North Pole-land

On Friday morning the 17th, we had an absolutely thrilling day of travel. Checking out of our hostel (in Krakow), we headed to the train station bright-eyed, ready to venture north. The main train station is a bit of a dump, and despite having the train timetable information printed on small yellow posters, they never display it on the boards until about 5 minutes before the train arrives, so you've no idea what's going on, especially when the train is late, as ours was. But it came, and we hopped on. The journey to Warsaw took about 5 hours, and we had a connecting train 10 minutes later. As our train was running 10 minutes late, you can imagine that I was keen to leap off and find our train as soon as we got there. However, such was not to be. It was all far too confusing - a warren of concrete tunnels lined with gaudy stalls. So, we had to wait for 2 hours for the next train, which we did with the help of a beer at a nearby cafe. When the train did arrive, it was chaos; hundreds of people pushing their way through the tiny corridor at the side of the carriage, fighting for seats. We ended up standing for the first 5 or ten minutes until it sorted itself out a bit and we crammed into a compartment with six other people.

After that the ride was perfectly pleasant - complete with helpful english-speaking Polish man - and we arrived in Torun, the birthplace of Nicholas Copernicus, without any more drama. After consulting a map, we decided to walk to our hotel, which didn't look far. More fool us. The bridge over the river is nearly two kilometres long, stretching for ages over wetland first. We made it, with beautiful views of the town as we crossed, comforted that there was a nice hotel room waiting for us. But, alas, apparently our booking had never occurred. Whether the fault was with the booking website or the hotel, I've no idea, but we convinced the receptionist to house us, insisting that we pay only the price we had been quoted on the hostel site. Having achieved that, we were satisfied, as the room was really very nice. It was late and we were tired, so we did not explore the town that evening.

The next morning, though, we set off refreshed to see Torun. It was very, very hot, and we walked the streets of the mediaeval town sweating like knights in plate armour. In a street near the cathedral is the house where Copernicus was (probably) born, and there was a very boring museum in the attached building. The house itself was fascinating - a 14th century merchant's house, with huge dark beams on the ceilings, and disconcertingly few rooms. Heading back into the heat, we discovered the ruins of the Teutonic castle in one corner of the town, torn down after the townspeople somehow captured it and got rid of the knights, possibly not in the nicest possible way. It was quite a structure in its day, made of red brick, and there were interesting mannequins in the crypt, and poor displays of mediaeval fighting going on above ground. It was absolutely scorching in the uncovered ruins, though, so we headed to a big gothic building that was a palace and a granary, but I can't remember in which order. It housed an exhibition of oriental weaponry, which I thought was very cool, despite the lack of information in english. There was also an exhibition about Torun, which was incomprehensible.

After lunch, we walked north, just outside the border of the old town, to the outdoor Ethnographic Museum they have erected in a park. I like that sort of thing, and soon we were poking our noses into reconstructed farmhouses, mills, and smithies, imagining what life would have been like for the poor sods who occupied them. This was hot business, the sun didn't let up all day, and we had to force ourselves to see the last couple of things before retiring for a drink. We were pretty wiped out after walking around in the heat all day, so we went back to the hotel and had a bit of a nanna-nap until it cooled down, then wandered around looking at all the pretty lights, and had the old staple of pizza and pasta for dinner. We got back to our room just in time, before a storm wiped away the last of the heat, and flooded the street in front of the hotel, great sheets of water gusting sideways and lightning lighting the sky.

On Sunday we had to check out, despite the rain, but to Goretex, rain is as nothing, so we were able to wander around a bit more with no difficulty. We finally went into the old town hall in the main square, where there was an art deco exhibit that was mildly interesting, and various galleries of ho-hum paintings. Despite the Goretex, we welched on the long walk back to the station, and got ourselves driven there by the least emotional taxi driver in the world. The train back to Warsaw was just as full as the train to it, and this time we weren't lucky enough to get a seat, and had to stand in the tiny corridor the whole three hours. The two compartments near us were full of drunk people, one of whom thought that the corridor was outside, and lit up cigarette after cigarette, so all in all a good time was had by all. But we arrived eventually, and made our way to our hostel, housed in the old Department of Sugar Distribution (or something) building. Checking train times for the morrow, we quickly realised that there was only one train a day to Vilnius, our next stop, and that it left at 7am. So it was back to the station to buy the tickets, then basically straight to bed, and as it was fairly late, did not get a huge amount of sleep. But that story's for next time!