In which Emily and Krakow have a disagreement.

14:42 -- Vienna, Austria

I read online that the Polish train system is "decent at best" only after Ellen and I decided to take the night train from Prague to Krakow.

The journey began in Prague around nine-thirty, with Ellen and I navigating the Prague subway system to get the train station. We are now pros at subway systems, including buying the appropriate tickets in foreign languages. We had bought gelato and were juggling that and our luggage AND exiting safely the man-eating escalators, when we saw a giant Czech man say something to us. We ignored him and kept on going, only he didn't leave us alone, and I was really concerned for about a split second and then he said, in English, "Ticket check, please," in a very calm voice. I was very grateful he chose to try a different language rather than yell at us in Czech, because that would have been very scary. Anyway, he smiled as we showed him our tickets, but then said we couldn't eat ice cream on the subway. Which I thought was really peculiar, seeing as they sell absinthe and what's touted as marijuana-laced vodka (I'm skeptical) and rum hot-chocolate at kebab stands in the street, but oh no, the buck stops at ice cream on the subway!

The train looked like it might have been new in 1960; its compartments were of fake leather that were often graffitied, the doors between the cars would start closing as soon as they reached their open position, and you could only get one door open at a time, so that an attempt at passing through them went a lot like this:

1. Use free hand to pry open Right Side. Throw shoulder and body into opening it.
2. Maintaining body weight against the Right Side, use free hand to start opening Left Side. Shift body weight against Left Side to get it open while (hurry!) simultaneously throwing feet and/or luggage against the Right Side to prevent it from closing.
3. Throw body weight and luggage in one great effort into the space between cars. Breathe.

The floor between cars was two overlapping pieces of metal, so that on either side you could SEE the train tracks going underneath you. Once you and your luggage had navigated that, you then faced the next set of evil doors.

But the really terrifying thing about these trains is that they were occupied almost exclusively by Polish and/or Czech speakers, meaning they spoke in a tongue that sounds roughly like a motorcycle revving its engine. Ellen and I took an empty compartment but then another lady joined us, thereby preventing us from laying down, so after the train started moving we journey forth in search of another empty compartment. This was really the most strenuous part of the train journey, as Czech men were frequently in the hallways, drinking and smoking with their cigarettes out the open train windows. We'd ask politely in English if we could get by them, hurry past (AWKWARD!) get through the double doors to the next car, and repeat the process. We finally found an empty compartment, turned off the lights and closed the door and the curtains, and were thankfully undisturbed for the rest of the night.

We got into Krakow in the early, early morning, so our first view of the city was as the sun was just about to go up (not that we could see it, through the clouds and fog), walking to our hostel. This was really quite peaceful. That morning we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, which I won't say much about except that I'm glad I went, but it was a very surreal experience.

That evening we had an extremely unfortunate experience at the train station. We had gone to get tickets back to Vienna, and stopped at numerous kiosks asking where to buy the tickets, and they all kept saying "upstairs." Well, upstairs is the train tracks. We would regularly encounter signs that said "Tourist Information" and an arrow that looked like this:



U-turn!, one thinks. Then one turns around and realizes that behind you there is only a train. Well, that can't be it. Maybe they mean down the stairs and around the corner? So one does that, then sees another sign that points up the next set of stairs, which leads you to the first sign! After three hours of this, one begins to go a little crazy, and also feels like crying.

We FINALLY figured out that by "upstairs" they actually meant IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BUILDING.

We decided to take the tram to our hostel, as we were both tired and frustrated and angry at Krakow for being so dysfunctional. After several minutes of being confused as to where the Tram stopped so that people could get on, we realized that there was no loading platform of any kind; the Tram just stopped in the middle of the street, cars passing on either side, and would-be passengers kind of scrambled on board in between gaps in car traffic. (If the cars were nice, they'd stop for you.)

And then something great happened: on the tram, someone's cell phone rang. It was the regular verizon (I think) ringtone, the one that starts in arpeggios down the scale and on the third such arpeggio lands on the home note. Except this time, instead of the home note, the note took a drastic tonal downfall and ended up sounding like a musical car crash.
This is a poor replica, but it'll get the point across:

Da da da da, da da da da, da da da da dooooooooooplhklhsiudhfaishdfasdfaslk.

And it was a perfect metaphor for how I felt about Krakow! I laughed until I cried.

After a good night's sleep and a hot shower in a warm hostel, I felt much better about life. We went to the Wawel Castle in the middle of Krakow, which was beautiful and cool and terrific. Krakow and I made peace. Also, I had AWESOME potato pancakes.

We boarded a (much nicer) train to Vienna, got in early this morning, went to bed, and man is it good to be home.