The Travel Blahs

I'm traveling for 7 weeks all over Poland, right? On my back I carry my viola case, which I veeeeerrry hesitantly brought along with me, because I knew it was going to be a pain in the rear to tote all over the country(but I was asked to by the IM staffers here). I have an overstuffed carry on size suitcase and an even more overstuffed backpack that perches precariously on top, carrying all the things that short-termers keep giving me at the camps(4 bags of decaf. coffee, 1 lg. tin of mint hot chocolate, mango salsa). It's really not that terrible, except when I have to go down escalators, or get on a metro or a bus, or quickly push my way on an overcrowded train. Other than that, it's not too terrible. =-D

To get to the 2nd camp, I had to take two trains. The first one had no remaining empty seats, so I stood in the aisle for 3 hours swaying back and forth, trying to hold on to all of my belongings. Let's just say that I was not a happy camper. Then from that camp to this camp, I was supposed to take three trains. The first train was supposed to leave at 5:47pm, so two of the guys from the camp drove me to the tiny train station and we stood and waited 20 minutes in the rain for a train that never came. Since I had to be in another city by the next afternoon to meet the next team and ride to camp with them, the guys from camp #2 decided to try to find a bus station so I could take a bus to take me to train #2. We drove for almost three hours around the countryside looking for a bus that would take me to the desired city. No such thing could be found. So we drove back to camp, went to sleep, got up at 4am and drove back to the 1st train station to catch the morning train. Again, no train appeared, so we drove an hour and a half to the next biggest town where I could catch a direct train to Warsaw. We made it there 2 minutes before the train did.

Five hours later I arrived in Warsaw, purchased my tickets for the next train, got something to eat and got on the train, very happy that nothing else had gone wrong. Two hours into the two and half hour trip, we came to a very abrupt halt and an announcement was made over a loudspeaker. I understood the following, "Attention! The train blah blah blah blah blah a car blah blah blah. We blah blah blah sixty minutes. Thank you!" Ohhhh, well that certainly doesn't sound good. The guy sitting next to me proceeded to pantomime the fact that we had indeed crashed into a car and were stuck there for sixty minutes while they cleared the tracks. I have no idea whether the people were ok, or not, and just sat praying for them and for the safety of the remainder of the trip. What a sobering thing to happen. After a little over an hour we continued on our way. We came to Radom, and I almost didn't get off, because it was such a dumpy train station. It's a city of about 400,000 people and I just assumed it would be a nice big train station. The nice man sitting with me grabbed my suitcase and basically pushed me off the train. Thank you, nice man. That was very kind of you!

Now, camp #3 is almost over. Tomorrow we'll head into Krakow with the American short-termers. I'll stay with them until the 9th and then will head over to a studio apartment to have three days of time alone, before going back to Warsaw for a couple of days and then on a longer trip to the northwestern part of Poland and then possibly back to Radom. Hopefully, the next few train trips will be a lot less uneventful!