A quick calculation would indicate that if all the compartments were full, which they should have been to justify that many people in the aisle, then there were about (26 in aisle + 8*8 in compartments = ) 90 people in the compartment and we were 2/3 of the way away from the inspector. Immediately I stood up, stepped inside the family compartment, lifted my shirt and tee-shirt and took my ticket out my money belt. The family watched me, obviously very amused. When I came out of the room, 30 seconds or so later, ticket man was already upon us. John had to get his ticket out of his rucksack. I was a bit embarrassed bothering the family. Then mine. I wanted to get it over subtly so no-one would know where we were going but I think he asked us even though it was written on the ticket. I put my ticket in my top pocket, as a sort of decoy. John also and put his ticket in his top pocket. The ticket man quickly did the family and then disappeared. John's rucksack fell on the young girl's head (age approx 7). They all thought it was really funny. We'd got up the nerve to go to the toilet, but every time I went there there was someone in it. The ticket man went back along the train, speaking to black+red on the way, who subsequently spoke to most of the other people in the carriage. The family seemed to be trying to close the door. The young girl wanted to sleep. I forced myself against the door. The family were the only people I trusted and I wanted their pro- tection. The woman in the family gave me a sandwich, cheese I think in the usual solid bread, and one for John which I gave to him when he returned from the toilet but he hardly ate. I was really tired. I dreaded getting to Krakow as I wouldn't be able to do a thing, I just wanted to go to sleep. I kept drifting off.
By now we were certain that everyone in the carriage was waiting for us to arrive at Krakow at which point they would, by any means possible, take our rucksacks, pass- ports and money. There was nothing I could do. I just had to sit there for hours watching the time tick by, watching the moment get ever closer. I know it sounds melodramatic but I was really scared at the time and very tired. I had no strength, I knew that I wouldn't be able to defend myself, I just had to sit there and wait for my life to end. I remember also being very angry that the British media had put us into this position. British people may be more aware now but in 1992 there had been lots of news stories about people in the east being freed from communism, having revolutions and how this was the first year that we'd been allowed into these countries. It was even worse for younger people as they were being taught it at school and so lots of young people were keen to come to Eastern Europe. I was very worried about the younger people that we'd met who would be making similar journeys and I was very angry that we hadn't been warned of the dangers. I vowed that if I got out I would do everything I could to warn people about this so that it didn't happen to other people. The country may have been freed from its previous governors but not only were there no real official governors to take their place but also people had developed a way of thinking and behaving that will take generations to change.
As we approached Krakow everyone in the aisle stood up. They all looked out of the windows. Guitarman visibly and audibly cracked and flexed his muscles. He told his girlfriend to sit calm. The Western girls, obviously now with red+black and against us, started to smile and rub their fists. The blonde one took out a pill box. She swallowed a small pill and offered one to the dark haired girl, who declined the offer. Red+black put his book away. The old man sat up for a moment then put his head back against the opposite wall very solidly. The big bloke sat with his kids obviously against the opposite wall. Some thugs appeared out of the first compartment. John with typical genius decided to wind them up. He asked guitarman when we would get to Krakow. He replied that he didn't speak English and refused to converse, even though he and John had had an English conversation at the start of the journey. We stood up. John put his head out of the window. Red+black also had his head out of the window and John says that Red+black was staring straight at him, glaring viciously and flexing his fists. The two girls, he says, were practising stealing with their hands. They were also glaring at us and seemed to be preparing for a 'ruck'. We looked at the station. It was totally dark, small and run down, not like we were told by the guy at Warsaw. We never actually saw a sign saying the station name, but John says he thinks it really was Krakow. The family man, unprompted, said that this was Krakow. I nodded and did nothing. He looked concerned and said it again, starting to rise. I ges- tured for him to sit down. His 16 year old daughter started getting John's rucksack down, I put it back and explained that we weren't getting off. The train stayed in Krakow station for a while. There was obviously tension and confusion all around. Although everyone had stood up no-one at all got off the train. We pulled out. John and I sat down. The family girls went down the car- riage to talk to someone. Now we were even more worried, if that's possible. They'd all known we were getting off at Krakow, many who we hadn't told. It seemed pretty obvious that they had been going to attack us. It dawned on me that the family had been in on it too. I'm not quite sure why. It probably came out of the fact that everyone else was, but it all fitted. I thought of the sandwich as being the last meal of a condemned man. I've also thought about whether it was drugged. I felt really tired afterwards, but then again it was late. I'm sure that the reason why people kept pushing past us, making us stand up, was to make us tired, and then after that everyone had pretended to go to sleep to encourage us to do the same. So now their opportunity to steal our stuff relatively easily had passed. We tried to guess what they would do next. The most obvious thing to do would be to just throw us off the train as it travelled at high speed. No-one would ever know.
