The kindness of strangers and crazy bus drivers. - Warsaw, Poland
2 Stars This place was Poor visited Aug 18, 2005
Our friend the Lithuanian truck driver dropped us off the next morning about 60km from Warsaw, with some story about not being allowed to go closer because he wasn't a local truck. This was fine, except he once again dumped us in an inconvenient spot - probably annoyed that we had refused to share his bed for the night, and had spent the morning reading instead of entertaining him with conversation! We seemed to be in a small village, and the locals looked at us a little strangely when we got our signs out on the side of their road. We hadn't been there long when a woman came up to us and started chattering in Polish. From the few words I understood (I'm so glad "autobus" is an international word) I gathered there was a direct bus to Warsaw that left from a stop about 1km down the road, and it would cost us 5 zloty (AU$2) or so. We thanked her for the information (I hope) and she continued on her way, or so we thought. 5 mins later we were still on the side of the road, thumbs out discussing if the bus thing was a possibility, considering we had no local currency and the thought of walking a kilometre with our bags and not sure where we were going wasn't overly appealing. The woman returned, and managed somehow to explain to us (only in polish again, gods know how we understood anything) that she had arranged a friend to drive us first to an ATM for money, and then to the bus stop! And the friend turned out to be a travelling chocolate salesman, and after making sure he was leaving us at the right bus stop, he left us with a huge handful of coffee-toffee chocolates! We arrived in Warsaw around 11 or so, exhausted, in desperate need of showers, and without a clue where the bus had left us, although the driver told us in no uncertain tones (no idea what he said, but we got the message) that we had to get out of the bus - I suppose it must have been the end of the line. We miraculously found a bus to take us to the centre of town - a bus with a driver intent on scrambling his passengers. Even the locals were hanging on for dear life as we screeched on two wheels around corners, and he slammed on the breaks for each stop before roaring off again. The poor lady sitting behind me very nearly ended up with both me and my pack in her lap more than once! Not surprisingly under those conditions, I didn't manage to get the map out in time to see the best stop we should get off at for the most convenient hostel in town, and we ended up going one stop too far, but that was ok. Warsaw is not Poland's most beautiful city. We decided to go there for 2 reasons. Firstly, it was a convenient place to stop in between Vilnius and the south of Poland where we are going to visit sean. Secondly, Kate's student visa for Turkey had been sent there, so our main mission was to find the embassy and pick that up. We did also get to do some sight seeing. Warsaw was flattened during WWII, but in the last 15 years or so they have meticulously rebuilt the old town from scratch, so that is looks identical to its prewar state. It's all a bit odd. After a wander around the "old" town, with frequent rest stops, we realised that the thing we most wanted to do was find a supermarket for dinner ingredients, and collapse in the hostel. So we did. The supermarket was in the shadow of the Soviet built "Palace of Science and Culture" which just happens to be Poland's tallest building. With the visa mission successful (despite a slight difficulty in trying to find a currency exchange place when we discovered that the only acceptable currency to pay for said visa was american dollars...) we felt quite happy that we had seen the little that Warsaw had to offer, and caught a train to Krakow Yes! A Train! Shock! Horror! But we've decided to skip the hitching until out of Poland where it's just too hard with 2 people. And the trains are pretty cheap, so we'll survive!