Europe's Dejected Child (Poland)

Sorry about the complete lack of updating this blog. There has been a long time where I've either been having too much fun gallivanting to update the blog, or, more often, I was staying in cheap, crappy hostels that don't have internet. I feel by now I've lost any kind of readership I had before this hiatus, but now I feel ready to get back into it. And so I will

So the first part of this post-project exursion was Poland, and I think I've captured all of Krakow and Wroclaw's glory in the previous post, so now let me get to what I really think of Poland.

It was a beautiful country. Its got wide open spaces, and nifty old-timey cities. I can see why it's neighbors have prided in devouring it over the past several centuries. But more easily, I can clearly see why it was so easily devoured.

Poland was difficult. If you were standing on the border between Poland and Germany, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But then, if you tried to actually do something in either country, the difference becomes apparent. Germany = easy. Poland = headache. Things don't move smoothly in Poland. For example, the information person in Krakow, Poland's biggest tourist destination, does not speak a word of English. Trains even move slower in Poland, and we even saw one roll into the Krakow pulled along by its coal powered enginew from the 1920s. While Annie had no problem buying a rail pass once we got into Germany, Poland (which doesn't count on my rail pass, I just thought I would reiterate that) didn't even know what we were talking about. I would classify it as a country that has some room for improvement. Read Annie's blog, she's probably got it more spelled out.

But despite all of that, I enjoyed being in Poland. After leaving Wroclaw, Annie and I went to the Polish capital, Warsaw, which is really nothing like the rest of the untry. When we arrived in the city, I remember saying that, to get to our hostel, we had to go right out of the train station. Unfortunately, and in typical Polish fashion, having a front door to the train station would be too easy. Emerging on the other side of the street from the train station (and not realizing it) we went right and started walking. Bear in mind that we got into Warsaw at like, 9:45 p.m, and we're carrying about 1000 pounds of stuff on our backs. So we're walking for a little while, and true to our little hand-drawn map, we pass a roundabout, and keep going. And then civilization ends, street lights diappear, and the sidewalk becomes more or less a dirt trail. After about 45 minutes walking down this path, we began to suspect we weren't going the right direction. Eventually, we came across a bus station, where we hired a cab and tld him where we were heading. He ushed us into the back f his cab, and we took off, for like, 20 minutes. He dropped us off at our hostel, where we checked in with a nice young gentleman with a fantastic mullet, climed several flights to our room, took off our sweat-stained clothes and plopped in bed.

When we awoke the next morning and found a map, we sought out where our journey had taken us. We couldn't find it, and then realized that we had walked off the map. That's never a good thing.

Warsaw was interesting. We spent a whole day just wandering around and looking at stuff. They have really great androgenous mermaid statues (one of which made farting noises and ripples in the fountain it was in), an amazing communist building, sweet bear pits (like Bern!), and a fake palm tree. Oh, and some of the coolest memorials and statues, and an awesome Supreme Court building.

I love Poland. That might be an exaggeration. But I'm willing to come back for Euro 2012. I just hope the trains move faster then.