Oh well, this is my first blogpost on here and my first blog ever. I wanted it to be a short first impressions post, but I managed to write only about my trip from home to Warsaw. Enjoy!
Road to Warsaw
I come from Brașov, România. Super chill place, I recommend it. But I had a problem. Romania and Poland are horribly connected and I was on a budget. The pandemic only made this situation worse. It is basically impossible to do the trip in less than 12 hours. Since I had to waste an entire day to get to Warsaw, I decided I should choose the closest option to my heart.
This is how I embarked on a 25-hour long trip, on 3 trains and 20 something kilograms of luggage packed in two backpacks with me.
The first train: Brașov – Budapest; 10 hours ride; sleeper car. This was honestly fun. I left my city at around 20:30, found my cabin and changed in my pyjamas. My cabin was a 6-beds one, but I was completely alone there. I could just stretch my legs, watch a Netflix show and try out seltzer for the first time. I’m sorry, but I really don’t get seltzers. It’s pretty boring. Around midnight I decided to go to sleep, especially because I realized I’ll have to be awake for border control at 5 in the morning. Sleeping in a train feels like something you learn by doing. I didn’t close the curtains properly, the train was old and loud, and I was too excited to sleep. I think in total I slept like 4 hours. Amazing.
The border control. Yes, we have them even between EU countries. Romania is not in Schengen cause the Dutch dislike us. Ok, not really, but geopolitics are hard to explain in a few sentences. Moving on, first there were the Romanian border guards checking the train. This was really relaxed, after all we were just leaving the country. Give your ID, say where you get off. Neat. The Hungarian border control on the other hand…
I was in the toilet when the guards entered my car. I heard the door open, but I just thought there were some going to the toilet. The loud banging on the door and the muffled Hungarian shouts alerted me to the fact that I was wrong. I exited the toilet and met the whole “gang”. Two women and two men in fluorescent jackets waiting to make sure I didn’t hide a migrant in the toilet bowl. One of the men was carrying a ladder, while the other had a mirror attached at an angle to a long metal pole. After being weirded out by Hungary’s least talkative welcoming committee, I hurried to my cabin, grabbed my ID and put on a mask. I later found out that you didn’t have to wear those indoors in HU. One of the women scanned my ID and asked where I was going. After that the man with the mirror checked my cabin. I asked the guy if he’s looking for people and he answered just answered with a short “yes”. Having only flown abroad for the past 6 years or so, I was feeling strange. I had nothing to fear, but still, I couldn’t calm myself down. I have an EU passport and ID, I am fully vaccinated, even tested before leaving (they didn’t check for that anyway because I was in transit), and, as a bonus, I am extra pale. However, I was keenly aware that if something were to be wrong, my wellbeing was in their hands. Everything went smoothly though. But I still couldn’t think of anything else than what happens to people that don’t check all the boxes.
For the rest of the ride, from the border to Budapest, I just tried to sleep. After 2 hours, I gave up. I was still thinking about the border control, the sun was rising and also, my train had a delay.
The second train: Budapest – Břeclav ; 2 hours. This is the one I almost missed. My first train was 30 min. late and Budapest doesn’t benefit from having a central train station. I came from the East, so I arrived at Keleti and I was going to the West, so I had to get to Nyugati. I had 20 minutes to do this, almost no sleep, and reduced walking speed due to being encumbered. Murphy’s law states that if anything can go wrong it will and oh boy, did it. My train stopped some 200m from the exit, it was pouring rain, and, as the cherry on top, the train station was full of 6–8-year-olds who had yet to master walking in a line and also completely did not care that I was there. While doing a slalom between babies, I was also trying to open my Bolt app, because I really needed a taxi, task made infinitely more horrible by the fact that the water from the rain was really messing up with my touchscreen. As I reached the exit of the train station, I somehow managed to order a taxi. It only took me 1 minute extra to find it and board it. In my mind I was safe, after all I had 15 minutes for a 1.5 km ride. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything really. It was around 9:30 in the morning, so the rush hour was still a thing. In addition to the traffic, my taxi driver really didn’t want to speed up a bit for me and so we managed to wait 5 red lights. By the time we reached the 3rd one I lost all hope. When I finally saw the train station, I told the guy he can just leave me anywhere, in my mind I was better off walking. I barely got my backpacks on me, the big one hanging off one shoulder, the smaller one in my hand, and I just gunned for the first door I saw. I have never been in Budapest’s train stations, so my intuition was the only one guiding me. And my intuition did not fail. I reached my train at 9:40 and the train left at 9:40. Behind the mask, I was smiling like an idiot. My body relaxed and that’s when I realized my left shoulder wasn’t doing too great.
