could we start again, please?

12 july 2010 11:42 pm

days later, now, and i am sitting in pablo’s apartment, waiting for him to ring his own bell so i can try to maneuver the buzzer and let him into his house.  it’s been fucking hot here in berlin, but i’m glad to be here, even if i am back at square zero in terms of language, and also having some trouble realizing that i am actually here.

i will probably realize just in time to leave again.

so, yeah, train.

i fell asleep on the train, warm beer and exhaustion taking their toll.  thanks to the air conditioning, i was able to put on my sweatshirt and pull the hood down to cover my eyes, blocking out the crazy-bright light.  i woke up when we stopped at the border, for passport control to come on and check people out.  that was a bad time for me to realize that i had no idea where my passport was.  i found my US passport, but since i haven’t been traveling on it at all since leaving the US it was completely useless.  i started trying to search my bag, without letting off the growing panic i was feeling.  i couldn’t find it.  had it been in my pocket earlier?  if so, where had i put it?  everything after 9 am was a blur, i couldn’t reconstruct much in the way of details.  if it had been in my pocket, i would have put it in my messenger bag.  pull everything out of the bag, not there.  look through all the books in the bag.  not there.  put everything back and act normal, like there is absolutely no problem at all.

which is what i did, as i realized that they were only asking the asian-looking people for their passports.  one girl turned to her friend, after the officers had walked away with their passports, and asked, “why did they take mine and not yours?”  the answer, in heavily-german-accented english, “because you don’t look European.”  shrug.  then a bunch of discussion about her Chinese passport, and what all the language meant.  this was the same girl who, as i was getting ready to get off the train, met me as she was coming out of the bathroom and wished me good luck and safe travels.

i think she was pretty much awesome.

anyway, still worried about my passport, but understanding that the immediate pressure was off, i went back to napping.

kinda.

all the trains that i looked up online, heading through poznań towards berlin, all said that they only stopped at berlin ostbahnhoff, the eastern train station.  cory gave me s-bahn instructions to his house from there, which entailed me calling him so he could meet me at the stop.  my phone was refusing to work, in poland or germany, to call him, and i was exhausted, and heavy suitcases, so i decided to take a cab.  downright luxury.

then i realized that the train really did stop at the hauptbahnhoff, the main train station, and that maybe i should get a cab from there, since i kinda know that station, from all the time i spent there in the winter.

we pulled into ostbahnhoff, and i was ready at the door for the next station.  there was a conductor on the platform, who saw me waiting so she pushed the button to open the door and asked if i needed help.  cultural difference #1:  in Poland the trains sometimes stop for such a short amount of time that people get up and wait by the doors when they get even vaguely close to their stop.  that’s what i was doing, because i had so many goddamn bags.  she seemed confused by my presence.  i asked if hauptbahnhoff was an actual stop and she told me it was next.  then she walked away to talk to another passenger, leaving the door open.

and then we sat.  and sat.

after ten minutes of feeling more and more frantic, i opened the door that i had closed in anticipation of our leaving and threw all my shit off the train, deciding fuck it, i’ll figure it out.

which is how i ended up sort of lost in berlin ostbahnhoff, lugging my suitcases into elevators and out of elevators, looking for the front of the station, while drunk people rushed around me with open bottles of champagne and german flags because germany had just come in third for the world cup and wooooo!  party!

suck.

i ended up heading for an open doorway, which turned out to be the ass end of the station, so i had to drag my shit around to the front, under an overpass, goddamn cobblestones, to the taxi stand, past more screaming germans, but at least a young gentleman with a bottle of champagne and a german flag helped me get my shit down that last flight of stairs.

the two girls with him seemed overwhelmed by his chivalry.

i found the taxi stand and a guy who i will choose to call “the worst taxi driver in all of berlin.”  he actually seemed surprised when i walked up to his car, even though he was at the front of the line.

true, cory told me later, his street is very short and therefore many taxi drivers don’t know it.  this guy stared at the written address for full minutes, then moved me over to the side of the cab where the light was better, then said the equivalent of “aha.” and got in and drove away.

not at all knowing where he was going.

ok, well, maybe a little.

he got me to the neighborhood, then turned the wrong way and headed for gaudystrasse, not geiststrasse.  when he realized his mistake, he came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, turned off the meter, and took out a street index.  he then spent a full five minutes staring at the listing for the street i wanted, not at all inspiring confidence when he said, “hmmm.” and put the book away, kind of turning around and heading back the way we had come.

