I never thought I would take a train around Eastern Europe, and make it back in one piece, but of course, one year before, I never thought I would have left Canada for the first time to teach in Kyiv, Ukraine either.

My husband, Steve and I left Ukraine for Poland on Saturday, March 4th at 10:30 at night from the Central train station.  We shared a 3-person bunk with a girl who knew little English.  Steve and I had the top two bunks, which was a little squishy and a lot uncomfortable.  I felt like I was in a coffin.  The girl below us had a cold and kept coughing all night.  It was really hot in our cabin, so I opened the door to let in a little air, since the windows didn’t open.  Well the girl kept closing it! I tried to ask her to keep it open and then she replied in another language and would close it.  I think she thought the “draft” would give her more of a cold.  In the middle of the night we were woken up by immigration officers when we left Ukraine and also when we entered Poland.  It took us 14 hours to get there, as they stop at almost every city, and they also have to change the wheels on the train in every country.  I didn’t understand, but who am I to judge?

 

We arrived in Krakow, Poland and found the apartment easily that we rented for 3 days.  It was much nicer than we thought it would be.  We dropped our bags and quickly got out to explore the city.  We first walked down the street and found a huge stone walk covered in paintings.  It was gorgeous!  Then we kept walking and found the Czartoryski museum where we saw a Da Vinci painting called, “Lady with Ermine” and a Rembrandt. Not a bad start to our trip.  We actually ended up at a movie theatre after that, since Kyiv doesn’t have any movies in English, we hadn’t been to the theatre in eight months.  Not sure Steve really wanted to watch Broke Back Mountain, but whatever.

The next day we used our very handy guide book and made our way to the bus station where we caught a bus to Weiliczka, where they have underground salt mines.  Of course the guide book didn’t tell us that the bus driver would drop us off on the side of the highway and we would walk into the town.  Funny how you have to just have to have faith sometimes!  The salt mines were pretty interesting, although the tour was almost 2 hours.  We just kept stepping down and down into the dark, where old wooden stairs took us into the mines, again, just a leap of faith. Inside the mines they had sculpted many different statue and figurines out of salt.  In one part there was an entire ballroom made out of salt, from the chandelier to the “painting” of the Last Supper.  When it was time to leave, we walked to a corner of the mine where there was a service elevator shaft and seven other tourists waiting.  When the elevator came, they crammed all nine of us onto the elevator for our 200 meters to the surface.  Again, it was a leap of faith.  After taking a bus back into town, we flagged down a cab and went to the Wawel Castle in Krakow.  I really liked Krakow, as it was full of smiling, friendly people.  Some spoke English, but if they didn’t, they tried to help anyways.

After a few days of sightseeing, we decided to jump on the three hour train to Warsaw.  We couldn’t believe how much room we had! We had an entire cabin to ourselves!  We decided to celebrate with a few Polish beers.  We found our apartment quite easily again.  It was even nicer than our apartment in Krakow and was only one block from the spectacular Old Town Square.  We did a lot of walking around in Warsaw and even walked all the way to the city center.  We were very excited as we found Subway, Pizza Hut, and KFC in the center.  We had gone eight months without fast food!  We did a lot of sightseeing, caught all of our trains, were able to navigate with our maps, and found everything we needed to with considerable ease.  All through the trip we kept saying, “I can’t believe we did this! No problems!”

We spoke too soon

Our last day in Warsaw, we had to check out of our apartment in the morning but our train wasn’t leaving until 9:30 at night.  The Old Town Apartment staff said we could leave our bags at the office until 8pm.  So we went downtown, wandered around until 6, and then went to an Irish Pub for a light supper and a drink…..this might have been our first mistake.  We ended up chatting with this guy, having drinks, and he even bought us each a t-shirt from the pub.  Then I looked up and saw the time.  It was 8:00!  I jumped up, told Steve to pay the bill and I would meet him in the Old Town Square where the office was.  I ran as fast as I could the 12 blocks to the office, and realized I didn’t know the way quite as well as I thought I did.  Then I realized, maybe Steve doesn’t either! I got to the office, rang the buzzer, and no one answers.  I’m late and our bags are in the office!  I start to panic when a guy runs up and starts apologizing about being late and opens the door for me.  I pick up all of our bags, walk down the stairs, and there is Steve.  Ok, that was a close one.  We decide to grab some bread, cheese, and water for the trip back to Kyiv and then quickly make our way to the train station.  We don’t want something like that to happen again!  So we get to the train station with almost an hour to spare.  Find the right station; ask a few people if it is the right station, for good measure.

 

Steve says he has to go to the bathroom.  He drops his bags and leaves.  I start to talk to some other tourists and they ask me if I’m alone.  I say no and look at the clock.  10 minutes has past.  Where is he?  20 minutes pass and I know he is lost.  I start scanning the top floor.  There are around 10 escalators on each side of the building to each of the 10 terminals.  People are able to walk around and see the entire station from the top floor.  Finally I think I see him upstairs.  I start waving frantically.  I think he sees me and he walks away.  I think he’s coming down the escalator.  He doesn’t.  Half hour passes.  I then see him again on the top floor, so I grab all of our bags and try to run up the escalator, then go back down to another section where I thought I saw him, yelling his name.  He isn’t there.  People are staring.  I run back to where I am supposed to be, so that I don’t miss him.  My bag falls apart and everything falls to the ground.  I stop, drop everything, and start picking up the contents of my bag.  The train, OUR train, pulls into the station and everyone starts to get on.  Now I am at my breaking point.  I hold onto a bottle of water, staring at it, trying not to cry when Steve comes running up.  He got completely backwards when he went to the top floor and forgot what terminal we were at.  He was pouring sweat from running from terminal to terminal, asking what train was going to Kyiv and yelling, “I lost my wife! I lost my wife!”  We gather our things off the floor, jump on the train, and just as we find our cabin, the train begins to pull away.  Moral of the story?  I have no idea; maybe don’t pee alone in a Poland train station?