they were there. Same thing here, I didn’t get to fully express my gratitude and appreciation for the good time we were shown by these great people, and I regret that a little bit.
This thing is getting pretty long, so I guess the rest of it will have to wait for the next post.
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