finally he found the street and stopped, again, in the middle of the road.  he had turned the meter off for much of the ride, but it was still a little pricier than i would have liked, since he took so long to realize he was heading the wrong way.  still, i couldn’t care at that point, so i tried to pay him with the 50 euro bill i had.  oh, no, sorry.  can’t.  for the first time i realized he spoke perfectly good english, he had just been hiding that fact behind a wall of silence.  then he asked me if perhaps i had a credit card.  sure.  card.

as he was asking me about the card, a van pulled up behind where he was completely blocking the narrow street and began honking wildly. then a rather wiry but muscle-bound bald-headed gentleman got out of the driver’s side seat and walked up to the cab driver’s window.  he yelled something angry in german at the back of the driver’s head, who didn’t even flinch, continuing to wait for my debit card to be approved.

the man was a statue of composure.  considering he was, in all ways, half the size of the van driver, this was admirable and elevated him in my eyes.

cory told me he heard the honking, had an idea it was me, and put on his shoes.

then the driver insisted on carrying my bags from the trunk to the curb, slowly and methodically, while the van driver fumed behind him.

he became my hero at that point.

ring bell, cory was also my hero as he carried my heavy-assed bag up many flights of stairs, then beer and talk and sleep as the sun was coming up.

awesome.

where the hell is pablo?

12:22 am

chivalry is dead in Wrocław, PL

last hurrah

10 july 2010

today is kinda suck.  i got on a train this morning with brendan and a suitcase apparently full of dead bodies and bricks and now all i have is the suitcase, and i already fucked up the pull handle.  considering the co-dependent lifestyle we’ve been living for the past two weeks, i’m finding myself at a bit of a loss.  who will berate me and ask me what the fuck my problem is?  i guess i could do it myself, but that just takes all the fun out of it.

i have to write all about our adventures, but right now i’m in the … well, in the now and not getting out of it.

in fact, installments of our trip to Ukraine may be interspersed with musings about what the fuck i think i’m doing with my life right now.

which may not be much.

i left tarnów this morning, threw brendan off the train in kraków so he could catch his flight back to paris, though i fully intended to go with him to the airport.  that is, until we realized we were on a train to wrocław and i should probably stay on it.  hard to say goodbye when people are pushing out the door past you, both rushed and drawn out, as the train slowed and slowed coming in to the station.

then i was alone.  well, i was with a series of people sitting across from me as i nodded out over and over from the benadryl i took to counteract the allergic meltdown my body decided to go through on this, my last day in tarnów.

it’s fucking hot, and i didn’t realize how fucking heavy the suitcase really is until brendan was no longer there to lug it.

macho man, indeed.

so i got into wrocław, and a man did help me get my suitcases off the train, but told me, when he heard i had to go all the way to the ticket office, that he was running late.  sorry, goodbye.  so i dragged the two suitcases down the platform stairs, out to the walkway to the temporary train station building, since EU funds are ensuring that the remodeling of every train station in Poland will make your traveling experience that much more hellish.  a woman in her fifties, big floofy hair, shoved her face into mine and asked me, loudly, where the train information was.  i was red-faced and dripping sweat, and i had to tell her i had no idea.  then i got excited that the whole short conversation had taken place in polish without much thought from me at all.

then up a few more stairs, because the ramp was on the other side of the building and therefore way too far, past four gentlemen putting their heads together about how to fix a door to a secondary ticket office.  small bits of metal clanked to the ground from somewhere, and i wondered how they could watch me with these ridiculous suitcases and not help me at all.

guess i’m used to smaller-town Poland.  since this is the city i hope to move to, i tried not to let it get to me.

then inside, to the grumpiest train lady ever.  “berlin?  today???”  disbelief in her eyes, as she consulted her little book and told me i would take the next train to poznań, then off the train to transfer to berlin, with only 17 minutes to spare.  i knew that would not really be something that would actually happen, as it seems to be policy that the trains run late, but i began to worry about how, exactly, i would make that connection with all this fucking baggage.

then i asked her which platform, and was shocked to hear, “because of the remodeling you have to wait for the announcement.  i don’t know.”  fuck.  well, at least i understood her.

out to the other side of the temporary station to get some water, since i was dying, and to the kantor for some euros, since i knew i wouldn’t be able to get any later.  fucked on the exchange rate, but at that point i couldn’t care.

then waiting in the passageway for them to announce what platform i would have to run up with all my ridiculous baggage, with 5 minutes to spare.

a guy did help me.

i’ll have to write about him later.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

now i’m in poznań, waiting for the train to berlin.  i wrote the last part on the train here from wrocław, which was, of course, 40 minutes late.  so i missed my connection.

of course.