The ride itself was really uneventful. At the border crossing between Hungary and Slovakia the border guard just checked for the Covid status. I didn’t have to show anything, since I was just transiting the country. The last city in Slovakia that my train stopped at was Bratislava. That was pretty nice, since the train station is on a hill and I got to get a good view of the city’s skyline. First stop in the Czech Republic was Breclav, which was also where I got off. As I exited the train, I was welcomed by four large men in police uniforms. I asked them if I had to show any documents, to which the head-dude shrugged and asked me if I will stay there. I explained to him that I only spend 2 hours in the city and he just said “ok”. I don’t get the border police.
In Břeclav I spend around 2 hours 20. I really wanted to visit the city and I had more than enough time to do so. There is a citadel in the town and plenty of fancy buildings to look at. I also wanted to see and hear a bit of Czech, as I never really been to this country before. Unfortunately for me the luggage storage of the train station was paid for and, even worse, I needed cash. I obviously didn’t plan on getting any koruna, so I had to walk around with my house. People were staring at me and I was staring back I them. I must’ve looked like a donkey that needed to be retired. The citadel was 1.5 km away from the train station and I only managed to walk 1 km. In 40 minutes. After I got lost in an intersection, I just gave up. I was in so much pain I almost started crying. I couldn’t feel my left shoulder anymore. It was not worth it. I was so slow, I was risking losing my train. Defeated, I returned to the train station, with now about 20 minutes to wait for the next train. I bought some water and a hot chocolate and enjoyed being able to move freely in the waiting area, without the burden of my big backpack.
The last train: Břeclav – Warsaw; 10 hours. I was really fed up when I realized the train already had a delay. It was coming from Vienna and it left with a delay. Břeclav was the second stop. They only announced that the train was late 5 min. after it was supposed to arrive. I was really tired of wearing a mask so I decided I’ll just wait on the platform. They also announced the platform 5 min. after the train was supposed to arrive. I just couldn’t care anymore. If the train was to show up 1 hour after it was supposed to, so be it. It only had a 15 min. delay when I got on, but knowing the Polish train operator, I was ready to be at least 40 min. late to the destination. I underestimated the power of the Polaks and we were 50 minutes late to Warsaw. The ride itself was bad. I got a cabin car, 6 places per cabin. I really don’t like this type of cars, they really trigger my claustrophobia when they are full. The intercom in my cabin was broken, so ,for 8 hours out of the almost 11, I had to endure the worst static noise I ever heard. My cabin filled up at Katowice, therefor the 2 times I had to go to the bathroom I stepped on everyone’s feet and fell on the guy sitting right next to the door. One time, on the way to the bathroom, the hallway door got blocked by the door of the electrical panel of the car, which just casually swung open. I tried to tell the conductors who were chilling, having a laugh, in the cabin right next to it. The first 2 times I knocked they didn’t hear me, probably because of the god-awful static noise. The third time one of them noticed me and asked what’s wrong. I just pointed to the electrical panel. He seemed visibly embarrassed by the state of it and hurried to close it. I asked him if he could do something about the noise, but he didn’t speak English. I thought to myself that this must be hell.
I reached Warszawa Centralna at around 22:30. As a last hurrah, when I tried to retrieve my big backpack from the upper rack, it hit me in the head. Luckily for me, I stopped feeling anything hours before. The only silver lining was that my boyfriend was waiting for me. Truly a knight in shining armor. He got my backpack and handed me a tote bag instead. Inside there was some pastry, some sweets and a 200 ml bottle of Soplica. Everything was ok once again.
