stranded (a bit)

a european odyssey in several parts

Let's see ... yep, I think there's time for one more flashback before I finally tell you why I'm in Krakow tonight. And you know I can never resist those ... so, are you ready for this?

Ok, let's go.

*flash*


4: THE END OF 'NEAR MISSES'

Hi! Welcome to the recent past )))

It's like this: a few days ago I left Lviv and travelled overland to Bratislava in Slovakia, to see two of my oldest and dearest friends, Span and Jits (and to meet their children Inka and Sidney for the first time).

Although Slovakia and Ukraine are neighbours, working out my route and acquiring the necessary tickets was no mean feat – Ukraine is, after all, a former Soviet country, so naturally the job of public transport providers here is to make life as difficult as possible for prospective travellers.

On this particular occasion, the award for Most Effective Hindrance to the Travel Plans of Foreigners went to the "international" booking office in Lviv. When I dropped the word "Bratislava" to the lady-at-the-window there, she gave me a completely mystified look, as though I'd just walked into a shoe shop and asked "Do you happen to know if they have Rochefort cheese on Mars, and if so, could you tell me the approximate price per kilo?" I'm absolutely convinced that the irony of having the word "international" stuck above your window, and yet being unable to help me get to the capital city of a directly adjacent country, would be entirely lost on this woman and all her colleagues.

Anyway, in the end she sold me a ticket to Krakow, leaving at a minute to midnight. I travelled in a bunk so high up in the carriage, and so cramped, that I could sit with my legs bent and touch the ceiling with my knees ... which felt kinda fun and adventurous (though not overly comfortable!). Then, as morning broke in eastern Poland, I bought my onward tickets at Krakow Glowny station. With some time to wait, I wandered into the city and walked around, seeing it for the first time with greenery and without snow. Then I continued south-westwards, crossing three borders in all, making four train journeys, and kind of enjoying the road-trippish nature of it all.

Seeing Span and Jits again was, I have to say, a real highlight of my year so far. The last time we were face-to-face was 2005 in Sydney, and since then we've come very close to meeting on several occasions, but never quite made it happen. Span works for the UN, so he can randomly turn up in almost any part of the world ... as in early 2009, when he wrote to me and said "I'll be in Turkmenistan next month. Can you make it across to Ashgabat** to hang out for a couple of days?"

I naturally thought "Yep, fantastic!". It's only two countries over from Kazakhstan (where I was living at the time), and it seemed like a golden opportunity. So I tried to get an express Turkmeni visa from the consulate in Almaty.

Of course, you can see what'scoming here. I arrived at the consulate to find it closed, so I returned during their opening hours (displayed on a sign outside the door), was re-directed to another office, tried again, was redirected again, went to an agency, was told the lead-time for a visa was almost infinite and the flights were irregular ... and so on.

I recently read in an ESL coursebook that beating your head against a wall burns about 150 calories an hour. So, when the Turkmeni bureacracy defeated me and I was forced to give up on our Ashgabat rendezvous, I felt frustrated and disappointed – especially as it wasn't the first time Span and I had planned to meet in the 'Stans. (There had been a vague plan to meet in Tashkent the previous year.) But hey ... at least now I know that I was getting some decent exercise ;-)

Anyway, as I was saying: after the repeated 'near misses', to finally be in the same city as two of my favourite humans was fantastic. We did the usual touristy 'walk through the Old Town' thing, we hung out and philosophised about life, the universe and everything, we told travel stories, we drank good coffee and good wine, we played scrabble, we learned to make blinchiki***, we strolled along the banks of the Danube ... we more or less did all the usual things you do when catching up with friends after a long period of geographical separation. And all were good.

Also, three-year-old Inka was a real charmer, and as a parting gift she gave me an original artwork that's sure to be worth millions one day. (As an innovative contemporary artist, her preferred medium is corn chips coloured with food dye.) It's on my fridge now.

