Days 1 and 2: A Long Day of Travel

[Saturday June 8 and Sunday, June 9]

[Click on any photo for a bigger view]

Our first day was planned to be a very long day of travel, and it was indeed. We would drive from State College to Newark, take a red-eye to Warsaw with a layover in Frankfurt, then hop on a train to the small city of Olsztyn in northeast Poland. If all went well, this would mean more than 24 hours on the move. There was a method to this madness, a reason for why we did what we did, but about halfway through the trip I wondered whether we'd made a mistake. Would we end up in Olsztyn exhausted? Would we even end up in Olsztyn?

The drive to New Jersey was uneventful. We haven't flown in about three years, but were pleasantly surprised that TSA was actually easier than on our last trip. We didn't have to take our shoes off, and the bomb-sniffing dog made sure we weren't harboring explosives without us having to empty out all our carry-on. 

The Boeing 747 8i is one of the largest planes in the world. And they use all that space to cram as many people in as uncomfortably as possible. The plane was loaded with noisy babies and toddlers. It's a good thing we'd downloaded a white noise app. That and a glass of wine meant we could hope for an hour or two of sleep as we crossed the Atlantic. 

Big airplane waiting for us to board

Frankfurt airport made me doubt the vaunted design proficiency of the Germans. Though it's one of the largest airports in the world, it's laid out with the interests of the duty free stores in mind, not the passengers. We had a four hour layover, but the departure boards don't show gate listings that far ahead. Gate listings are really only accurate about an hour ahead: I got more information from the Lufthansa app and text alerts than from the board! Watch out for the people movers! They move fast and yell at you to get out of the way! But craziest of all was the way they do bathrooms. I'm used to American airports, where huge restrooms are spaced every 50 yards or so on the concourses. You can't miss them. Entries are doorless and capacity is large. At Frankfurt, there are tiny restrooms (capacity 2) at about every other gate, but each has a heavy door that loudly slams. So if you're in the waiting area of a gate, you hear constant slamming.

Enough complaining! We got on the Airbus 320 for the 90 minute flight to Warsaw and had a very pleasant ride. It was a warm, sunny day. Vicky had done a Google search on getting from the Warsaw airport to Olsztyn by train. The search said you could pick up the train at the airport. The search did not include that it wasn't one train: the search only said some trips might require a change of trains. To get to Olsztyn by train, a passenger has to take a commuter train to the the central terminal in Warsaw, get off the commuter train, climb three flights of stairs, cross a busy intersection, and buy a ticket. We hadn't booked tickets beforehand in case our flight was delayed. But maybe we should have. There was one reserved seat left, along with standing room. Lesson learned, the internet doesn't tell you everything. A very nice young man from Gdańsk led us through the process of buying tickets. He also told us that seats for standing room passengers usually freed up as the train dropped people off after leaving Warsaw. He also said we'd made the right choice by not buying tickets beforehand. With transportation, you never know what's going to happen, and if there'd been delays or changes, we might not have been able to exchange the train tickets. We never got the man's name, but we did find out that he currently lives in Thailand, works remotely, and was going home to help his mother. There are nice people everywhere, and it was a reminder to help strangers. 

Trains go almost everywhere in Poland.

The Palace of Science and Culture, a Soviet era landmark in downtown Warsaw

We were only in Warsaw for about two hours, and most of that time was spent negotiating the train schedule and waiting for the train. We'll spend several days there later this week. The train ride from Warsaw to Olsztyn was just over two hours. It was a very pleasant trip through the flat farmland heading north toward the Baltic. Our traveling companions included a little girl and her family going home from her birthday party, and a couple with cute cat in a travel bag who complained when she wasn't able to roam the car.

Lena didn't like being stuck in her bag.

Olsztyn is a medium-sized city (close to 200,000 people), a regional capital, and a tourist hub for the Warmia-Masuria area. From Olsztyn, you can get to the Masurian Lakes and other tourist attractions like Hitler's Wolf's Lair bunker. We stayed at the Hotel Pod Zamkiem, in a historic building near the old part of the city, and thankfully only a quarter-mile walk from the train station.

The Hotel Pod Zamkiem was built in the early 20th century when Olsztyn was part of eastern Germany

We were in our hotel room by about 6:30 PM, nearly 18 hours after our flight had left Newark and 27 hours after we'd left home. Generously adding up the cat naps, I'd had less than 3 hours sleep, Vicky less. But we wanted to align ourselves with the day before hitting the sack (and we were hungry), so we took a walk up the hill into town. 

The city gates of Olsztyn

The old part of town near our hotel features the old city gates and a district full of shops, restaurants, and cafes. Being tired, we decided to put off our search for Polish cuisine. Seriously, the pub with outdoor seating that we went to didn't have much really Polish on the menu. We might as well have been at Champs. So we settled down for American style pub food: A burger and a beer. It was a pleasant evening, cool and dry.

"Dwa piwa, proszę"

When we left the outdoor pub, we were drawn to sounds coming from The Carpenter Inn Irish Pub just up the street. They were having a Celtic music play-along/sing-along. A group of about 10 were playing various instruments: guitars, pipes, fiddles, an Irish bouzouki, and singing a folk tune. I don't know how many of them were actually Irish, or if this was just a Celtic music fan club (they exist everywhere). They sounded pretty rough, but maybe they were a few pints in.

Celtic music club at the Carpenter Irish Pub

After that, it was back to the hotel to crash.

Back to the Beginning

Day 3