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.

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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 …

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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.