So the weekend was definitely one for the 'plus' column )))


5: ONCE MORE WITH PRZEZ

My journey back to Lviv was basically the same route in reverse, and I almost made it without incident. Getting on the right train in Katowice (Poland) was always going to be the difficult part – the station management there seem to consider it acceptable practice to omit some trains completely from their published timetable, and to leave platform departure signs blank or display random names on them. I guess they feel a duty to imbue the humdrum business of intercity travel with an air of mystery and a surprise element. To which one can only say "Thanks, guys ... Maladyets!***".

When I got to the platform which I thought was the right one, the signs there simply read "Przez". Now, I've no idea where Przez is, and I feel fairly confident that if you surveyed 200 random people on the streets of any world city, none of them would have a clue either. In fact, for all I know it might not be a city at all – it could be Polish for "sign out of order", or "apologies for the delay", or "Hey guys, guess what? Poland just qualified for the next World Cup! No more trains tonight ... we're gonna party like it's 1999!".

Ok, so it probably isn't the last one. But you never know ...

Eventually a train did turn up on my platform, and I saw the reassuringly familiar word "Lvov" (Russian for "Lviv") on the front of it. I cheerfully boarded the sleeper carriage – or at least, I tried to. The carriage attendant told me that my ticket was for platzkarte (a compartment full of seats; no sleeping berths), and directed me to the back of the train. I'd specifically asked for a spal'niy wagon (sleeping cabin), and the woman behind the counter had repeated the phrase as she handed me my ticket. But ok, whatever. At least I wouldn't be spending a night with the good folk of Przez ... and that was probably something to be thankful for!

6: BACK IN REVERSE GEAR

Next came a lucky break – or so it seemed. A few hours after I'd boarded the train in Katowice, it pulled into Krakow Glowny station, and all the other passengers in my seating compartment got out. This meant that I'd be able to push all the arm rests out of the way, and sleep lying across four seats.

"Brilliant!", thought the Word Nerd.  

As I was getting comfortable on my luxurious four-seater bed, the train pulled out of the platform ever-so-gradually, and for a few seconds the sensation of movement felt very satisfying. Then my deja vu sense began tingling. We were going back toward Katowice – i.e. back to where we'd come from!

"Hmmm", I thought. "That's a little weird ... but ok, not entirely unprecedented". 

We continued Katowice-wards for about five minutes, and then started going forwards again, at which point I guessed correctly that the train was going to pull into a different platform. Back at Krakow Glowny, I jumped off – a little surprised that there were no other passengers on the platform – but then had to leap back on a few seconds later, because the train had started moving backwards yet again.

The next humans I saw were railway maintenance workers and cleaners, standing beside the track and waiting for my train to arrive in a siding. By this time, I'd walked up and down my carriage and noticed that it was completely empty. I'd also noticed that the door to the next carriage was padlocked. Don't know if you've ever seen a padlock on the door of a train while you were inside it, but I can assure you that it's a sight which inspires neither calm nor confidence!

Anyway ... when the crowd of maintenance staff saw me through an open carriage window, I heard a few of them gasp. The train stopped and a guy in a bright orange vest got on, carrying a two-way radio. We attempted to communicate in a mish-mash of languages (a word of Polish here, a Russian or Ukrainian phrase there, the odd bit of English thrown in), and after this difficult exchange I understood that the back end of my train had been detached at Krakow Glowny. The first three carriages had gone on to Lviv – meaning that the spal'niy wagon which I'd attempted to board in Katowice was in fact the right one! Either I'd been sold the wrong ticket, or the carriage attendant had made a mistake when I tried to board.

Either way, my ride home tonight was well and truly gone.

The situation was undeniably bad, 'cause my Belle was waiting for me to return and I had no way of telling her what had happened. It was saved from complete and unmitigated awfulness, though, by one thing: namely, the incredibly sympathetic and eager-to-help maintenance staff of Polish National Railways.

