Spring break part 6: More transit though Poland

Before we left Przemyśl we spent some time in the bus station using their computer to try and figure out our next 4 days. We still needed some way to get back to Helsinki, so we went ahead and booked Ryanair flights from Prague to Finland via Frankfurt. So now we had some kind of a solid plan: we had to be in Prague on Sunday. Counting backwards from Sunday, we realized it would be totally impossible to do the Ukraine and Romania like we had been planning. That was a bummer, considering those were some of the places we were most excited to go. We figured if we could get to Kraków Poland by that night, we could take an overnight train into Hungary, and then hit up Slovakia and the Czech Republic before we had to fly out. We went to the train station to get tickets to Kraków and through a lot of pointing and gesturing, the ticket salesman told us that the train we needed left the platform in 2 minutes. He didn't sell us tickets or anything, he just told us to ran to catch the train. So there we are, running through the station in Poland, jumping on some unknown train without tickets as it's pulling away.
 I was really worried about the lack of ticket thing, since at least in Finland it's a huge deal if you get on a bus or train without them. I immediately started walking up and down the cars looking for the conductor and waving around a fistful of money so it wouldn't look like we were trying to get away with anything. When the conductor did finally come around, he was very nice (in the Polish way), and we easily paid and got tickets. We even asked him when we would be arriving (without using words of course) and he went and looked it up and came back a little while later with the time written on a piece of paper. Oh, those Poles....

Party on our private berth (or maybe it was just that no one else wanted to sit with us) on the train through Poland:

This one was really great, but unfortunately I only caught the end of it. It's a dance remix of Johnny Cash's Walk the Line. 

 

To hear the complete song, click HERE. And I highly recommend you do that. It's pretty epic. And possibly the most random thing you could ever hear on the Polish radio. Make sure you get at least 2 minutes into it before you give up. That's the point where the hook really gets ya. I'm kind of obsessed with it now. 

A nuclear plant

There were lots of Playmobil people in Poland

We got to Kraków at 11:30 at night, and luckily, there was a very helpful English speaker at the train station to help us figure out our next leg. It turned out that there was an overnight train into Hungary, but it took 12 hours, and if we did that we would be spending about 4 hours in Hungary before we would have to take another overnight train into Slovakia, spend a few hours there, and finally a third overnight train to Prague. While that would be possible, it sounded less than ideal. So we decided to scratch those two as well, stay in Kraków for the night (which was supposed to be a pretty awesome place in and of itself), and then just spend some quality time in the Czech Republic. We went ahead and got a ticket for the next morning to Olomouc, which was described in Lonely Planet as, "The Czech Republic's most under-rated destination." Sounds good to me.

Due to our less than 9 hours spent in Kraków, we unfortunately saw little more than the Sushi restaurant full of American high schoolers (described in more detail in "Eating Eastern Europe") and our hostel. It was quite a culture shock though to get off the train and have gone from this:

To this:

I don't really understand why, but somehow the train drops you off at this huge mall that you have to go through to get to the actual train station. It was quite bizarre. Although I must admit, we did stop in H&M for one hot minute.

Our snazzy hostel

Even though we didn't see much of it, Kraków seemed like a nice place (though, on that night at least, rather overrun with drunk youngsters). I'd like to make a return visit.

Spring break part 5: Przemyśl, Poland

I had picked Przemyśl as our next distination based on the fact that it has the closest train station to the Ukraine boarder which, at the time, was our next stop. It was also discribed as being a "relaxed" place, and with only 60,000 people and with it's location in the Carpathian Mountains, it sounded like a pretty nice place. But I had no idea how much we would fall in love with it.

When we got off the bus at the autobussijaam, we needed to find the town square, but didn't have any sort of map since the place was so small it only got a half a page in our travel guide. We though it should be pretty obvious, but it wasn't. So we went to somewhere that we thought was a tourist info center (which we were really shocked would be open at 8:00 at night), but it turned out it wasn't. I don't know what it was. But there was a guy sitting behind a desk and we showed him the address of the hotel we were trying to find, and asked him how we get there. He definitely didn't speak any English, but he actually walked outside with us and pointed out where we needed to go and gestured very dramatically how we needed to go up the steps, to the right, and past the castle. The Poles are VERY nice people. They don't go out of their way to talk to you, but every interaction we had with them was truly amazing. I was really feeling them. I think we had some common blood going on.

And sure enough, there was the 14th century castle.

