25 August

Once again hello from the train. This time from Warsaw to Krakow on the express train. Three hours instead of nine, thank you very much. One thing that was a bit of a drag is that I got busted sitting in first class with a second class ticket, but 42 Zlatas made the conductor happy and let me keep my comfy seat rather than being crammed into the other cars which are standing room only. We’ll be in Krakow in another forty minutes, but even though I haven’t had a chance to upload the last chapter yet, I thought I’d start a new one.



Warsaw is the first really cosmopolitan city I’ve encountered on this trip. It’s huge, and obviously a major travel center of Europe. The train station and bus station are crazy – much more confusing than even the Russian train station despite the fact that I have some experience at this now, mainly stemming from the fact that there are four thousand different ways to go anywhere you want to go. I settled on the express train as much due to not wanting to stand in the massive lines as not wanting to endure the longer ride. At some point I should really start trying to save money a bit, rather than spend it on things like first class seats, but after the never ending trip to Warsaw just 48 hours ago, I needed a short, easy trip, lest I begin hating trains.

Anyway, Warsaw. It’s big, and bustling, and despite the fact that they have a huge number of tourists, it’s back to only intermittent English speakers. I didn’t really make any friends there, as I was only there for two days and didn’t go out to any bars at night. As I sort of mentioned in the last post, it was basically a necessary layover for Krakow. It’s also expensive. My hotel room cost nearly $100 a night, though partially that’s my fault for taking one in the central city rather than further out. When I arrived in town around eleven at night after the God Awful train trip and found out the hotel where I had reservations was much farther away than I thought, I just wanted to be able to put my pack down somewhere and get something to eat, so that is what I did.

One interesting thing is that I wasn’t able to find a single wifi hub in Warsaw, despite its size. Latvia and Lithuania were covered with them, a café or restaurant or hotel on every block and in Lithuania they were all free. There though, I only found one coffee shop that had it, which showed up on a search on the web. I went there, and while the network was running, you had to either have a cell phone (to get a text message) to sign up or buy a scratch off card. I asked the cashiers for a scratch card and out of three of them, none of them new what wifi was, much less that they had it. When I pointed out a sign to them, advertising the fact, they shrugged and said they didn’t have the cards. I then went to the Marriot, the swankest hotel in town, which said they had wifi, but found that it was 12 euros per hour, which is a bit too steep as it’s about twice even what it costs at Starbucks in the US and London. I decided to hold off on the stuff I needed to do until I got to Krakow today. (I’m doing a lot of trip planning by computer, right now, and while the internet cafes are fine for checking email and sending messages, I’m trying to avoid sending things like passwords to credit cards and bank accounts through those computers. Hopefully in another week or so, almost all my reservations and plans will be finalized, and it won’t be a big deal.) In any case, Cell phones are still everywhere, of course, but otherwise the Poles aren’t exactly on the cutting edge of technology.

Speaking of technology, I heard on CNN night before last that Apple is recalling a bunch of powerbook batteries due to the possibility of fire. I looked on the web yesterday, and sure enough, mine is one of them. Let’s all hope that my laptop doesn’t explode before I get home and get a chance to exchange it. I’ll be sure to let you know if there are any problems.

In other news, my knees are hurting like crazy. Sitting on the train for what ended up being more than twelve hours two days ago seems to have contributed, but I don’t know why they are hurting this much. I drank a ton of water yesterday, as I probably haven’t been doing enough of that, and went easy on the walking. Hopefully doing the same thing today (other than hauling my backpack to the hotel) will help. Other than my knees, I’ve been in good health all along, and am feeling reasonably fit. Better than when I left Austin, for sure, though I was working so hard and so often in the two months before I left that things like running and kayaking weren’t getting their fair share of time in. There still hasn’t been any real working out, but just walking around so much has to be good for me, other than my knees, of course.



What else? Despite not going to a lot of tourist sights in Warsaw, I was still stuck by how many monuments I saw. I was sitting in the park yesterday and thinking about just how much more WW2 affected everything here than in the US. It’s an obvious thought, I know, but one I hadn’t considered from close up before. All of the old buildings are rebuilt, or else still have damage showing from the war. Every monument was either destroyed or moved. I can’t help wondering about all the ways that daily contact with the consequences of war even so many years later affects a person, much less a society. Methinks the world might have been better off if George W Bush had grown up in Europe, tripping over monuments to the dead rather than partying it up in Connecticut or wherever it is he drank his way through school.

Well, as I said, it is an express train, so this is an express entry. Short and sweet. I just hope there is somewhere in Krakow that I can find a wifi connection to post it. Let me rephrase that. Somewhere easily found with a wifi connection. I don't intend to spend all my days there looking for a place I can get online. I hope you are all well and not suffering in the Austin heat. More soon, I hope.

Stephen