After explaining things to me as well as he could, Mr Orange Coat got on his radio and said something that included the words do L'vova ("to Lviv") to gods-know-who. Then he motioned me off the train, and I climbed down onto the stones with my suitcase. He ushered me along the track, shining his flashlight at pieces of wire and other stuff that I should try to avoid, and took me to a huge man standing in front of another train. This guy just said "Wait" in Polish (luckily the same word as in Ukrainian), and there was some more two-way radio action.

I stood for about two minutes, then heard (or maybe felt) a deep approaching rumble. A few seconds later a diesel locomotive appeared, and stopped about three feet away from us. The huge guy lifted my suitcase into the cabin and gestured for me to follow it. There were two drivers on board who, with smiles but without a single word, gave me and my suitcase a private lift back to Krakow in their enormous machine. I watched them drive the train, and smiled to myself at the fluffy toys and other stuff sitting on the dashboard.

How's that for customer service?!

And so, here's where I find myself: a nearby clock is showing a little after 2am, I've moved off the market square to get out of the pouring rain (which started about 20 minutes ago) and I'm sitting at an outdoor table beside a closed café, writing on damp paper and hoping that none of the frequent police patrols will decide to hassle me as they pass. I've got about 30 more minutes to wait before I head back to the station to board my 3:20am train to the Ukrainian border where, after the usual customs palaver, I'll hopefully be able to hop back to Lviv by bus.

My pockets contain approximately enough Polish Zloty to buy half a cappuccino (if there was an open place to buy one), some fabulously useless Euro coins (they're accepted by the internet kiosk on the railway station concourse, but when I walked through there earlier, a homeless guy had unplugged the kiosk so that he could use the socket to charge his mobile), and a wad of Ukrainian Hryvnia which is unexchangeable anywhere outside of Europe's largest country****. Oh, and I have a banana and about four or five butterscotch candies.

Gosh, how I love this traveller's life!

Anyway, now you know more or less the full history of my slightly odd relationship with Krakow. With any luck, I'll get the chance to come back here once more before I leave Eastern Europe, and enjoy it properly in non-freezing temperatures and without transport hassles. We'll see.

Hope you enjoyed my extended ramble about nothing in particular. I promise the next entry will contain something more than a bunch of tangents and train rides!

Bye )))


* Ashgabat is Turkmenistan's capital, and a place I'd absolutely love to visit – especially after realising last year that I'd unknowingly turned into one of those people for whom "the Stans" exert a strange fascination. The city is a modern Islamic metropolis with touches of the typically Central Asian 'God King' mentality in its architecture ... like the enormous Neutrality Arch, topped with a 12m-high gold-plated statue of President Niyazov which rotates to always face the sun. This kind of 'president worship' never fails to interest me ... it's like stepping back into a land of Khans and Emirs. So there you go.

** Blinchiki = Russian-style pancakes. 

**** "Well done".

**** Europe's largest country is Ukraine, btw ... unless you're talking to a French person, in which case it's France. Or so I've heard, at any rate.

stranded (a bit)

a european odyssey in several parts

2: FREE-WHEELER
    (a.k.a. "All I want is a few hours' sleep, gods-dammit!")

You'd be amazed at what you can do to a train while people are on it. Or maybe you wouldn't ... depends on where you've travelled by train, I guess.

In any case, I was amazed at what happened on the border between Ukraine and Poland in December.

As you may or may not recall, I'd had no sleep the night before, so as the sun came up I tried to settle in for a restful journey to Krakow. It was difficult, though, 'cause I knew there'd be a border check and I didn't know what time we were meant to arrive at the magic line-in-the-sand.

About 90 minutes later, while I was staring vacantly into space, a tall red-headed woman with intense blue eyes came into my compartment. I remember being struck by the fact that the colour of her eyes matched her shapka* perfectly. Then it registered that the tall furry hat was part of the Ukrainian Border Patrol uniform, and that I was going to be asked for my passport. I quickly grabbed it from my bag and handed it over, and she took it politely and respectfully, asked me a few searching questions, and handed it back. Ok ... so far, so good.

