The last two days have been a bit of a mystery. Yesterday, it rained quite a lot so not much to do. It passed slowly, which is unusual on these trips and an early night was had in readiness for today's long train trip up to Gdansk-what is were I are now! The first leg to Warsaw went perfectly, but Warsaw has never brought me much luck.
The subterranean labyrinth of Warsaw Central brought back a memory of scuttling around its corridors looking for the police station, with my bike, my luggage and another guy's large rucksack. It all came about because when we tried to open the door of the train we'd been travelling on, it was well and trully stuck. We began to ferry two bikes and the luggage to the other end of the carriage along the narrow corridor. You can guess what happened, it pulled away with the Polish guy and his bike still on board and myself on the platform with a bike and two lots of luggage. To cut it short, about 30 minutes later, he rushed into the small station, police station and was gleefully reunited with his bag. Never have I seen such an expression of relief on anyone's face.
Stalin Wedding Cake
Do I need to tell you that there's a lot of footballs about to be kicked around in Poland soon. Hopefully, I'll be well out of the way but couldn't help noticing an extremely large city block plastered with football. I thought someone could have done us all a favour and covered up one of Stalin's wedding cakes which still dominates the centre of town.
Just like all these capital cities, shopping has become a national pastime. The glass dome over one of the shopping centres was having a clean by some climbers who looked like they'd be perfectly at home on an Alpine glacier.
Inside the centre Nike had invested in a huge LED screen with one of those devices that mimics human movements which naturally was to tie in with the football mania that grips most of Europe at the moment.
So why was I wandering around the Warsaw centre when I should have been on a train to Gdansk? The Warsaw Central curse struck again when I bought the ticket in Krakow, I was given the wrong train for the second part from Warsaw to Gdansk, and after a rather testing time I managed to change the ticket and get a train which meant I had to wait over two hours. It was more complicated than that and to cap it all, it arrived in Gdansk well over an hour late. But I'm here now in a very quiet hostel.
