Bielsko Biala & Leaving Poland

Hello!

Wow... interesting how plans change so quickly! Up until 4pm this afternoon I thought I'd be in Krakow tonight. Thanks to Grzegorz, I can save many hours of travelling! OK, pull out your atlases ppl!

The old plan - go to Krakow tonight (by bus... I discovered that they're so much nicer than the trains here!), then tomorrow catch 3 trains
1. From Krakow Plaszow at 5:58am (not the main train station, but an outer one - I would have to work out how to get there first) arriving at Plavec (in Slovakia) at 10:39am. The trip would take me around the east side of the Tatras (at the moment, I'm at the west side of the mountains)
2. From Plavec at 11:31 to Poprad-Tatry at 1:09pm, which is a trip that goes east even further before heading west.
3. From Poprad-Tatry at 1:39pm to Bratislava at 6:16pm.

So about 12 hours travelling. The new plan is kewl!

1. Go with Aga and Grzegorz in a road trip to Skalite. It's just over the Slovakian border. I think the trip will only take about 1hr by car (we're closer to the border than to Krakow). If they're too busy to go on a road trip then there'll be busses leaving from here.
2. Go from Skalite to Zilina by train or bus. The train can take between 55 mins and 2 hrs (one transfer required).
3. Go from Zilina to Bratislava, which takes 2 to 3 hours.

So, total travelling time could be as low as 4 hrs! That's a lot of time saved! And I'll be travelling on non-international trains, so it'll be cheaper too! Gee, it makes sense not to circumnavigate mountain ranges!

OK... so that's tomorrow... a bit backwards... the last couple of days...

I didn't end up seeing Pianista! I knocked on Jo's door at the hotel and she was sleeping! She finally woke up, I helped Indi with her laptop and then we left (Indi wasn't feeling welll and stayed behind). The night before I'd been to the Jewish quarter and it was full... there was a baritone guy singing in the Arial restaurant too! Grrrr... I think that's one place in Krakow that has live music every night. So, this night (ummm Monday) we went back and to a different restaurant. I ate some weird traditional food... it was OK but a few too many beans for me... and then we headed into the centre (square).

OK, now when you decide that apple zubruwka's taste like apple cinammon cake, it's probably time to stop drinking them :-) Nahh we were OK, but we left 1 pub and 2 closed on us (at just after 2am and at nearly 3am) and by that time we'd had some B52's and rum n cokes as well. I'm glad this was in Poland... in London I'd be broke already! (For the price of 1 rum and coke in London I can buy 5 zubruwka and apple's here!)

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed and got to the train station about 5 mins late for my train... arghh! But it was a good move - The bus was quicker, cheaper, and more comfortable! I arrived and caught a taxi to Aga's place.

So... Bielsko! It actually used to be 2 towns - Bielsko on one side of the river, and Biala on the other side of the river, but they combined in the 50's... Their apartment is *really* close to the centre - we walked to the bridge between the two old cities in about 3 minutes, and then had a look around the city. There are some nice old buildings, but the ones they restore get damaged by the vehicle smoke pretty soon... all the people going to ski south of here must drive their cars through the centre of the town!

Last night, after tons of chicken wings, I introduced Aga and Grzegorz to computer karaoke! Grzegorz already has good sounding midi stuff worked out, and by the end of the night Aga was going crazy singing both English and Polish songs! Errr... I think I've created a monster!

So... we finally finished at 3am, and slept... Grzegorz is sick atm, so we didn't set any alarms and decided to sleep in... and we all got up around 11:30! Ahhh sleep is good :-) Today's been pretty quiet. Aga and I went and grabbed Obiad (Late lunch... the biggest meal of the day here) and I looked at scarves etc... This town is a pretty good size... there are mountains just nearby (not huge ones, but imagine Kelmscott +50%) which is nice... and we worked out my save-8-hrs-travelling plan!

So I'm here for another night! Hopefully we have good weather for the mountain trip tomorrow :-)

Hrmm leaving Poland will be sad! It's pretty nice here, the food has tons of meat... and the ppl are really friendly! When you can understand them, that is :-) Although my polish is quite usable these days... going to be hard not to speak Polish in Slovakia! Having said that, I'm about 5 days behind my previous semi-planned schedule. It'll be cheap enough to delay my Rome-London flight though (from dec 10th till a bit later)... but I don't think I want to arrive in the UK too close to Christmas... will have to find somewhere cheap to stay, and somewhere to work!

OK... time for supper... Matt - the polish word for dinner is translated as "supper" here... see - I told you I speak good english (haha rather, I speak english well =) ).

Cya!

Posted by Sam at October 10, 2002 01:59 AM