Visas and Rivers

Hello Again!

I'm at the railway station (Warsawa Centralna) early, so have to kill some time. Todays big news is

I WROTE SOME POSTCARDS!

Like, wow!

I have a collection of 2 bali postcards and 2 loch ness postcards... unfortunately I didn't get a chance to write on them soon after buying them! I think that sending them now would be a bit dodgey considering I'm not in either country anymore! So at least my ratio is only 50% wastage now. Shaz... did you get your postcard by your birthday?? I guess this is a good place for a reminder as well... send me your address! If I don't have it I have a good excuse for not sending you a birthday postcard (otherwise I just have semi-bad excuses!)

OK... today I did a lot of walking... I think that's how I like to travel... street level, wandering with locals. I started the day trying to fix my visa problem. I'll give you a timeline so far.

In Aus: Sam buys Krakow-Vienna and Vienna-Salzburg train ticket sectors

Now, Australians need Czech Republic visas... even for transit through the country. You used to be able to get visas on the border or at the train station etc, but for some reason they changed the rules... argh!! So the plan was to get a proper visa, so I could also perhaps see Prague (supposedly a very kewl city).

In Aus: Sam's passport is away getting a polish visa so he can't get a Czech one
In London: Sam's having too much fun and doesn't bother to track down the Czech embassy. Tsk tsk. Given that it might take a week-ish to get the visa, in a way this was a good thing cos otherwise I may have missed my Scotland tour. (The original plan was to do Scotland casual-like in December, but I thought it might be too cold!)
In Edinburgh: Ahhh nice lights.... visa... what's that?
In Poland: Crap... how do I get out of this country?? I was considering working around the visa thing, but I talked to this weird old Dutch guy who was at Warsawa Centralna (and now lives near Modbury in South Australia!)... Bram and I couldn't believe it... he was wearing near-to-dead sneakers, long pulled up socks, really small shorts and a formal blazer... kinda like private school primary school kids dress!!! Anyways.... he was pretty talkative, and said that I should high-tail it to the Czech embassy in the morning. So thismorning, I got out of the hotel a lil after 9, tracked down a passport photo place and got some photos, caught the metro (underground) to centralna and left my bag in a locker, then walked to the Czech embassy. The line was huge! And it was bloody hot in there (which was good for a while, cos it was a bit chilly outside) and the line didn't move for 1/2 hr! Haha I could just imagine getting to the top and the girl not speaking english... haha I don't really expect them to speak english in the Czech embassy in Poland!

So... I decided to visit the friendly Australian embassy, and see if our good-ole home grown friendliness extends to the other side of the world. The embassy was super-secure... I had to leave my phone and go through a metal detector. (nothing like the US embassy here though, which has a few armed guards, huge fences, and some weird driveway contraption which I'm sure would tear your car apart... if you get through the gates first!) Not like they could do much... but at least they listened. I grabbed the address of the Czech embassy near Krakow (Can't remember the name of the place, but it's close to Krakow). They said it's likely to take 5-7 days.

Ouch.

I mean... I don't mind being without a passport in Australia... I don't *like* posting it away to Canberra or Sydney, but to leave it with someone when overseas... I mean... a passport is a travellers lifeline! So, I went to research my other options.

If I can't get a visa I have to work around my Krakow-Vienna ticket. Like... refund, exchange or trash. If I can refund the tickets... even with a small fee... then that's not too bad. Or maybe I can go through Hungary to Vienna... just thought of that one... wonder if they do border-transit-visas? Budapest could be quite nice this time of year... hrmmm :-)

Ok... geting off topic. I found out that a plane flight would cost me nearly 1200 zl (nearly $600 AUS)... a bit expensive. I was asking about going through Germany to Vienna, but that's a bit crazy... I might as well start my tour from Germany, head northwards, and then do vienna on my way south. hrmm.

I just checked the railplus website. A minimum 15% fee when cancelling... I don't imagine it'll be much more than that since they're sectors of travel, not any fancy limited tour. And it mentioned about insurance. I HAVE TRAVEL CANCELLATION INSURANCE I think! Well I'm pretty sure that since I can't easily use my tickets they might be covered... well at least the 15% that I don't get back. Looks like I've got stuff I can read whilst on the train!

Of course, the other option is to hang out in Krakow until I get the visa. Staying here is cheap, but... I still don't like leaving my passport with anyone!

NEW TOPIC that one is annoying me. I took a walk down the river they have here today - and took some photos of the dodgey nightclub-boat thingy. In my travel book I read about a hotel on the river, tied the same way... and I saw it today! It was quite strange... I think the rooms are quite cheap though. You can stay on a boat... that doesn't go anywhere!

OK... in the UK all the rivers seemed to be underutilised... but the river here is NOT utilised at all! Like... there's just concrete steps, weeds, big trees... I probably walked 3 or 4km down there and I only saw a handful of fishermen, one couple making out, and ppl dismantling kiosk things. Olivier, the Belgian I met when I first arrived here (did I mention him already? He bought me a bus ticket) was saying that he was glad that they shut down the open air nightclubs because he couldn't sleep anywhere in his house except the bathroom... But... what a shame! I think the idea of open-air nightclubs is pretty kewl! And at least they were using the river for *something*. Maybe the boat-club is the spillover from the open-air-clubs.

Hrmm an hour and a bit till my train. I'm going to grab some dinner, then my bag, then a train seat.

Ohh I was going to mention the markets! I bought a beanie... mmmm warm ears! The markets are in this big shed thing that I thought was an exhibition centre... it was huge! And all the ppl sell the same things! Like... jumpers... jumpers... lingerie... jumpers... phone stuff... jumpers! And they were all layed out pretty nicely... I guess you have to be organised if you only have 4m x 3m (ish) of space!

Do-vee-dze-nya! (phoneic polski "good bye")

Posted by Sam at September 24, 2002 01:53 AM