Below Belief

Rise late after one of the best nights sleep ever. Something about sleeping surrounded by fifteen sweaty, slumbering people on these rough mattresses is incredibly relaxing.
The sun is bright in a blue sky and we decide this marks a turning point in our journey as the first half ends and the second begins. North becomes South and East turns real East. We head first for the Romanian embassy where we need to purchase a visa for the next, rather daunting stage of the journey through Romania and Bulgaria, two of the poorest countries in Europe. Outside the gates is a crowd of scruffy dark-skinned Romanians who seem to be waiting for a guard to open up. We wait with them patiently, feeling rather out of place and not knowing what else to do. It becomes obvious that peoples’ names are being called out to enter the office. When the guard at last opens up, we adopt a stand-tall-and-look-nordic stance and this quickly brings us to his attention not least because we are a foot taller than everyone else.
Inside the cramped, sweaty office, Romanian style queueing is in force and everyone is more than a little flustered. We wait half an hour before the visa counter opens up and after pushing straight in at the front, a further ten minutes while our visa is made up. At $38 each, Romania had better be good. Satisfied with our day’s work, we head for lunch at a restaurant we have heard of on ‘Castle Hill’ – the parallel with Cambridge being the Curry Centre and too good to miss. It is inside the entrance to a concert hall and according to LP is cheap and cheerful. Cryptically, once inside, we are led by an old German man across the road to what turns out to be his own restaurant. He gestures us to sit down, but the menu is expensive so we make our excuses and head back to satisfy our curiosity at where this cheap place is.
A girl in the box office tells us she has heard the same story before from travellers with the Lonely Planet but tells us there has never been a cheap restaurant there. We always suspected they put red herrings in the book to catch people out. However, she does give us the name of a good restaurant on the other side of the river and so we take her advice. We end up in a restaurant where no-one at all speaks English. We manage to get a broad translation of the menu from a passing business woman and both rather cautiously order roast duck because this is the only thing we understood from the translation. The waitresses smile broadly at our predicament and seem to find us a bit of a novelty in a place which is obviously more usually full of Hungarian workers. I manage to spill coke everywhere but this only seems to improve our relations with the waitresses who can’t seem to do enough to help us, smiling and nodding all the time. The meal is actually very good and costs £3.50 for both of us.
After lunch, we decide to try the funicular railway, again our desire to be in a high place manifesting itself. At the top, looking out over the city, we are approached by a Hungarian man who speaks a very strange Oxford English and claims to be a Tourist Guide who can solve all our problems. Doubting this very much, we tell him we have already found the cheapest restaurant in Budapest for our lunch and considering this record are unlikely to require his assistance. He is indignant and claims he can do better for us. He even has an ID card to prove he is pucker. He offers us some crafty deal where we pay him by the hour to guide us around, but tells us that as a group of two it will be very expensive. He vanishes, just as soon as he appeared, to recruit some more members of his group and we take the opportunity to run for it, there and then.
We walk to the top of a hill and to a buttress which, for all the world with its fairy tale spires, looks like it was built for the tourists. It turns out be genuine, but not nearly as impressive close up as we imagined. The view is great, but the whole thing is rather spoilt by a man sat on a folding stool and playing the old ‘three-cup, where’s the ball?’ routine. Not only this, but he has an American tourist placing £40 bets each time. His technique, like so many, is to play her along and let her win a couple of times offering double or nothing returns. Then he changes to ‘sleight’ of hand and creams his profit. Chris thinks he can make a tidy sum too, but when he tries to bet with a handful of coins, he is told it is kinder spiel – childs play – and lacking the stupidity and the finances to offer £40 he has no option but to watch the American lose face.