However, when the process was repeated on the Polish side of the border, things started to get a little weird. (It's always a small increment of weirdness first, followed by larger and larger increments ... don't you find?) This time, when I tell you they took my passport, I don't just mean that they grabbed it, inspected it and added a big red stamp. The border patrol guy actually walked away with the passport in his hand, and a few minutes later I saw him getting off  the train and disappearing into a station office. I was suddenly ID-free, at the exact point in space where Europe officially begins and ... well, not officially Europe ends.

Almost half an hour elapsed before I got my passport back, and by this time I was more or less in a Zombie State. The moment the border patrol guard was gone, I keeled over in my bunk and tried to get comfortable. At last, I could fall into the waiting arms of sleep. At last I could make at least some attempt to arrive at my destination refreshed and ready for the Embassy visit which was the focus of my journey. At last, I could ...

Wait a second: what's going on? Why the Hell are we going backwards?

It was a largely rhetorical question: I knew there was no hope of me getting an understandable answer from the Ukrainian-speaking carriage attendant, even if I could find him.

And so I closed my eyes.

I've found that when you live as a foreigner – and often when you travel too – there are occasions when you just have to trust that whatever strangeness is happening around you will turn out to be non-fatal, and let it wash over you. Luckily, living in the former USSR provides plenty of practice in this art, and especially in Kazakhstan I learned to worry far less about things that would previously have sent me into Freakout Mode. So I guess that's what happened in this case: I just realised there was nothing I could do, and that realisation coupled with complete exhauston was enough to let me drift off to sleep, without any clear idea of where I might wake up.

I don't know how much later it was when I was shaken violently awake by the sound of an electric drill close by.

"Errr ... huh???"

I peeked into the corridor and saw two guys who looked like customs officers. One of them had a tool kit ... not something I'm used to seeing customs guys carrying! A few minutes later they entered my compartment, lifted up my bunk and asked me to open my suitcase. Ok, no problem. Then they got the drill out, and started removing the ceiling panel.

It was at this point that bells started ringing in my head. I remembered hearing about some of my colleagues crossing the Polish border by bus, and how customs had stripped the bus to find smuggled cartons of cigarettes (worth about $1 a pack in Ukraine, and $4 a pack in Poland).

The weird thing about that episode was that everyone, including the customs officers and most of the ordinary passengers, seemed to have been in on the scam. Customs delved into almost every little hidden space on the bus, and took out maybe ten cartons ... but they deliberately ignored a few obvious places, where most of the contraband cigarettes were hidden. And sure enough, as soon as the border was safely behind them, locals pulled out screwdrivers and crowbars, retrieved all the 'accidentally missed' cartons, and passed them to the driver. My friends, meanwhile, sat stunned in their seats. One of said friends had arrived in Ukraine barely a month earlier, after spending two years in sane and sunly Budapest. Nice introduction to the East for her )))

So anyway, back to my situation: the customs guys took apart my little sleep chamber, felt inside the ceiling with gloved hands, poked into all the corners with mirrors on long sticks and shined torches on the mirrors ... and then, apparently satisfied that I wasn't an evil tobacco smuggler, they smiled politely and left.

A few minutes later I peeked into the corridor again to see if they'd really gone, and if it was ok to sleep. The first thing I saw was a shifty-looking Ukrainian guy loitering less than a metre from me, with a question on the tip of his tongue: "Do you want to buy some cheap cigarettes?"

I closed my compartment door and locked it.

When the train started creeping forward a few minutes later – heading once again for the wonderfully unpronouncable Polish border town of Przemysl** – I lost consciousness entirely.
 
The next time I woke up we were in Przemysl, and my carriage was being jolted about violently in all directions. When I went to the vestibule for a cigarette, I noticed with horror that the carriage which had previously adjoined mine was gone, and that there was a locomotive in its place.
 
"WTF?", was naturally the next thing that went through my mind.
 
