Coburg, Germany
From Prague, I took the night train to Krakow, Poland. My ticket was for a 4-person sleeper. A train conductor checked it and told me to take a different compartment. I looked questioningly at him.
‘You are alone,’ he said. The guy was Czech; he struggled to find English words to explain what he meant and these words did not come. Instead of talking, the conductor led me inside the car and showed where I should sleep.
‘This is not your place, but stay here. Lock the door well,’ he showed me how to do that. Then I got it. He was concerned that I was a woman traveling solo. There were other passengers in my compartment and he moved me to a vacant one where I would be safer and more comfortable. Grateful for such thoughtfulness, I emptied all remaining Czech korunas from my wallet (about $6) into the conductor’s hand.
I made the bed on a lower bunk and locked the door. The car rocked from side to side; the train wheels clanked on rail joints and the gear squealed on curves. The cacophony of these sounds combined with the train motion did not let me to relax and to drift off to sleep. The train stopped at stations where the bright light of lamps on the platform flooded the compartment despite the pulled down blind. My bunk was hard and uneven. When the train accelerated I slid to the edge and almost fell to the floor. I got up, grabbed my sheets and spread them on the opposite bunk. At least there the inertia force pressed me against the wall and I was not in danger of falling off the bunk. I also flipped my pillow to the other bunk end close to the door where the light from outside would bother me less. Usually, I slept well on trains lulled by the soft clickety-clack of their wheels and gentle rocking. That night, I dozed on and off for a few hours and got up well before the conductor knocked on my door to tell me that the train was approaching Krakow. He brought me a cup of coffee which I did not order. I asked why.
‘You gave me a tip, I made coffee for you,’ he said.
At the railway station, I left my backpack in the luggage storage and went to look around. It was my first time in Poland and I had no idea how many zlotych I needed to withdraw from an ATM. A quick look at the menus of station cafes was enough to estimate the purchasing power of the Polish currency. Then I went into a nearby hotel and asked for a city map – the trick that I learned during my travels.
The fortress up on the hill was an obvious attraction. I walked to it through the sleepy city. It was only 7 am, a few pedestrians were around. Everything in the fortress was closed at this early hour. A morning mass was going on in the Royal Cathedral. This Cathedral was the place for all important ceremonies in Poland – royal weddings, coronations, and funerals. I was not allowed to enter during the mass. After another lap around the fortress, I did not want to wait longer and left without seeing the Cathedral’s famous sarcophaguses. I did notice the enormous bones chained to the wall near the entrance. The legend says they belong to the fearsome dragon Smok Wawelski; however, they are more likely to be mammoth or other animal’s bones.
My plan was to stay in Krakow for the night. That quickly changed after I saw the entire old town in one hour and did not know what else to do. Being glad that I did not booked a hotel room, I returned to the railway station and bought a ticket to Gdansk for the 11.51 am train. The weather was not inviting either. The day was chilly and damp. I ate hot pizza and hid in a tourist agency that consisted of one small room with a few chairs. It was warm inside and nobody paid attention to me. I sat there until it was time to take the train. Gdansk is on the Baltic Sea. I always loved cities that are ports. Things would be better and more interesting in Gdansk.