Trams, Trains, and Hotels

Saturday, July 26, 2008
I rode a train for the first time today. It wasn’t a commuter train, like the one Easel and I rode into Chicago one time, but a regular train for transporting people between cities. We took the train from Warsaw to Krakow. On Friday, Easel and I rode the tram downtown to purchase our tickets. He had a note, provided by a coworker—in Polish, explaining what we wanted so we would be sure to get the correct tickets. We definitely wanted the express and not the one that stopped at every town. The express train took three hours to Krakow, the other took five. With tickets in hand, we returned home. This morning, we trundled our bags along the bumpy, lumpy, brick and broken pavement route to the tram. We got on the tram with our bags—we packed two bags for three of us and we had Easel’s backpack—and headed downtown to the train station. We got to the train station almost an hour early but since we didn’t know the “routines” we wanted to make sure we were there in plenty of time. The train came and we had to hustle a bit because our car was further back along the train than where we were waiting. We got on with no trouble, found our seats, stowed our bags and sat down. “Whew!” We made it. As the train began moving a few minutes later, we realized that we had the compartment to ourselves. We were on a newer train and the compartment only seated six (instead of eight as we had been told to expect). How luxurious to know we would be traveling for three hours and have room to stand and move and stretch. By the time we arrived in Krakow, we were very comfortable. Even if there had been three more people in the compartment (though I’m glad there weren’t) we would have had much more room than on a plane or in a car. Riding on the train was wonderful. The compartment was quiet (it was air conditioned so the windows and door were closed) and the window was large so we sat back and watched Poland flow by. Once we got into the countryside, which really only took a few minutes, I enjoyed looking at the fields. I’m not sure why the fields look like “stripes” rather than the “squares” or “rectangles” I’m used to at home but they were very attractive as we rolled by. I saw several fields with strips of cabbages that looked like great blue-green garlands draped on the hillsides along the edges of the fields.

Upon our arrival in Krakow, we found a young lady who helped us determine that our hotel was in walking distance of the station. It turned out to be no further than the tram stop is from our apartment. We arrived, checked in and left our luggage (the room wasn’t ready but they were happy to keep our bags safe.) We left again to find some lunch. We ate at the Cyklops Pizza “restauracja”. This was the first time I ever had pizza with peas, corn, and carrots but the crust was great. We wandered to the square, looked at some of the stalls in the “Cloth Hall” and listened to some music (with dancing) for a while. We then headed back to the hotel to get into our room and rest a bit. The sun was very hot! Our room was nice but did not seem to be air conditioned. We found out later in the afternoon that there was an air conditioner but you needed to ask for the remote control at the reception desk. The air conditioner was wonderful to have, not only because it cooled the air but because the train tracks ran just below our windows and the train noise was MUCH less with the windows closed!