Krakow
We started our journey on the train to Krakow with quite an amazing coincidence: we met some fellow students from Brown. What is so surprising is that the carriage was rather empty, so that the probability of us even having cabin-mates was rather small, much less some from Brown. We got into Krakow early in the morning and began the usual frantic search for a place of residence. Unfortunately, the telephone numbers were changed since the printing of the books, and we ended up unhappily paying $20 each for a somewhat shoddy hotel room. At least, breakfast was a buffet so we were able to sufficiently stuff ourselves. We followed our usual routine of seeing the sights, including a rather depressing trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau. I personally found the latter to be a much more effective memorial-seeing the camp left exactly as it was. It took us a while to actually find the place until we resorted to following the numerous tour buses. Krakow was beautiful, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations. Particularly, because we were unable to see the sights due to a tour group having bought up all the tickets in the morning. That was rather unfair. The bajgel (aka almost-bagels) were very good, however. We also walked through the Jewish section of town, which was rather abandoned, and a testimony to the portion of the population that no longer lives there. Quite sad. So after two days of Krakow, we made a last minute decision to travel north, to Gdansk. This decision was influenced, not surprisingly, by train schedules, but ended up being a highlight of our trip-at least for me.
Gdansk
Of course, the trip to Gdansk involved another night train, leaving at midnight, and arriving painfully at six in the morning. Incidentally, buying our tickets in Krakow was another miserable experience since the person selling tickets yelled at us for not speaking Polish. Somehow, using pidgeon Polish (ie. garbling as much Slovenian and Russian as possible) we managed to buy the tickets. Since nothing is open at six in the morning, we spent some time wondering around town, foraging for food, and eventually standing under someone's window because it smelled so wonderfully of food. We stayed in a delightfully cheap youth hostel-the standard setup of lots of beds. It served it's purpose well. Unfortunately, the weather in Gdansk decided to be unappealing and we spent a lot of time being cold. This resulted in us seeking refuge in museums and churches. Incidentally, Gdansk has the largest brick cathedral in the world-it's about the size of a normal cathedral. Nevertheless, the city was gorgeous. So were the desserts. I would love to go back there, especially to look at the monument to the shipbuilders properly. Everytime we tried to go there, it started to pour and when we finally made it, traffic was so heavy that we decided not to cross the street thinking we had seen all there was to see. Later, we realised there was more. Due to the afore-mentioned rain, we spent a lot of time in a conveniently placed bookstore. This turned out to be a wonderful place selling English-language books for $2. And good quality books as well-all of the classics. A money-spending frenzy resulted in which books were traded for future dinners. Yes, being an intellectual (well, that is a matter of definition) is hard on the stomach. I think our diet in Gdansk consisted entirely of soup-the greasy meat we ate on the first day also played a role in that. It was also in Gdansk that Yoriko developped her obsession with roasting a chicken-I do agree, the roasted chicken smelled very good, and it probably would have been a lot more filling then soup. Our trip to Gdansk ended with a luxurious train ride to Warsaw-we managed to sit in 1rst class seats. Very nice.
Warsaw
We arrived in Warsaw mid-morning and spent most of the day dodging the rain. By this point, we were somewhat low on zloty and spent a lot of time debating the virtures of buying the stacking Yeltsin dolls and books, versus lunch and dinner. We ended up eating the infamous milk rice for lunch, which was deemed most filling-and it really is, which is why it became such an important and good part of our diets. And yes, our trip to Warsaw was not complete without a trip to the bookstore to buy some more of those wonderfully cheap, good books. After our pizza hut experience in Prague, we were wary about where to eat dinner (especially after not having had a proper dinner in a while). Our guidebook recommended a place called "Pod Samsonom", however, that appeared to be a rather classy restaurant, so we did the rounds until we found a place serving dumplings. The food was very good and I got to practice my pidgeon Polish again-it was fun. Eventually, we made our way to the train station-pleased to found our bags hadn't been stolen despite the malfunctioning lockers-and eventually made our way on the train (night train, of course). This was not without meeting some fellow travellers we had met earlier on our trip to Gdansk. And off we were, to Berlin.