We decide we’re going to give the thermal baths a try. Chris is very apprehensive at first, but we’ve heard the baths are very good for relaxation and after the stress of dealing with a very frustrating locker attendant, we are both ready to relax. We are motioned towards some white cubicles and handed beige loin cloths which are tastefully designed to cover absolutely nothing and make everyone’s bottom look as stupid as possible. We walk out looking for all the world like two white Englishmen in French Maid outfits. Joss told us yesterday the women looked even worse in their ‘frontal aprons’. Chris and I question whether that could be possible. Left to discover the mystifying experience of thermal bathing without instruction, we establish a cycle moving through progressively hotter rooms until eventually we can take the heat and steam no longer and have to jump into the icy plunge pool. The sensation is incredible. It can’t be good for the heart but the skin tingling is wonderful. In the shower area there is a beday type arrangement which looks like it came from some KGB torture chamber. It consists of a grey metal seat centred over a rather powerful jet of water. Enema, colonic irrigator and tonsil cleaner all in one. In the naturally heated pools we can sit back and relax while we watch the American tourists passing by wearing speedos under their loin cloths and get the impression they’re not really entering into the true spirit of things. The guide book did warn us that ‘the baths are sometimes frequented by people whose sole interest is not in getting clean; friendly conversation should be approached with caution.’, but wearing trunks is taking it a little far.
We come out feeling wonderfully clean and so relaxed we could sleep. After a pizza, we do just that and return to bed. On the way home we bump into the Harris Isle guys again, this time being led off to some dodgy accommodation by a brutal looking matron of a woman who shakes our hands. Typical, them behaving like sheep again.

The Hungarian border guards complete the punctuation of our night by waking us at 6.30am. We leave the station with two American women who claim they know where our Youth Hostel is and offer to lead us there. We can’t stand being around them for their superficial conversation and pray they won’t be sharing our dormitory. In the end, we have to show them where the hostel is and the nightmare is complete.
We are willingly accepted into the Back Pack Guest Hostel, a brightly painted suburban house, even though they seem pretty full up. We are led downstairs to the Bob Marley room, where, through the sweaty fog we can see 15 prostrate bodies slumbering on mattresses on the floor. This will be our home for the next two nights. We shower and then head off to Keleti station to wait for our rendezvous. The station is full of artificial smoke and some Czech B-Movie is being filmed on the platform. We meet two English girls, Debbie and Lilly studying at Nottingham. The snowballing social effect means we soon add a Land Economist from Fitzwilliam college, Cambridge to our group and decide we just can’t get away from the place. She knows Mark and Kate.
The second of our dubious rendezvous’, this time with Joss, comes off beautifully and she seems quite pleased to see people she knows after travelling alone for most of the way. We head to the Pizza Hut where beers are 33p and stock up with breakfast and lunch while listening to Joss’ tales. She tells us immediately she can tell we have spent two weeks in each other’s company. Quite what the giveaway is, I don’t know, but I guess we might have built up a few in-jokes along the way.
On the way up to a vantage point on a hill overlooking the river, we bump into the Fitz girl and her friend again. They are heading for a thermal bath and ask us if they need swimming costumes. They look shocked when we tell them that no, costumes won’t be necessary, but slightly more comfortable when we tell them they’ll only be bathing with other women. We meet up with Debbie and Lilly and try to soak up some culture at the National Gallery but get quickly bored and almost thrown out when I shout ‘That’s rude!’ in Geraint-James style at the top of my voice when faced with a large oil painting of scantily clad Czech girls. Debbie and Lilly decline our offer to go for cakes and tea at the Marriott hotel (all you can eat for £2.50), possibly because they think we’ll get thrown out of there too. Joss and Chris and I head there alone. Joss has, unashamedly, been there twice already. I don’t think the five-star Marriott really expects outsiders to join their guests, but most of the cake eaters seem to be hungry travellers rapidly eating their way through enough cakes to last a week. Unfortunately, we’re still full of pizza, but nevertheless we manage to spend three hours eating in the comfortable surroundings, fantasising about being rich, planning next year’s social calendar and drinking coffee.
Too much cake and six coffees later, we move on to meet up with yesterday’s Oxford lasses for a beer in a cafe, their shout. We return exhausted to the hostel, but it is still buzzing with life. We watch the film ‘Midnight Express’, about a guy who gets imprisoned in Turkey for trying to smuggle dope and go to bed feeling just a little uneasy about our quaint image of Turkey, the place we’ll be staying in a weeks time. Certainly won’t try stealing the Turkish flag.