anyway, back to wrocław.  i was sitting against the wall, panicking, trying to understand the announcements that would tell me where to go.  some girl in the group of people staring at the departures poster, which continued to not yield any information the more it was stared at, mentioned poznań and i suddenly jumped at her, unfortunately in english.  “are you going to poznań?”  she looked at me like i was the creepiest eavesdropper ever before saying, “noooooo,” low and accusatory, and quickly moving away.

the next guy i talked to was no help either, because he hadn’t been listening to the announcements but had been staring at his phone.  he also seemed to want to get away from me.  i said i had a lot of baggage and was therefore nervous about making the train, and he said he was in the same boat, though all he was carrying was a light-looking duffle bag.  i accepted his uselessness and looked for someone else.

all the time i was straining my ears, looking up the various stairways to the platforms, my crazy baggage up against a wall, farther and farther away from my frantic movements.

there are some drunk guys down at the end of the platform here, drinking a lot of obvious beer out of a giant water bottle.

drunks

there is also an american girl with unnaturally red hair and a fake-chinese jacket sitting to one side of me who asked if this was platform one and then thankfully didn’t seem to want to talk to me.

anyway, the third person i approached in wrocław was older and reminded me of ramsey.  he had weird chaos-looking tattoos on each shoulder.  he was pleased to speak to me in english, and told me that he was also waiting for the same train, so he would let me know.

then they announced the platform, the minute i got back to my baggage, with three minutes to spare.

he actually helped me with one of the suitcases, unfortunately the light one.  then we got up to the platform, stood a minute, tried to get some indication of which side the train would be on.  then my savior started yelling across the tracks at some guy in an orange vest on the next platform down, who nodded.  almost immediately i saw the sign on that track.  that was my train.

fuck.  they moved the track.

down he went with the light suitcase, while i struggled to keep up with him, lugging the heavy one.  down the stairs, up again, actually just pulling it up by the pull handle, which was a bad idea and didn’t make it any easier to maneuver.  people just walked around me, staring.  then i realized that my savior was just there to meet someone coming off the now-arriving train, not to get on it, so he was stuck there with my suitcase while i tried to get the other up the damn stairs and pulled out the handle so far i couldn’t get it back in for hours.  now it’s a little looser than before.  still fucking heavy.

anyway, my hero.  the only one.  he got me on the train, and then i had to make my way down to a half-full compartment, one bag at a time.

i ended up in a compartment with a woman who looked like seven of nine and her giant beast of a dog, who didn’t want to sit still.  there was a younger woman across from me, who helped me with my bag.  my polish seemed to have completely left me by that point, so i asked her for help in points and grunts.  she gladly obliged, though i’m pretty sure i crushed her hand in the process.  there was an older woman, who may or may not have been related to the dog woman.  i couldn’t tell.  so i sat, and sweated, and tried to call cory to no avail, while the dog pulled by me again and again, dragging its leash across my already bruised legs, shedding with wild abandon, looking to everyone for entertainment, or at least some relief from the heat.

very little of either was to be found.

the dog and my suitcase stayed in the hallway through the whole ride, which amused the coffee cart worker and pissed off one of the conductors, who seemed to be the only Pole i’ve ever met who doesn’t like dogs.  he even moved away in what looked like fear at one point. every time we had to move these items from the hall, the leash would get tangled in the suitcase and the woman at the other end would pull and pull and the poor dog would have no idea where to go.

two hours.

then a very small child from one of the compartments further down spotted the dog and, with her sister just into her teens, made her stumbling baby-walk way down to say hi to the dog that was maybe ten times her size.  at one point the dog licked her face, it’s tongue perhaps the same size of that feature, and the baby squealed in delight and fear and confusion and had to be taken away for a little while.

on the train here to poznań …

___________________________________________________________________________________________

whoah.  the train to berlin/amsterdam showed up like a bullet and took off the same, so it’s good that i distracted myself long enough to get my shit together.  don’t have to finish the sentence when crazy bullet train is going like hell.

we were going 135 km/hour until just now.  the “IC Café” car is all crazy wind and inability to hear.  i had a warm tyskie and really felt like i was leaving Poland.

i am.

for now.

there’s an adorable girl in front of me reading a children’s board book to her sleepy mother.  that’s polish.  behind me there are germans.  “vas?”  the guy who offered to put my suitcase up on the rack did not seem polish but did seem egged on by his girlfriend.  i said, “jest bardzo cięzki” and he responded in english.  i had to talk him out of trying to lift it to the overhead racks.

still.

no grand stories coming out of me now.  just trains and trains.

jestem zmęczona.