The train stopped for quite a while pretty soon outside Krakow. It wasn't at a station. A queue of about 25 people dressed in trainers, jeans and rucksacks got onto the back carriage of the train. Then it changed direc- tion and headed back again. John went into his rucksack to get his passport. While he was doing so the 16 year old girl seemed to be going through his rucksack. The girl actually had her hands right down in his rucksack with his. They had no qualms at this stage, thinking that their ownership was now a fait accomplie. John went to the toilet. He says 'getting to the toilet was diffi- cult - the people standing near the toilet had placed all their rucksacks (approx 4) against the toilet and one girl was lying against these so I had to move the girl and approx 2 rucksacks to get in.' He put his passport, ticket and travellers cheques in his shoe. He put toilet paper in his top pocket so they wouldn't notice that the ticket had moved. I went to the toilet to relieve myself. I'd been waiting ages. My passport was too big to go in my shoe. At least I'd got a money belt, unlike John, which I'd protected from most people on the journey (turning in such a way that my arm always blocked it when people passed) but the family knew about it and so pre- sumably everyone else did. We didn't really know what to do. The family girls who had stood at their window while we were at Krakow, now stood at our window, blocking the only means of escape we had left. John and I argued and kept changing our minds about what to do next. John had wanted to take his rucksack but I had explained that it would slow us down and was a good decoy, which is why he'd retrieved his stuff from it. The only things of any real value were the cameras, although the photographs were irreplaceable I think there were about five rolls of 36 pictures that I'd taken in the last week. The replacement value of my rucksack and its contents was about &Lsterling.700). Our lives were under threat so retrieving physical things wasn't really important.
Everyone gradually sat down. They seemed to want a rest having worked themselves up.
John went to the toilet. They let him get there, so I followed him. When he came out we quickly chatted and strolled into the next carriage. A lot of people looked up at us. Thugs we'd seen earlier who were sitting in the aisle of this carriage. They were taken by surprise. Many were eating packed lunches, identical in content, packing, and container, to the ones the Warsaw girls were eating. I saw a couple of guitars, with identical cheap cases to guitarman's. They all had jeans, trainers and rucksacks. We trampled over them, not really caring about standing on them, not wanting to be slowed down.
John says 'the people in the 2nd carriage seemed to know who we were. I turned back half way along this carriage and some blokes were visibly laughing at us'. In a com- partment in the middle of this carriage were a lot of thugs, (in darkness?) one was in the doorway with his arms up. John worried that he could easily bring his arms down onto us. John ran through. I quickly followed without looking to the side. When we got to the other end we found we were at the front of the train (which until recently had been the back of the train.) People were sitting on the door footplate so that the door couldn't be opened. I explained to John that we couldn't get out of there. I took him to the opposite door, saying that our only chance would be if this lock also opened at a station. Meanwhile we pulled into a station, not to a platform though. A guard I didn't recognise went out through the protected door. We followed him. He looked at us, conveying nothing, and got straight back on the train again. We walked quickly into the station (John says 'we ran like &*@#'), briefly looking to see that no-one was following us. They weren't and the train set off again straight away. No-one got on, no-one got off. The train had stopped purely to let us off.
We went into the train station. We looked around for the phone but there wasn't one. For a moment we kept our manners and waited in the ticket queue, then we pushed past and asked if we could use the phone. Nothing. We emphasised that it was for the police. Polizie. The man in the queue said something like 'has your baggage been stolen? Ah yes' indicating that it was a regular occur- rence. He said there was no point in calling them as the police station was only 2 km up the road (people often gave figures like this when it was actually much less). We set off into the dark, not having any idea where we were (we were at Skawinie), and not trusting anyone. I tried to make John run but he explained he couldn't as his shoes were full. We stopped a couple more people to ask the way and got to the village. I found a phone and dialled 997. I had made a point of remembering this freephone number when I read about it outside the travel agent in Warsaw. It didn't work. I tried another phone and here too the number didn't work. John found the police station. It was in darkness. We banged on the door, woke up the police and they let us in through the first door. We told them that we'd just got off the train from Zakopane and people were after us (gesturing the cut throat sign that we got used to doing) and that our baggage (a Polish word) had been stolen. The man made a phone call. He shouted a lot, but then the Polish do that. John says he said that this was ridiculous, yet more people had had there baggage stolen on the train. John got the feeling that this was a regular occurrence. Like many others they were confused about why we were in Skawinie as the train shouldn't have gone anywhere near there. I was exhausted. John had been sleeping much more than me saying that we would be OK until we got Krakow but I had stayed awake. Pretty soon after we got to the police station I collapsed on the floor and left the talking to John.
The policeman phoned the British Embassy I think (John says he didn't) and he also spoke to someone at the Holiday Inn. John spoke to these too as they spoke English. Through these John asked for help. |