Wake to find the guys who appear to be staying in our room have still not turned up. Ray, a Kiwi fisherman with 11 months on the road arrives just before breakfast having apparently discovered Prague night life in one large chunk (or possibly one small white pill). He crashes out and we leave for the station.
In the ridiculously long left-luggage queue we meet three girls from Lincoln college, Oxford. We manage to trade them our useless gas canister in return for absolutely nothing except their company for the day but that’s good enough for us. Chris tries to change Travellers Cheques into dollars but fails miserably and ends up with more useless Czech currency he doesn’t know what to do with. The last thing we need as we prepare to leave the Czech republic is a wad of their failing currency. We find a bar upon the girls’ recommendation and have filled baguettes for lunch. They are drinking coffees and we are drinking beer, so Chris and I are momentarily concerned that, if this trend continues, we will soon be past polite conversation. It doesn’t seem to matter though because we are soon all in hysterics. Particularly, and very cryptically, over our deep conversations about the possibilities of ‘paper pants’. After four hours of this and with the paper pants now wearing a little thin, we decide a change is in order and head to a pub and restaurant the Harris Isle guys recommended.
On the way we can’t resist re-enacting the boat race in pedalos and a rowing boat. Tabs win again. The restaurant looks expensive but is actually really cheap and the food is great. At the station, we are forced to spend our last Korona on cigarettes for the girls. Lucky for us, we decide, that they are so easily pleased. In return they offer us cups of tea brewed up on the platform. Sitting there sipping tea seems so typically English and, above all, so Oxbridge.
Recovering our luggage, I suddenly get a whiff of the most outrageously strong eau de toilette and look around in vain to find the animal who could possibly wear so much aftershave in one go. Whoever he is, he must have a cold. The smell just keeps getting stronger and as I wander round trying to follow the scent, it soon transpires that the source of the fragrance is me. Something inside my washbag has exploded and all my dirty washing has come up smelling of roses. Bonus.
We arrive in our couchettes on the train to Budapest. The guard is a jolly Russell Grant look-alike and we are sharing with three American girls, Mary, Jenny and Nelly. Nelly is on her very first railway journey, is exceptionally and disproportionately nervous and great to wind up. In fact she behaves like a five year old and isn’t happy at all. She believes us when Chris and I tell her that the bed sheets only go on one way round and that if she gets it wrong, the conductor will be forced to throw her off. Half way through changing all her bedding around, Chris and I just can’t believe anyone so gullable is still alive – surely, we reason, natural selection should have wheedled them out by now? We spend the evening behaving in a slapstick manner, making them all laugh and doing our best to spill Sprite all over the floor.
I fall into a restless sleep but seem to have no air on my cramped top-bunk. I discover later that the heater has been turned on full and I have been slowly cooking at the top of the carriage. My efforts to sleep are made doubly useless by the waves of steadily evaporating aftershave pouring forth from my rucksack, only inches from my head.
We are woken at 3am by Czech border guards and 15 minutes later by Slovaks. Unfortunately, Nelly seems to have lost her Hungarian visa. She spends ages searching through her baggage in an increasingly desperate fashion while the patient guards look on. She doesn’t seem to have any idea how to alleviate the situation and in the end her tears and sobs require the attentions of three of the other American girls, including one from next door who seems at least to know what’s going on, to calm her down, stroke her head and get her to fill in all the forms. She causes endless confusion and I don’t think I have ever met anyone so pathetically under-equipped in the common sense department to deal with life. We are mildly sympathetic to her losing her visa, it could happen to anyone, but we still find her position laughable. We liken her travelling in Europe to letting a blind rabbit loose on the M1.

