day eleven: escape from luban

Well, there's good news and there's bad news. Also some weird news.

Let's start with the good: my bike is still here! The owners put it into their garage overnight. When I saw it this morning, I could've hugged it :-)

So ... our little odyssey continues. Maybe.

Now bad news #1: Scott bought a new axle and tried to install it himself, but it was an impossible dream. After watching every available Youtube video on the subject (full of wiry young American guys boasting about their awesome bicycle accessories), and despite the able assistance of a Polish gentleman called Czeszek (whose name I'm almost certainly misspelling), we gave up and put it into the repair shop. There was a queue of several jobs and only one repair guy, which meant that the bike might be fixed in time to get the last train out of Luban this evening ... or it might not.

Bad news #2: Of all the places where we could've found ourselves stranded, we seemed to have chosen the most offline town in Poland! This normally wouldn't be such a big issue, but I have a uni assignment to submit today ... in fact, the deadline for submission is flying past even as I write this*. We had wi-fi in our hotel (sort of), but once we'd checked out, that was obviously no use to us. So we walked around town for ages, and couldn't find a single place with a working connection. In one bar we walked into (tempting the Joke Gods to make a punchline of us), the question "Czy maj pan vee-fee?" ("Do you have wi-fi, sir?") was met with the kind of incredulous look you'd expect if you went into a pet shop and asked whether the puppies came with fries or baked potatoes. It was weird.

The wi-fi drought finally ended when we ventured a little way outside of Luban, where we found a large roadside bar/restaurant. The place was slightly disturbing, with its flavour-free food sprinkled with cold greasy breadcrumbs, and its overly made-up female clientele (reminiscent of Ukraine, you might say if you were feeling bitchy). But still, it had what we needed.

Only problem: there was less than an hour before the last train for Jelenia Gora pulled out of the station. That left just enough time for us both to down a coffee, and Scott to grab a snack while I started surveying the accommodation options for tonight. Scott then raced back into town to see whether his bike was ready, while I booked our accommodation and tried to work out how we would get there from the railway station in Jelenia Gora**. He turned up 20 minutes later with a bicycle in good working order, and we ran to the hotel to grab our luggage, then to the station.

We made it with about three minutes to spare, hastily buying our tickets and congratulating ourselves on being out of this place. I mean, it was a pleasant enough town really, but after all that had happened (and failed to happen) since we arrived, we definitely didn't want to spend another night in Luban!

Then, as we were standing on the platform and every teenager within a 30m radius was asking me one-by-one if they could have a cigarette, a middle-aged woman came up and told us something in Polish that the ticket-selling lady had totally failed to mention. Being linguistically ignorant Western tourists we didn't catch all the details, but her message was basically this: "You can't go to Jelenia Gora by train." 

Our hearts sank, as Don Henley's voice rang through (I dare say) both of our heads at once. Of course, you know the line he was singing: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".

Then the woman continued: "You have to take the bus."

"From where?", I asked, knowing that in Eastern European towns, the bus station and railway station aren't always in the same neighbourhood.

"Over there", she said, pointing to a bus standing directly outside the station entrance, with about four passengers on it.

So we race over, have a quick word with the driver to confirm the destination, then start trying to cram our bicycles through the back door. Meanwhile, a train rolls into the platform, with the words "Jelenia Gora" written on the front. A "wtf?" moment ensues, and we wonder if we've been misdirected, but then everyone gets off the train and starts heading towards us. Suddenly our bus is packed. We figure there must be track maintenance or something like that going on.

A minute later, the bus leaves the station, winding its way through Luban's outskirts and onto a highway. We're outta here at last!

A minute after that, our driver suddenly pulls off the road and into a field.

Yep: a field. I mean, there was a road there, of course. But also lots of grass. And crops. And no sign of this being a bus stop whatsoever.

The driver turns the bus around so that it's facing the main road, has a brief and seemingly angry phone conversation, then turns off the engine, gets out of the bus, and stands on the road smoking a cigarette. All of this without a word to the passengers.

So this is where we are now: sitting on a stationary bus in a field of green grasses, yellow wildflowers, and patches of (I d'know, some crop or other), watching the sun get lower in the sky, with absolutely no idea of what's going on.

And we still haven't managed to get out of Luban.

Nevertheless, looking around me at the serene landscape, I'm thinking that if you're gonna be mysteriously stranded somewhere, it could certainly happen in worse places than this.

Bye!


(* More often than not I don't write directly onto the blog, 'cause I'm in a place where internet access isn't available. I tend to write first drafts on the back of whatever paper I can find – worksheets from my lessons, uni notes, train/bus/airline tickets, receipts – and then assemble and type up my scribblings later.)

** We would never have been able to do this holiday without Google Maps, which (along with, obviously, maps) gives you detailed road directions between pretty much any two points on Earth. A couple of times it has led us astray, but generally it's a brilliant resource, especially if you can print out the info and carry it with you. We now return you to your regular programming.