SeanTerrill.com » poland

Krakow

webmaster — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:25:12 +0000

I spent an unplanned fourth night in Krakow last night, partly because I needed to use up my remaining zloty, but mostly just because the hostel here is so amazingly nice. It’s definitely way better than my apartment, and costs less to boot (something like $550 a month, including breakfast and dinner). Actually, it’s most like staying at a friend’s, albeit with better social opportunities. I’ve been hanging out with a couple of British girls, who just graduated and are starting their trip. It’s fun to compare their initial enthusiasm with my desire just to get the hell home.

Krakow is pretty neat on the whole. It’s overrun with tourists, but I guess pretty much anywhere is this time of year. It has the standard Eastern European city features: castle on a hill; river bend; city walls-cum-park, but is small and sort of quiet. Definitely a good place to relax, even if my knee and ankle haven’t quite gotten back to being 100% yet. I’m taking the night train to Poznan, then Berlin, where I’m staying in an H2G2-themed hostel. After that I only have two nights to plan before I fly home. I’m thinking about trying to catch either Bastille Day festivities, or the Tour de France, but who knows how it will pan out?

Krakow's mascot

Donya and Catherine

I imagine this is less funny in places that were actually conquered by the Nazis.

English is kitschy, but apparently not actually spoken much.

Auschwitz

This would be a great name for a bar.

Yes, it's a theme hostel.

If you visit Berlin, you HAVE to go to the Pergamon.

Zakopane

webmaster — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:51:22 +0000

I left Poprad on schedule; I was actually too excited about the hike to sleep well. Poprad, incidentally, is as far east as I’ll ever get; it’s all homeward bound from here on out. Rysy, where I crossed the border, is so steep that the last 500 m took 45 minutes, much of it spent climbing on all fours (with no safety equipment, of course). The view from the top, though… for a few minutes I knew what it was to be a god. Aesthetic properties aside, it was so damned tough it almost killed me.

Anyway, I arrived at Morskie Oko, the Polish trailhead, at 7:30, exactly 12 hours after I started. A Polish guy I met up top, and who buddied up with me on the descent for safety, was nice enough to pay my share of the (horse-drawn) cab, and I got to Zakopane at about 10:30. Due to a misleading map on the hostel’s website, however, it took three hours and all of my remaining cell phone credit to actually get a to a shower, and bed.

After a good night’s sleep, my bad left knee (old news) and right ankle (a recent development) have stiffened to the point that walking is both painful and funny-looking. Good thing I’m out of money, or I’d be pissed about not being able to do anything. Oh, and my favorite hat blew off my head and landed in either Slovakia or Poland, so all in all not a high point on the emotional roller-coaster that is backpacking.

I'm headed for the one on the right. With the snowcap.

The Aussie who gave me that stick probably doesn't know he saved my life.

This seems like a nice vacation spot, but it was deserted.

About here I figured out my trail map wasn't to scale.

Pretty neat trail overall

I think some of these people were using it as an illegal immigration route.

First view of the true summit

I really loved that hat.

Not something you see every day

Budapest

webmaster — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:33:54 +0000

My Eastern European blitzkrieg has bogged down, as is typically the case. I spent the last two days in Budapest, having decided that Ljubljana in just too far out of the way (9 hours, and no night train). So the plan for now is to hike over the Slovak-Polish border at 2500 m, and then relax in Krakow for a few days before heading home on what will no doubt be a hellish six-day gauntlet of international trains, intercontinental flights, and interstate driving.

Actually, I’m crossing out of Hungary right about now. I speak absolutely no Magyar, which is what Hungarian is called by people who aren’t ignorant Americans, but the procedure is the same everywhere: the one with the gun wants your passport, the other one, your ticket. In most of Western Europe (the Shengen countries) border crossings are seamless, and the gun-toting passport-checker doesn’t even board the train, but I’ve crossed the Iron Curtain several times now, and by local standards it’s almost hassle-free.

All told, then, I will have been in 14 countries (12 of them for the first time) in 53 days, about which I can’t help feeling a little proud.

Grazer Schloßberg

Graz and the Kunsthaus

ATOs are EVERYWHERE.

Serving absinthe the badass way.

Nicest. Hostel. Ever.

Crappy weather in Budapest

Bratislava is known for wacky sculptures...

... this being the most famous.

'UFO bridge' and Soviet-era tenements