Wake up to a breakfast of rolls and yoghurt in the hotel. The showers are freezing cold and there is no hot water in the sinks. We head into town, where the first stop is the Bulgarian embassy. We purchase here, for the princely sum of £28, our 30 hour transit visa for Bulgaria. We prefer it for the colourful stamp in our passports rather than working out that Bulgaria will probably be the most expensive country we travel through, at nearly £1 per hour. We try to get a Romanian visa too, but it is late into their opening hours and clearly they do not wish to promote the benefits of tourism in Romania beyond the bounds of having a decent lunch hour. We decide Romania can wait until Budapest.
In the Romanian embassy, also being hassled by the clerks, are two Scottish guys, Donald and Murdoh, from the Harris Isles. They tell us that they grew up with only 2000 inhabitants on their island and going to University was, for them, pretty much a culture shock. Our plans to get their addresses for a rural holiday in Scotland fail miserably as they decline our offer to join us in climbing a rather poor replica of the Eiffel tower overlooking the whole of Prague. I guess if your childhood was spent with no-one but sheep to talk to, you might well have a rather truncated view of the social world. From the top of the tower we get an expansive, if rainy view over the whole of Prague. But having exhausted our need to be in a high place, we move down to the town to find a Pivnice – Beer hall for lunch. The food is excellent, although we both burn our tongues on the garlic soup. The clientele is definitely middle aged German, so we fit right in. The waitresses seem to be wearing incredibly short skirts but that’s probably just the cheap beer.
We head off to Prague castle which we saw lit up across the river so magically last night. The church with it’s iridescent stained glass windows is very impressive but somehow the rest of the museum just passes us by. We don’t really have a feel for what the castle is used for now. It certainly isn’t ruined. Judging by the number of ‘armless’ guards we see around the grounds, it might be home to the president. Perhaps, in that case, we have arrived on the eve of a state visit. Certainly the workmen seem busy fixing up the place, to the extent of wheeling in new bushes for the gardens.
The rain is getting to us so we head for the centre and find a cinema. There for £1.10 we watch the Czech republic’s premiere of Mission Impossible. Of course, this film has added interest for the inhabitants of Prague since most of it was filmed right here. The film is wacky with great special effects. Later after a beer in a ‘village hall’ full of bus-loads of Americans, we walk the streets where Tom Cruise directed the film. It is a dark and misty evening and it seems surreal to be on the film set only minutes after watching it happen. Here, I can almost imagine these dark Eastern European MIF dreams actually happening. There is an atmosphere in the air tonight.
To capitalise on this, we have heard there is a Ghost Tour tonight in the main square and decide this will be great entertainment and a good way to find our way around the old streets. A monk and a choir-boy seem to be waiting for us to turn up and, speaking the minority language, English, we get bundled off with the monk and three Italian ladies with child-bearing hips. The toothless monk immediately takes most of the atmosphere and any expectation we might have had away by telling us that during the tour, two ‘ghosts’ will jump out at us and that we will be given plenty of opportunity to take photos. Waiting around while each story is told, first in Italian and then in English becomes very tiresome and there is little continuity to our Monk’s narration. The turbaned Turk who jumps out of a sidestreet at us clutching a manikin’s head is really rather poor and when the same guy, this time posing as a ghost barber, jumps out of a second street further on, Chris and I feel sure they’re winding us up.
Our Monk cuts the last threads of life from his presentation by telling us he would like to come to England and would we, by any chance, like to sell him some pounds or dollars on the black market? When, later, he tries to sell us wooden ‘Ghost Tour’ souvenirs, we become totally demoralised by the whole affair. At least we have spied some good bars on the way. We visit one, but the atmosphere is just lacking something. No-one seems to want to sell us a beer in the lively student place we are looking for. We leave for home with the sinking feeling that the Prague people have sold themselves to emulating the West in the only way they know how. It is unfortunate that they have chosen to do this the American way and a city which has the richest history in Europe now belongs to the country without any history at all. A poisonous visit to McDonalds on the way home seems to make it all particularly pointless and I walk home feeling cheated and remembering Krakow with fondness.

