These are the notes I made for myself after my friend John and I returned from an Interrailing holiday. I had to write it fast before I forgot it or got fed up with writing so it really is just notes rather than a great novel. It contains lots of details that I wanted to remember that the reader might not find interesting but also contains some important events and observations. I also wrote it because I wanted to warn people about the dangers of going to Eastern Europe but I couldn't get anyone to publish any article about my experiences.
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In our carriage on this train: Compartment next to ours 1 girl (Irish so had Polish visa trouble), and two English guys. Age approx 21. Not sure of their exact planned route after Warsaw, they mentioned Prague and Cologne, Athens then Istanbul. Compartment a couple past them 2 young English girls aged approx 18. Compartment at other end 2 English girls age approx 21, one in a Spear of Destiny tee-shirt, the other was almost like her sister. They planned to spend the whole month in Eastern Europe eventually catching a plane from Istanbul. There were also two Dutch people (I only met one) with very thick glasses and a bicycle, elsewhere. We were the only people in the carriage.
In the night, after crossing into Poland, I woke up seeing someone looking into our carriage in the dark. I thought it was John, but he was on the bench opposite. The person gestured an apology and I went back to sleep. In the morning the two young girls were in tears. A small bag had been stolen. It contained one girl's contact lenses so she couldn't see. They asked the guard for help but he was very unhelpful saying they should go to the police and that he couldn't do anything.
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We got off the train at Warsaw central station. I left my rucksack with John and got on again to go to the toilet. I thought it was the terminus. I heard the engine start. I opened the toilet door. The train door slammed. I turned the handle, the door locked. I tried to open the window. It was locked. The train pulled out. It wasn't fast but I couldn't get out. I felt like I was in a James Bond film. The Spear of Destiny girls were on to but they meant to be. The guard didn't speak English but said we'd been at Warsaw central(e) and were now going to Warsaw something else. At first I thought John was at the wrong station but eventually remembered that the night before we had discussed that we were going to Warsaw central. At the station I waved my arms about to find out which platform to get back to Warsaw central. The train people just ignored me but some people helped me. About 45 mins later I was back at central. The station was massive. I ran around everywhere, shouting John's name but no-one responded. Eventually I found him with the trio from the next compartment at Left Luggage. 'Phew', I thought, the bad bit of the holiday over. John and the trio talked about how bad the economy was there and that we could just buy a house for the night. Actu- ally prices were pretty similar to here, just the wages are different. We had to say how much the rucksacks were worth and pay accordingly. It was a lot more than the price of the lockers which obviously weren't safe. The trio left to find coffee and accommodation and we went to the Bureau de Change in the dark depths of the station and changed 20 DM. We went upstairs to reserve our ticket to Krakow and another one from Krakow to Bucharest. We found the Spear of Destiny girls who had discovered that there was nothing at the other station and that this was where they really wanted to be. They gave me an aspirin as I'd had a strenuous time and had a headache. We went to the ticket office to book our train. The woman did not speak English and there loads of people behind us waiting (despite there being being about 15 windows). Using a pen and paper we were told we didn't need a reservation from Warsaw to Krakow so we just asked for one from Krakow to Bucharest for the fol- lowing day. She made us tickets which we didn't want so we had a row about that, someone helped out and we ended up with some reservations. After we'd paid, a kid came up and asked if he could help as he spoke English. It turned out we'd got a reservation from Warsaw to Krakow for the following day. Totally useless. We gave up and went back to the S.O.D. girls. We had told the boy which train we planned to get out that night.
John and I went to the nearest hotel and had a very nice breakfast (salad, bacon, bread and lemon tea for me). Got ripped off with the bill as they added an extra charge (VAT or something?).
We met the young girls in a travel agent (we were trying to find the tourist information place to get a map. We bought one there.) The girls had been to the British Embassy. The man said this happens a lot. He said there are mobs working the trains. The train staff are often part of it. You shouldn't really travel at night and one person should always be awake. They would get some new glasses the next day. We sat outside the agent talking frightened for a while. I can't remember what we said. We asked at the travel place and then at a big hotel where they spoke English. We asked if it would be safe to travel to Krakow at night, what the trains were like and what the station would be like. (Our plan for the holiday, based on our experiences in Western Europe a couple of years earlier, was that we would do all our travelling at night and make sure the journeys took the whole night, thus saving us the price of accommodation and giving us full days every day to see as many places as possible.) The hotel receptionist said Krakow had a big, well-lit safe station.
