Poland is a beautiful place. Krakow is my favorite place that I've visited so far. On the bus to Krakow you can see endless fields of lush green grass, indigo outlines of mountains, and small villages so unimposing they almost seem to be part of God's design. While the view on the bus was beautiful the ride became unsettling at times.
We didn't exactly get off to the best start as we left Budapest. The Budapest bus station isn't just large, it's spread out. We bought tickets to ride on an OrangeWays bus, and we couldn't find it anywhere in the terminal. Finally we gazed a long way across a busy street to see an orange bus. With ten minutes until the scheduled departure, we crossed as quickly as we could and stepped onto the bus. The seats were nice with leather and plenty of legroom. A nice bus driver walked by us and asked to see our tickets. He did a double take, and in broken English explained we were on the wrong bus unless we wanted to go to Vienna instead of Krakow. With red faces, we gathered our luggage and started to exit the bus when I realized I had no idea where to go. I asked the bus driver where the other OrangeWays buses were. He pointed in the distance at several white buses.
OrangeWays buses can be... white? The American in me wanted to sue for false advertising.
Bags in hand we scuttled over to the other bus where the bus driver and another man were looking over sheets. The driver looked up at us and I said, "Hello! Is this the bus to Krakow?" The driver nodded and took my tickets to look them over.
"Good morning," said the other man. He was a bit heavy with small eyes and a mustache.
"Good morning," Ty and I replied.
"After the fact," he muttered underneath his breath.
"What?" I asked, not quite catching what he had said.
He rolled his eyes at me and walked off.
Apparently we didn't say "good morning" early enough for his royal highness's satisfaction.
The nice bus driver let us get on the bus and within minutes we had left. This bus was a lot shabbier than the other one, but Ty and I were just thankful we hadn't missed it. It was uneventful with me vacillating between staring out the window and trying to get comfortable enough on Ty's shoulder to sleep. Eventually I noticed a commotion beside me in the aisle. A man was nervously slapping his unconscious wife in the face. One woman loaned him an instrument to measure blood pressure, and two other women were offering water and candy. Considering all of this was happening in another language I can only guess we was a diabetic. After about 45 minutes of dreading the death of the woman across from me she came to.
I had just relaxed when the bus came to a stop at the Polish border. A man in a full camouflage military uniform with sunglasses stepped on the bus and started collecting passports. He snatched my passport from me, flipped purposefully through the pages, stuffed it into his belt, and continued seizing the passports of others. An endless list of horrifying scenarios played through my mind. I was almost resigned to the fact that a group of American/brunette/woman-named-Kelsie group of Polish military members was going to come onto the bus and sell me into slave labor for twelve years and then let me go so I could later write I book and become a millionare when the bus driver stepped onto the buss and laid all of the passports on the front seat. Since this reality was much better than the torturous one I imagined, I hopped up to retrieve our passports and soon we were--as Willie Nelson says--on the road again.
From the moment we stepped off the bus in Krakow we were in a totally different atmosphere. Krakow is a small town disguised as a massive city.
The first thing we noticed was a pub with Ty's name on it! We remembered the name so we could try out Ty's special beer later. We placed bets on what it would taste like... my guess was it would be something fruity. ;)
Later that evening we went out to have some traditional Polish food. Ty had chicken with wedges and a salad, I had stuffed dumplings. Such a wonderful meal.
The restaurant we ate in was very cute and quaint.
After we stuffed ourselves in typical tourist fashion, we went to walk around the city square. It wasn't crowded at all, and we were able to see some very beautiful sights. It had just rained, so everything had a shimmer to it.
St. Mary's Cathedral.
To be completely honest, I'm not sure what all of these buildings were named. Ty and I just had a really fun time walking around at night and seeing everything lit up. Our real aim in going to Poland was to see Auschwitz and that was planned for the next day. I'm hoping to have a post up soon about it!
Thanks for taking the time to read!
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