The night goes very quickly but it is brought to an end in the finest manner by Dirk’s hospitable offer of breakfast. Over the last few days we have been travelling, it seems, non-stop, without any permanent residence and the need for one is now surprisingly real. We have begun to feel like tramps but a visit to the Nord-bad communal showers goes a long way towards making us feel human again. We notice strikingly how very tolerant everyone is around here.
Thanking Dirk for his breakfast and apologising for the brevity of our stay we board yet another train, this time bound for Prague and charging a measley zuschlag of 8DM. We have grown so accustomed to paying through the nose that it doesn’t feel so bad this time. The route is very scenic as it passes through the rocky Sächische Schweiz (Swiss Saxony). For once, we are almost glad we are travelling during the day. On the platform we suddenly have board and lodging offers thrust in our face by a million Czechs. We decide that we know better and would rather hunt out somewhere recommended by LP. Anyway, we argue, places which have to advertise at the station must be desperate and thus unpopular. We head for the six-storey Hotel Standart and after getting lost once regret not having taken up someone’s offer at the station – at least they could have taken us there. However, we find it in the end and manage, with our YHA cards, to secure two nights accommodation for £7 per night each.
We are in a huge four bedded room, and for the moment at least, seem to be the only occupants. It is already 5pm and much of our day has been consumed by travelling. We head into Prague to find some food and the cheap beer we’ve heard so much about. We arrive at the Muzeum station and are surprised by the beauty of the buildings. Later, I am surprised by the tackiness of some of the shops which have been allowed to fill them and spoil such an impressive main street. I find an exchange shop and pay dearly for the fact that it is evening and all the respectable places are shut. We get approached several times, usually outside legitimate establishments, by swarthy men in leather jackets asking if we would like to partake in the black money market. You get supposedly good rates, but, we have been told, often sleight of hand quickly removes any apparent benefit.
In the hunt for food, we find a pizzeria which belies it’s tacky exterior and is actually in a large cellar with a vaulted ceiling. The beer is impressively cheap and we have a very nice meal except for the garlic bread which is intensely unpleasant. Later we try to look for one of Czech’s beer halls – reputedly better than Germany’s – but have no luck near the centre. All we can find are tasteless nightclubs and lap-dance shows which the triads – Japanese businessmen – seem to have come for. Even in the sidestreets where LP assures us there will be ‘buskers playing to the throng’ we find only closed shops and McDonalds food cartons being whirled around on the cobbles by the wind.
In a jazz club, which we imagine might be a little like the Galleria, there is a middle-age man sat on an electronic Wurlitzer organ playing seedy little tunes to an audience of four. Three of them must be his family and it is all we can do to stop bursting into fits of laughter as we come back up the stairs as quickly as we went down them. Eventually, when we come across Prague’s main square – a fairy tale of front lit Gothic spires – beer is at Western prices. Clearly tomorrow must be spent in search of a decent place to drink.

We arrive in Poznan after a restless, but not altogether sleepless night. After waving off the girls on their connecting train we have four hours to wait and decide to head for the centre and at least see a bit of this place, which neither of us planned to visit nor know anything about. On our way to the McDonalds – the one place we can guarantee warmth, cleanliness and free seats – we decide that in Poland zebra crossings in fact designate accident black spots. Polish drivers actually speed up as they come towards the white stripes and so we endeavour to avoid them at all costs. Our policy is quite successful although it generally means hurdling crash barriers and sprinting three lane highways. We hope that our insurance company does not consider these compromised road crossings as exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk.