My first theory was this: there had been a technical problem with my carriage, and it had been hauled into a goods yard for maintenance, with me still inside. The carriage attendant was still on board, though. I couldn't ask him what was going on, so I just sat in my cabin, being buffeted backwards and forwards, until about 10 minutes later I finally remembered something that Scott had told me, which more or less explained what was happening.
 
"It's ok", I reassured myself. "Everything's going to be fine. They're just changing the wheels."

Mm-hmm, that's right; going from Ukraine to Poland, every train has its wheels taken off and replaced with wheels of a different size ... while the passengers are on board! Not only can I not imagine how this is done; I can't even imagine why it's done. I mean, if the rails are a different size in Poland, why not just get everyone to change trains at the border? I really don't get it. But anyway, that's what happened ... and it was not a gentle process!


3: STEAM & THINGS

Anyway, once the new wheels were affixed, the rest of the journey to Krakow passed smoothly, and I finally, finally slept.

Some time later I had my first glimpse of Poland's "cultural capital", and I have to say it was very pleasant (apart from the biting cold). As I mentioned in the last entry, the christmas market with its steaming sausages, its steaming hot wine and its steaming everything-else-that-had-been-heated-to-above-freezing was rather wonderful. And there were plenty of poky little streets to explore in this beautiful medieval city. I mean, it didn't blow my mind the way Tallinn does – but then, few other places in Europe can compete with that level of prettiness.

(I have to ignore Tallinn when I'm rating other European cities, 'cause it just throws the whole scale. With that done, I'd probably put Krakow somewhere not too far from the top.)

The alternative, 'arty' vibe in the city was definitely not something I'd expected to encounter – especially after living in nearby Lviv for a few months, where said vibe exists only in pockets. On my second night in Krakow, I spent most of the evening in an underground 'rock club' where I danced to everything from Rammstein to The Doors, sharing the premises with a motley collection of metalheads, punks, goths, rockers and other interesting folk. The next morning I woke up on a sofa in the hostel reception, alongside other guests and staff members who'd all come back and collapsed with me after a great but exhausting night out.

This was definitely a contrast to Lviv, where the 'cool' clubs are frighteningly pedestrian, sleazy and depressing (and where I haven't dared to venture into any of the less reputable ones, for fear of throwing up in disgust).

And that – apart from a little bribery to get myself a private compartment on the way back, which I'd actually purchased but then been denied – was my first visit to Krakow.

Which brings me almost back to the present moment, sitting on the bench in the main market (sans christmas stalls this time) and hoping my laptop battery doesn't run out as I scribble down my thoughts (or at least, as I do the electronic equivalent of scribbling ... i.e. typing anything that comes to mind at 20,000 kph, then going back later and wondering what the Hell I was trying to say, and whether it can be organised into anything that approaches coherency).

So ... how did I end up here again, on this chilly May evening?

Hmmm, good question. Glad you asked ;-)

Tell you later.


... to be continued


* shapka - I've mentioned these before in The Manor, but in case you've forgotten, they're those tall furry hats that are popular in Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere within the 'former Soviet world'.

** I remember in the 1990s seeing a fake news story on The Onion (political satire website), to the effect that Clinton was sending the US Army into the former Yugoslavia to bomb it with vowels. The article was full of stuff like "Officials in the regional capital of Brzlsmc say that the shortage of vowels here could lead to ethnic cleansing if the situation doesn't improve soon." I often think of that silly piece of humour when faced with names like "Przemysl".

stranded (a bit):

a european odyssey in several parts

Er ... hmmm. Technically this is my third time in Krakow. To say that, though, almost seems like a form of cheating. The second visit was just a whistle-stop en route to a further-away destination, and the third (i.e. now) was completely unplanned ... kind of a "stranded by the dysfunctional character of Polish public transport and by my own unobservant nature" type situation.

As I write this, I'm sitting at one end of the huge and elegant main market square, where five months ago I bought one hell of a fabulous kielbasa (Polish sausage) at the Xmas market. Almost as memorable as the sausage was the mulled wine, which I sipped while walking around in -12C, blowing on my cup to make the steam rise up in clouds and warm my frozen face.