Unfortunately however, it seemed our Hotelik Pod Basztą was no longer in operation (note the painted out H O T E L of Hotelik).

But that was okay, as we found another place that was just fine (although it wasn't directly across the street from a 14th century castle, it was just down the hill). After we checked in we went out to eat and then to a super cool bar with really nice ironwork, tiles, atmosphere, and beer. 

View of the town square out the bar widow

It was so wonderful to be in a place that 1) didn't speak English (not at all. Not even the receptionist at our hotel), 2) was not used to having tourists, and 3) was just busy doing its genuine southern Poland thing. It sounds cheesy, but it really did feel like we had discovered a "hidden gem." The only bad thing about this ideal little town (besides the fact that we couldn't say the name of it, which sounded something like shea-mesh) was that the air was absolutely filled with coal smoke. All the houses in southern Poland burn coal, and something about the valley location of this town made it just terrible. You could see it hanging in the air and it burned my eyes. It was even worse than I remember the air in China being. But other then the fact that you would get black lung after a few years of living there, it was perfect. 

The town square. In addition to someone to clean up their air, they could also use a good arborist. 

What up, 14th century castle? 

The statues were all eroded from the acid rain

Communist 

(I'd like to take a moment to credit Pinky for a lot of these photos. He took this one down a little alley while I was using the ATM)

Przemyśl is famous across Poland for its manufacturing of bells. So there is a museum of pipes and bells in the town's bell tower. Pinky has always wanted to be a bellmaker (ever since reading Redwall), so he was very excited about this. 

Pinky admiring the bells

And the strange pipes. Elvis, Reagan, and the Beetles among others. 

 And I don't know who this is, but it freaks me out. 

Inside the clock

Going up to the top of the bell tower.

And the view from the top

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee

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. 

Spring break part 1: Eating Eastern Europe

So we missed our flight to Turkey. Non-refundable tickets = no option except for purchasing all new tickets. We couldn't even use our return tickets since it's an all-or-nothing deal. So over a few beers in the airport lounge, we decided our next best alternative would be a tour of Eastern Europe. We went to the book store and bought a Lonely Planet Guide and roughly planned out our next 7 days. And this became my new spring break:

View Larger Map
Our original plan also included the Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia. But Belarus had to be jerks and not let us pass through their country, Poland was much larger than we had anticipated, and we wanted to be able to actually get off the train every now and then.

Apart from the fact that we paid for tickets to Turkey that we never used, I have no regrets going to Eastern Europe instead. Who would have thought I would love it so much. Although there was no camel wrestling or hot air ballooning, we did shoot AK-47's in a nuclear fallout shelter and drink plum brandy with a Czech family in the back of an accordion repair shop.

Since there is SO much I want to post about this trip, I think the best way to go about it would be by category. As an overview, this first one will be about the food (my favorite subject).

Tallinn, Estonia

Dinner:

We went to a "medieval" restaurant in Old Town Tallinn, that sounds like it would be tacky, but was actually amazing. The best part was this dark, thick honey lager in big ceramic mugs. As an appetizer we had dried elk that came wrapped in a linen cloth.















Because of the lack of electric lighting, it was hard to take pictures, but you can kind of see what I had: wild mushrooms in pastry dough with sausage, cabbage, and potatoes.
It was really good.









Breakfast:

The hostel we stayed in offered a breakfast, and for some reason we seemed to be the only ones who took advantage of it. The dinning room was beautiful, with antique furniture and a wooden dishwasher! I was really excited because I hadn't realized kefir was a staple in the cuisine of the Baltic states until now.

Pinky going to town on the kool-aid.

Black bread sandwich and toast with jam, and kefir with kama (a mixture of ground, roasted rye, barley, oat, and pea flour. A little like adding wheat germ to something, but a much stronger flavor. I loved it). 

Yum! 

Riga, Latvia

Dinner:

In Riga we went to a place called Vecmeita ar kaki (which translates to The Spinster & Her Cat) that would totally thrive somewhere like Asheville. The only negative thing I can say about the place is that the story behind the name is totally lame, so I won't even go into it.

The menus were made out of wooden spoons and rolling pins.

Pinky got the antipasto platter and I had potato pancakes with a chanterelle mushroom sauce. It was super good. But my favorite part of the meal was my radish/parsley/kefir drink.

The check came in this cool little box!

 













Breakfast:

For breakfast we went to a buffet style blintze pancake restaurant. Some of them were filled with berries, cheese, mushrooms, or meat.

I could have done a better job with my presentation, but I was hungry.