We are both feeling vaguely cheated by the fact that in just a few hours time we will be back in Berlin, where we were on day three, with so much of our journey nullified by last night’s one minute mistake. We make long-winded jokes about boarding the cattle train to Minsk. Sitting with a carriage load of ruminating heffers seems infinitely more attractive than travelling back to Berlin. Our train is delayed by 30 minutes and our hypothetical philosophy a la Eagles for today becomes: ‘Poland. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’ An hour later, our train finally moves off. The conductor is a complete half-wit who rambles on in Polish at us until we eventually realise that he wants us to pay a supplement of 25zl to travel on this train. The only word of German he knows is Zuschlag – supplement. We try to play ignorance for as long as we can to see if we can convince him to give up. First, we try to move our bags to the next carriage, pretending to think he means that this carriage is reserved. Next, I search ponderously on the map asking “Wo ist Zuschlag?”, thinking he means the train changes at Zuschlag. Finally, when he turns out to be a jobsworth no amount of stalling will put off, we decide we’ll have to pay. Unfortunately, we have only Deutsch marks and I am holding a 20DM note in my hand, after being nearly ripped off in a “2 ham sandwiches and a mars bar for £14 buffet-trolley shocker”. The guard, presumably seeing the note I am clutching, claims the the Zuschlag is 20DM and we have little choice but to hand it over. Sick at the feeling of being ripped off, I do the maths and discover 25zl is only 14DM.
Chris does a sterling effort in the fight against bureaucracy by hunting down our man and forcing him to concede his tidy profit in a cowardly manner. No-one it seems, when faced with the kind of unswerving politeness demonstrated in such true Cambridge fashion by the hero Mr Cherry Pie, could possibly get away with ripping us off. Cantabs 1. Authorities 0. We come out with a 6DM refund and a cracking photo of a man troubled by a tail between the legs. We may have conceded a bump last night, but now we’re back on course. In an attempt to allow for a speedy get away should the authorities return, Chris tries to open the carriage window, but instead releases the emergency rip-cord by mistake. The window is now wide open and only held on by a loose piece of string but actually it serves a useful purpose because I’ve decided that my damp washing has been kept in the plastic bag in my rucksack far too long and must now release it’s odour.
The bumps course is not yet over. After the German border, the conductor changes to a conductress who enters our carriage and requests a further Zuschlag. How much is it? 6DM. Each. Bugger. Cantab 1. Authorities 1. In Berlin we have a definite and unwanted feeling of deja vu. A group of girls laugh at us with our huge packs on but we surprise them by understanding their ensuing German conversation and talk to them about their visits to England. At Berlin Lichtenberg we have to wait for our connection, tired and hungry. I choose the kebab option and Chris, the fruit. I spend a disproportionate amount of time on the phone trying to get BT to connect me to Dirk’s house. Dirk is a German student and friend of mine. Eventually when I get through, he seems phased by the whole idea of us coming to see him but agrees to let us camp in his garden tonight. I suggest we meet him later in the pub.
On the train to Dresden, things get worse. A guard on the platform tells us there is a Zuschlag of 32DM each and we have a sinking feeling that once again our mistake has cost us very dearly. I save the day and win our battle with a resounding Cantab 2. Authorities 1 by realising that you only pay one Zuschlag per day and that by producing our receipts we don’t have to pay anything more. Neither of us really understands how the system works, but only that it did and saved us a considerable amount of money. The sun shines as we speed away from Berlin and towards our original route, our mistake almost corrected. In fits of tiredness, and partly because the weather has been poor so far, we talk of accelerating our progress towards Greece and at least timing our journey so we get the last week there in the sun.
As ever, we start to feel our time is being pressured – particularly by our Sunday appointment with Joss in Budapest. We arrive exhausted in Dresden and navigate towards Böhmische Straße by memory from the last time I was here. On the way we get some food for tea. Sleep comes before meals though and after pitching the tent to the bemusement of Dirk’s neighbours, we crash for two hours. We discover, during this time, that Dresden is very possibly the noisiest place we have ever slept. Our slumbering has to contend with church bells, screaming children, motorbikes, grinders, hammering and general building racket. However, it is reassuring to note that Dresden, once a great city and destroyed by our own race, is so efficiently being rebuilt around us as we sleep. At 7pm, I wake feeling a little better. Chris is still exhausted. I set to work on the meat and pasta and manage a fine gourmet meal of spaghetti bolognaise. It is impressive only because we have just one gas ring. Afterwards, we crash again and it is 11pm when I finally awake to find the temperature has plummeted and to remember our 10.30pm rendezvous with Dirk. Luckily, he is still up so I go out for a beer with him while Chris remains asleep.

