Spring break part 4: Lithuania and Poland; 32 hours by bus

Due to the fact that we only had 7 days to complete this Modern Odyssey, we had to spend a lot of time in transit, and didn't have time to really spend a day in Lithuania. But it looked really nice out the window of the bus! And the bus station we spent a few hours in was definitely not the worst bus station I have ever been in.

This is what most of Lithuania looked like to me:

And this was pretty exciting: Not only did I see a real, in service, telephone booth, but there was actually someone using it!

We took an overnight bus from Vilnius Lithuania to Warsaw Poland and, partially due to changing time zones, we arrived at the bus station in Warsaw at 5:00 am. And I think I can safely say, the Warsaw bus station was the worst bus station I have ever been in. It was dirty, cold, and at 5 in the morning nothing was open. Not even the two "sex shops" that were in the basement. 

The Warsaw autobussijaam (which is actually an Estonian word, but is now my favorite way of saying "bus station.")

We had heard that trains are the preferred way of transport in Poland (faster, cleaner, etc) and there was a train leaving for the south of Poland at 6:15 (we had no desire to stay in Warsaw any longer than we had to).When we went to buy our tickets, the lady didn't speak any English so she wrote the price down for us which was 700 złoty, which seemed like a whole lot to us. So we went to check out the bus prices, and a bus ticket was only 50 złoty. We went with that even though it didn't leave until 10:00 and would take an extra 4 hours. It wasn't until later in the trip that we realized (or remembered) that Europeans make their 1's more like this: Ʌ and their 7's with a strike through the middle: 7. So the tickets had actually only been 100 złoty (about $35) and we had just mistaken the 1 for a 7. Ah, well. The bus ride was actually quite enjoyable and we got to see lots of things we won't have on a train. These are some of the things we saw:

Warsaw. Yuck.

A typical countryside dwelling 

A typical city dwelling

It was all very communist looking.  There were also a ton of apple orchards.

At one point our bus driver pulled up on the side of the road, got out of the bus, and bought 2 bags of apples from a roadside stand. It was awesome. 

Hydropillar!

One thing we noticed about Poland was how quickly the landscape would change. You'd go from broadleaf forest to apple orchard to city to evergreen forest to wetland, all in the blink of an eye. It made for exciting bus travel. The bus driver and everyone on the bus were also very nice and helpful. It was amazing how that 12 hour bus ride totally made us fall in love with Poland. And as the sun was setting, we saw a huge colony of bats that completely filled the sky.