More kefir!

Lithuania and bus stops

Unfortunately, our time in Lithuania didn't involve much more than riding on the bus and being at bus stations. 

I had a terrible (and I mean terrible: cold, greasy, 2 hairs, came out of tupperware containers) meal in the bus station in Vilnius. 

But the place was pretty nice otherwise (as far as bus stations go). There was a lot of wood and the walls were papered with repeating pictures of Monument Valley AZ, which was funny. The light in the bathroom had died so they put a black light in there instead, which was funny too. 

Other than that meal, the rest of Lithuania was just snacks. 

Here is a "hot dog" from another bus station: 

And Potato Wafers (basically the most inconvenient form of potato chips ever).

And my "feather" candy bar. Which turned out to actually be egg flavored... not my favorite.

Przemyśl, Poland 

It took us nearly 24 hours to get from Vilnius Lithuania to Przemyśl (pronounced: shea-mesh, obviously) Poland. That's a long time on buses. At one point our bus stopped at a little tiny grocery store. Check out this fresh produce selection in the middle of Poland! Who would have guessed. Way better than Finland.

Polish sausage anyone? 

I was SO excited about this: I though it was just going to be a roll with caraway seeds on the outside, but it turned out to be filled with sauerkraut! It was amazing!!!

Okay, now for the actual meals in Przemyśl.

Dinner: 

We went to this super cheesy (we had to listen to Justin Timberlake the whole time), but totally local place with REALLY good food and beer.

Incredible borscht (we were only about an hour from the Ukrainian border, the home of borscht), mushroom pierogi, and cucumber salad. 

Lunch:

We were trying to get out of there in the morning, but had trouble locating the train station and then figuring out where we were even headed next anyway, so we ended up staying for lunch. It worked out great though since the food was really good and we had fun trying to communicate in Spanish with our bartender (who really just spoke Polish and Italian). 

Apparently, the restaurant is the only one in Poland in a cellar with a skylight.

I had meatballs, fried cabbage, and beet salad. In the background you can see Pinky's steak with cranberry sauce. 

Kraków, Poland

We got into Kraków around 11:30 at night (after literally jumping onto a departing train with no tickets) and needed something fast and light to eat. So we went to a sushi place that turned out to be full of really loud and annoying American high school students. It was horrible, but the sushi was really good. I didn't feel like it needed to be documented.


Breakfast:

The hostel offered a free breakfast that I was way into:

Cheesy scrambled eggs with sausage, a vegetable salad kind of thing, deviled eggs, open faced sandwiches, and (not pictured, but consumed) yogurt and coffee.


Olomouc, Czech Republic

I'd like to say right now that Olomouc (olla-moats) was not only my favorite place on the trip, but one of my favorite places ever. I'm totally going to live in the Czech Republic some day.

Dinner:

I got one of the tradisional Czech dishes: roast-beef with cream sauce topped with cranberries and whipped cream, and knedlíky (sliced dumplings).

Pinky had steak tartare (raw beef)

I was not enamored with my meal

Lunch:

We met a bunch of jolly Slovakian postcard collectors over lunch (to be narrated in detail in the upcoming section "Eastern European Friends") and I made my lunch selection based solely on their recommendation.

Pinky accidentally got the same thing I had the night before. Mine turned out to be lamb goulash. We split an order of fried Olomouc cheese (the local specialty).

 

Prague, Czech Republic

Dinner:

The story of dinner in Prague really needs to be told in the context of our entire experience in Prague, which will come later. But just to kind of set the scene, we choose the restaurant based solely on the fact that it had this giant disco strawberry: 

It was also named Fragola, which was just ridiculous.

Me looking disapointed in my expensive drink which I ordered because it was called a FragoLaLa. Does that look like a FragoLaLa to you? 

Pinky looking disappointed in his beer. Or maybe he's just looking at the weird, queen sized bed in the corner: 

We went with an Easter theme for dinner-

Lamb:

And rabbit: 

(I actually got the rabbit because of my obsession with the Czech version of Alice in Wonderland... it's a long story)

Lunch: 

Lunch in Prague was a bit more normal.

Pinky's pork hock. The menu said it came with "fresh vegetables." I guess that's as close as you get in the Czech Republic. 

And this was my roast beef "salad." It was so good though. 

Our last meal in Prague ended up being in a terrible "Mexican" restaurant (this also deserves to be told in the full context of The Story of Prague).  Here is a picture of some of the decorations that were on the wall: 

I'll end with that.