We rise stiff and stuffy from this sweaty room and quickly develop a need to escape the confines of the convent. An even better reason to leave soon presents itself : if you want breakfast around here, you cook it yourself. Today we are taking the train to Zakopane, a skiing resort in south Poland. After all, the weather is cold enough for snow. The journey takes four hours but it doesn’t seem to matter as the countryside is increasingly mountainous and the sun is beginning to shine. Our carriage is filled with loud school children who spend most of their time laughing at us. Their teacher offers us sweets and tries to get the children to speak English with us. We try not to be too sociable as we have postcards which, in our current social whirl, never seem to get written.
Zakopane lies in the foothills of the Tatra mountains which we can see rising majestic into the clouds, topped with bright white snow. We talk eagerly of photos with our flag, of snowball fights wearing Oakleys at the top and of the view we’ll get from the cable car on the way up. When we arrive, late in the afternoon, hunger seems more important than snow so we take our fill from the local big M. Then we take a bus up the side of the hill to the cable car. The driver is in a bad mood. At the cable car, our grand plans of snow and Oakleys are dashed somewhat by a sombre woman behind a glass counter who tells us that the last return cable car left at 4pm. It is now 4.20pm. We could go up now, she tells us, but we’d have to walk down and that takes three hours. I feel like shouting at her like she seems to be doing to us. On the way down, the same grumpy bus driver charges me twice as much as Chris. He speaks no English and I can hardly argue for fear that Chris might get charged double. I’m sure the two Polish girls sat opposite us are laughing at us and I sub-consciously check my flies just incase I’m walking around making a fool of myself. Today really is going badly wrong.
A funicular railway which goes up a hill, not a mountain, is a poor second best to the cable car and from the top we observe, across the valley and without admiration, the brilliant snow covered peaks we have been so grudgingly denied. In search of comfort food, I see some tasty-looking brown pastries being sold by old women at the side of the road. I readily accept when I am offered a taste but soon discover that far from being the delicate savouries I imagined, these foul things are rather salty cheeses with brown skin. I am not comforted. Racing back to catch the train home, we only just make it but we do get a carriage to ourselves. We while away the four hour journey discussing the mysteries of women and, as it turns out, we have plenty of time to get into detail. Our train is late and its schedule seems to bear no resemblance to any timetable we have. We end up in Krakow Plazow once more with only ten minutes before our connection to Dresden leaves from Krakow Glowny station. There are no connecting trains for half an hour so we dash outside and in a moment of inspiration decide to take a taxi. Amazingly, there is one waiting. We might still make it. Our driver agrees that 10 minutes is pushing it but seems amicable enough to giving it his best shot. As he floors the Granada both Chris and I reach for our seatbelts. With fiats scattering left, right and centre, we fly through the suburbs of Krakow, straight through the red lights and at one point almost taking out a queue of people leaving a tram. It feels like a high speed car chase and the adrenalin rush alone is worth the £5 fare. We race into the station with just a minute to spare, retrieve our bags from the left luggage and sprint under the subway to the platform. All this is much to the amusement of Nicki and Sue who just happen to be waiting in the luggage room for their train. Once again things really aren’t going well for us. Our train has literally just left as we bound onto the platform and we are forced to return dejectedly, lactic acid burning in our thighs, to purchase comfort food and plan a route which will get us to Dresden by tomorrow.
In desperation, we decide to join Nicki and Sue on their overnight train to Poznan, take a train to Berlin tomorrow morning and finally end up in Dresden by 2.30pm tomorrow. It’s not ideal, especially since we have wasted a couchette booking and will now spend the night on seats, but it’s better than sitting on the platform here all night and there aren’t all that many options at 11.30pm in a foreign city. In the train, we locate two empty carriages next to each other. We tie our carriage door shut with rucksack straps so that we don’t have to worry about being robbed during the night. This works very successfully, until new passengers arrive on the train in the middle of the night and seem to think our carriage is an empty one with a jammed door. Despite our shouts of “There’s no space!” and “This carriage is full!”, they seem to consider it a challenge, all night long, to try to get in.