It was still awesome and we had lots of fun anyway.
So where do I start? Olek had planned for us to go to the Sudetes, more exactly to this spa town called "Szczawno Zdrój". We had made reservations and bought tickets and everything was supposed to be fine. Our train left Thursday morning and at around 9am just after we had crossed the border I get a text (with quite a few spelling mistakes) from the guy where we had booked a room that he's only able to rent out one room at the moment and our reservation is cancelled. The very same day, a few hours before we were supposed to arrive our reservation is cancelled? Olek called him and he said something about the previous locators demolishing the room (wtf?) and that he's out of town and can't call around other places for us.
This might be the place to mention that in Poland May 1st and 3rd are public holidays so everyone and their mother goes away somewhere and most places are booked out far, far in advance. Seeing as the weather was going to be less than ideal (we'll get to that) there was a good chance of other people cancelling their reservation, so that we could get a place somewhere anyway. But we weren't going by car and we can't quite walk around town with our suitcases checking out every place that has a "rooms" sign. And we were stuck in a train and didn't even have coverage or internet most of the time.
Fortunately Olek's mum was able to bail us out. She spent her noon calling around Szczawno to see if there was a free room anywhere and found something. Something that was a lot nicer and more expensive than what we had booked.
We arrived, had a very talkative taxi driver and the rest of the day went well.
The plan for the next day was to see part of Project Riese. It's a system of underground tunnels and (probably) the biggest Nazi building project. To this day it's not exactly clear what they were trying to build, but it is really impressive and creepy and my husband loves everything underground
Apparently they have an "extreme" tour where you partly go by boat (all underground!), but there were SO MANY people (May Weekend!) that they were offering the short tours only. We got tickets and had to wait an hour before our tour started, so we odered cake and coffee (I got the coffee 10min before our tour started) in their super overcrowded cafe-place.For the tour we all had to wear these silly helmets. That turned out to be super useful. I hit my head a couple of times and I'm rather short.
The photos from inside didn't turn out very well, but it was very interesting to see.
This was just outside. My husband's comment "Looks like your uncle forgot his car".
Afterwards we hiked through the mountains to see two more ruins (overground this time) from the Riese project.
Some guy on some film on youtube (not exactly the most reliable source, I know) said that some Norwegian researchers said that this could have been the beginning of an nuclear power plant.
It was really foggy that day, making everything look 10000 times more spooky.
We finally reached a town (that consisted of abandonned factories mostly)
and according to the timeable at the bus stop the next bus back was supposed to be in 10mins. Perfect! So we waited... and waited... and waited. An hour. It was about 5°C and I was freezing. When the bus finally arrived there was a very useful notice INSIDE that on May 2nd the buses run according to the Saturday schedule.
The tickets were only about 0.50€ (for 2), though, which kind of made up for waiting so long.
We got back, had pizza and went to bed, because we had tickets to see the castle Książ at 10 the next morning.
THE NEXT DAY WAS ALSO MY 26th BIRTHDAY!! HELLO 30, I'M COMING!!!
I woke up to a Hello Kitty Breakfast/Picknick Set, a picture frame, some after eight chocolate and a card
and also to a temperature of about 1°C outside. WHAT THE HELL, weather? It's May! I normally wear my winter coat if it's colder than 5°C, but I'm not going to wear it in May!
We took the bus (that was on time, and once again cost only 50 cent) to the castle. And we were not the only ones who had the castle in their plans that day. There were sooo many people. I think if the weather had been better, it would have been more bearable, because there's a really beautiful garden/park and terraces around it, but not only was it cold but also raining, so everyone stayed inside (there was also a flower exhibition thing going on) and you could mostly see other people's backs.
After we had visited the underground tunnels in the castle we left, had some tea/coffee so our hands wouldn't freeze off and as it hat stopped raining we decided to hike back instead of taking the bus.
The trail was amazing and totally worth it. It was also difficult enough for us to not feel the cold
Wearing my raincoat, because every layer is a good layer when it's cold.
We made it back and went out for drinks and cake. Olek ordered this "surprise" drink that came with burning sugar cubes
Yesterday we hiked to this SS Mausoleum, that I would have liked to see from the inside, but my legs hurt too much to climb through the half bricked up "door"
Outside the Totenburg
Am I over the length limit yet? Hasn't Michelle upped it recently? So probably not. But I think there's a limit for photos, so all photos from now an are probably going to be links.
We went back to the city, ate pierogi (no trip to Poland without these) in a restaurant that was (like everything on this trip) cold as f*ck and then we had about 2,5hrs until our train left. There's a shopping mall, but it's kinda outside the city and the next bus there was in 20mins so with getting there and back, we wouldn't really have had much time. So we went straight to the station, bought some water, cookies and magazines... and waited.
Ten minutes before the planned arrival, they announce that our train is going to be 100 (that is right, one hundred) minutes late. WHAT THE HELL? The train hadn't even been travelling for 100 minutes yet. Couldn't they have told us A TINY BIT EARLIER? Like not 10 minutes before it's scheduled to arrive?
So we wait 100 minutes (the waiting area wasn't very cold at least), the train arrives, we get in... and wait.
and wait. Olek likes trains and is interested in the logistics and mechnics and all that, so he goes to the front, to see what's happening. (Because of course on Polish trains, you're never told WHY your train is late).
A few minutes later (we still haven't moved) he calls me to let me know that the locomotive is broken and it's unlikely that the train's going to move as much as a centimeter.
To make it even more fun, the train was on a single-track section, that was obviously blocked now.
After about half an hour they told everyone to get out and take the next train. Our train had about 7 wagons and while it wasn't crowded, it wasn't empty either. The next train had two wagons. You can imagine the fun we had travelling three hours to Wroclaw.
When we arrived, there was a bunch of policemen in riot gear on every platform, which already made me kind of uneasy. Olek had gone off to find the conductor to ask him what we were supposed to do, seeing as our last train back home that day had already left and the next one wasn't until 6 the next morning. I waited with our bags, looked at the policemen and then I realised fuck, the only reason for there to be this much police in riot gear is freaking football. There a few things I'm very scared of, but being caught between the police and a bunch of Polish football fans is definitely one of them. I wasn't sure whether they had already left or were going to arrive or whatever and then there were two really loud bangs, like from big fire crackers or something. And all the policemen left our platform to go into one direction, so I found Olek and we went into the opposite one. Turns out the train with the football idiots was already leaving.
We were still stuck in Wroclaw. It was 9pm and the next train was at 6:30am. The information was closed and Polish railways doesn't have a 24h helpline or anything. It was cold and spending the night at the station didn't seem like a good idea, so we checked into a hotel.
And arrived home at 10 this morning, when we were supposed to have been at 10pm last night.
The end.
A tl;dr version for lucybelle:
We went on a weekend trip, our room got cancelled last minute, it was raining, foggy and below 5°C and our journey home took 17 hours instead of 5.
I have an awful transit story too. It took me 10 hours to go 200 km on a bus once. In the dark. It was awful. But it's a good story now! So you have that- a good story