I love doing that!

Anyway, it's now a little after 1am on a Tuesday morning, and the square is thinly populated by ... well, by the kinds of people who thinly populate squares at 1am on weeknights. Most of them are drunk, and one or two are singing. (I just heard a few bars of Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2U, somewhat massacred by two drunken Polish girls staggering home from a bar.)

Under normal circumstances, I'd probably be thinking "Wow, it's great to be back in Krakow!" My first impressions of this city were very positive, and I told myself that I had to return here in warmer weather, to see how it looked in its beautiful spring green coat. But as you've no doubt guessed, the present circumstances depart somewhat from normality. I feel that my relationship with "Poland's cultural capital" has taken another strange turn ... and I use the word "another" quite deliberately.

Let's start at the beginning ...


1: SLEEP DISRUPTION

My friend Scott – as all who know him will surely attest – can be rather persuasive. He first demonstrated this ability when we lived together in Kazakhstan, and has continued to do so over the last six months. (We work together now in Lviv.) And I have to say that, when it's cold and snowy outside, and I don't have to work the following day, I'm rather an easy target :-)

Here's a case in point: on the night before my visa run* to Poland last December, as we were finishing up at work, Scott said "Hey, you're going to another country tomorrow. Let's have a quick drink to celebrate!" I agreed, adding the caveat "but it has to be only one. My train leaves at 7:20 in the morning." However, that night we saw the first real snow in Lviv; the streets were icy-cold and glistening, and the cafes were warm and full.

And yes ... I think you can guess what happened ;-)

In fact, as I was walking home through the pristine snow at 5am the next morning – accompanied by some random guy who claimed to be a 'skinhead' and enthusiastically outlined his views on Pan-Slavic Solidarity and Death to All Russians** – I realised that I'd barely have time to iron, pack and get a taxi in time to be on the train.

But hey ... gotta live while you can, right?

As it turned out, this was a fitting start to a weekend characterised by weird sleeping patterns, continually disrupted by random occurences.

The first wake-up call came an hour later, when my taxi driver dropped me at the wrong station. I'd almost fallen asleep in the passenger seat, but to get my train I had to run with my wheelie bag through a thick blanket of white for about 15 minutes. A nearby LED display showed
-13C, and the wind whipped me mercilessly as I struggled along the roadside. That will always wake you up ... especially when your train is leaving soon and you're not entirely sure that you're running in the right direction!

I reached the station and found the platform with only minutes to spare. As I climbed the stairs to the platform, the clock showed 7:18am. My train's exact departure time: 7:19. The platform was deserted, and the signs on the carriages were cryptic. I had no idea which was my carriage, and no time to find out ... so I threw my bag through the nearest open door and leapt in behind it. I almost lost my footing as the train jolted forward and began rolling out of the station, pulling my right foot in behind me to avoid the crush of the closing door.

The conductor showed me to my place in the carriage (which by some miracle was the right one), and I thankfully discovered that I had a whole cabin to myself – a rare luxury in this part of the world, where you normally have to share your sleeper compartment with strangers. I collapsed on the lower bed, thinking "Yay! I can sleep all day, and arrive refreshed!"

I could hardly have been more wrong.

The journey ahead was a mini-adventure in itself, and an education for those like me who had never before travelled by land from the wilds of Eastern Europe to the 'civilised' territories of the EU. I was about to make rather an unusual border crossing ... and it's not the kind of thing you can sleep through.

I'll tell you about that soon. For now, let me wish you a good night :-)

... to be continued ...



* "visa run": I mentioned these once before, but in case you missed it: this is where you get a visa for the country where you're living, but at some point you have to go to another country to either change your visa type or extend the validity of the visa. It's common to a lot of countries, from Russia to Thailand and beyond.

*** "Pan-Slavic solidarity and death to all Russians": a plainly self-contradictory philosophy of course. But then, it seems to me that zealots of all kinds are drawn only to ideas which clearly contradict themselves ... have you noticed that too?