Po-Land

So last weekend I went to Krakow, Poland, which I had heard was really nice and pretty and whatnot. Poland is actually less than 100 kilometers from where I live, and I have been meaning to go for quite some time.

Some quick info about Poland: It is much bigger than Slovakia, with eight times more people, and it is colder. It has been jerked around by its neighbors quite a bit, and it has also jerked itself around from time to time. This is what I remember from college, I hope it is accurate.

Krakow is in Southern Poland, close to the Slovak border. You would think that this would make it easy to reach from my location in Northern Slovakia. You would be extremely wrong.

On this journey I was joined by the irreplaceable travel guide/food critic/semi-speaker of several Slavic languages, Vi. Here she is on the train from hell:



Although Krakow is less than a three-hour drive from Presov, there is no bus service, only the train. In addition, only one train a day goes to Krakow, on the Bucharest-Krakow line. This train leaves Presov every night at 11:59, and takes six hours to get to Krakow. Here's the schedule.

Normally, a night train ride over the snowy Tatras mountains would be nice. There are little benches in the train cars, and you can use your coat as a pillow. The problem, however, stems from the train's heating system, which I'm sure was designed by Soviet political prisoners in the 30's.

In each car there is a crank which is supposed to control the temperature. In fact this only can cause the temperature to go from "hot" to "hellish", and is best left untouched. Instead, a traveler must devise their own climate control system, which for me involved waking up every ten minutes in a puddle of my own sweat and opening the window as wide as it could go. Next, I would fall back asleep until the snow whipping through the window into the car piled so high onto my sleeping face that I started to suffocate. At this point, I would close the window and repeat. If you do happen to go into shock and pass out, finally allowing you to sleep, you will still be awoken repeatedly by the ticket agents/drunken backpackers/angry Polish border guards every twenty minutes.

While this might seem exciting to some, I thought it was a real drag, and by the time we reached the station in Krakow I experienced the unique sensation of suffering from both dehydration and hypothermia at the same time.

Nevertheless, it was nice to be in Krakow, which is a beautiful city. We only had a day and a half, so I wasn't able to make it to fun nearby places such as the concentration camps, but I plan on going back in April. Krakow is pretty much just a square, albeit a very nice one, and an impressive palace. We mostly just hung around the center, here are some pictures:























It's been snowing forever around these parts, which gave everything a winter-wonderland kind of feel:



Because it was so cold, we tried to do mostly indoor things. We visited the Theatre Museum, watched "Proof" at the movie theatre, which was good, and saw this modern art exhibition, "Identity":



I also saw a cool dog:



I admit this entry sucks, I didn't get many decent pictures and spent most of the time in Poland either freezing or exhausted. One interesting thing about the Polish language is that it seems almost the same as Slovak, only with a lot more Z's. One interesting thing about Krakow is that many stores sell Cherry Coke.

Here in Presov the snow is really piling up and I am preparing for the beginning of the spring semester next week. I have been assigned to teach a class called "Contemporary USA" to 4th year students, although they haven't told me what the class is supposed to be about. If anyone has ideas about what to teach, let me know, or even better you can come and do a guest lecture on the topic of your choice.
Catch you later.