We followed the map to the interesting parts of Warsaw. This involved walking through what felt at the time to be very dodgy areas of the city. Very run down, desolate and quiet. Everyone had vicious dogs with them. We went past IBM, past the student areas. About four hours after we left them (11:30) we met the trio from the next com- partment. They were finding that, as the book said, 'searching for accommodation in Warsaw is a depressing and soul destroying experience'. We directed them to the tourist information place. We were glad we would be leaving that night. It was a very hot day and we'd walked a long way so we bought a coke and sat in the street drinking it as it was one of those old glass bottles and you had to take it back to get the deposit money. All the cars were really old and travelled at about 30 mph, screeching around corners. We went to a few renovated churches. I remember taking a photo in one, that's next to a statue of Copernicus(?), of a concrete block that was just about the only brick from the ori- ginal church. On the wall was a b+w photo of a pile of bricks which was the church after the 2nd world war. Outside another church was a beggar who John said had AIDS. We had a coffee, bought a camera film each and batteries. There weren't many shops open as it was Sunday. The Polish are supposedly very strongly catholic. We went to see the tomb of the unknown soldier. It was guarded, has fire burning (the sun was blazing) and was housed in three arches, the only remains of some big building. We saw lots of soldiers, marching and playing band music.
We went to old Warsaw. On the way there an English speaking man asked us to take his photo and then we asked him to take ours. I'm sad to say that I doubt if I would have handed my camera to someone again in the same situation. Old Warsaw is a big market square rebuilt to look as it did in 1944. It is like stepping back in time as is well worth seeing although the Marlborough umbrellas spoil it a bit. I noticed one stall selling perfumes and thought that it was a bit strange that there was a green waterpistol in the middle of them. I later read that this meant that he was selling armaments. We went to the Bureau de Change and changed 20 DM. We sat down in the square to look at the scenery. We took some photos. John pointed out that a guy was staring at us. He was dressed like a 1960s scholar. Looking down in thick glasses and tweed jacket carrying a book. John thought that the guy might be gay. We walked across the square to look at some paintings that were on sale. The man followed us. He wandered around pretending to look at the market stuff but not really doing so. We walked all over the square and he followed. We gradually stopped trying to avoid him seeing us seeing him. We stared at him. He kept following but still looking at paintings. We sized him up as if to take a photo of him. We walked very fast diagonally across the square. We lost him.
We looked at a mermaid, by a castle. We took a photo of it. I can't record every time we took photos but a lot of my memories are of taking photos. We found the museum we'd been looking for but it was shut as the previous day had been a holiday. We sat outside and sulked for a while. The market people got angry with us (or maybe they were just laughing at us) as they thought we were waiting for it to open, so we walked on. We had a meal (chicken kiev and beer). I went to the toilet at the res- taurant and the women queuing outside were furious when I came out as it was the ladies. Then it rained. We sat in a church (just in the doorway as there was a service taking place). We gave two girls the cuddly parrot we'd got with the films, then talked to them for a while. I think they were German or Scandinavian or something on a school trip. We walked back. We saw a large lady, with her husband, urinating in a house doorway. It was raining so we rushed back and got to the station at 18:30 for our 22:30 train.
When we were looking at the train times (down in the dark bit) I noticed that there was a guy standing there looking, glazed, at the times. He was obviously more interested in the people there. I was annoyed with John as he talked very loudly to me about which train we were going to catch and pointed at it. We went to get our rucksacks. When we got back the guy was still there watching someone else. I explained this to John, he didn't really believe me. The guy (age approx 20) talked to someone else (age approx 35), who had a small leather bag under his arm, the two of them quickly walked up the escalator, across the hall and stood separately looking at the train times on the big notice board over the ticket offices. They went and stood in ticket queues for a while, then in other queues, they each did circles around the hall, met up and went back downstairs again. In the next hour we saw them do this routine a couple more times. I saw a group of three lads come in. Two average people aged about 21 and a short fat kid older than he looked wearing a baseball jacket. They walked across the hall and stood in a circle talking to each other looking over one another's shoulders surveying the scene. After a few minutes the two average ones went up the stairs to the gallery that overlooks the hall and the kid went off to stand in a food queue. |
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