Road trip to Europe: part 3

Finally it rolled round to 6:40 at Berlin Ostbahnhof and we got on our train. It was one of those old types, with seperate compartments. There were none vacant, so we had to share with quite a grumpy man. It was very warm and comfortable on the train, and we were asleep within five minutes.

We were woken up by a ticket inspector, who wouldn't sell us through tickets to Poznan for some reason. He insisted on seeing our passports, but only sold us tickets to Frankfurt am Oder. I was too sleepy to argue, and didn't want to risk any more filthy looks from the grumpy man. I was soon asleep again, only to be woken at the Polish border by some gruff guards, demanding to see passports. They examined them quite closely, with smirks on their faces. I don't know why, as my passport photo is actually really good. Nevertheless, I was soon asleep again. The next time I was woken up was by a Polish ticket inspector, who spoke terrible German. The grumpy man had by this point disappeared, which made me slightly worried as he was travelling to Poznan too. I presume he got fed up of sharing his compartment with two sleeping girls. What a hard life it must have been for him.

At around 9:40 we pulled up into Poznan. It was a very bleak station, very grey and stark. The platforms were only raised about a foot from the level of the tracks, which meant you had to clamber down from quite a height. We had to cross onto the other platform, where the ticket office was, and I wanted to just skip accross the track instead of going up onto the ridiculously high footbridge. No one else seemed to be taking this shortcut though, and I knew that sod's law would dictate that I would be hit by a speeding train. In the ticket office there appeared to be no members of staff hanging around to answer questions, but luckily K was a little more sensible than me and actually checked the departure board. There was a train going to Gdynia, and we thought that this must go to Gdansk too. Sure enough, it was, and we climbed (literally) on board.

This train was dusty and quite full. We found a compartment with two seats, and settled down. When the ticket inspector came round, we faced a small problem in that we don't know a single word of Polish. A kind girl in our compartment- probably late teens or early twenties, looked a little like Maria Sharapova- translated for us, and we were able to get the tickets. Looking out at the Polish landscape, I was struck by one thing: the lack of colour. I'd read that Poland is a very green country, but to me it seemed only grey. Even the sky was grey. There were lots of allotments with sheds in various states of disarray. We passed through towns (grey, bleak, univiting), villages (cute, rustic, but still grey), fields (either plain mud or snow covered) and forests (some had snow on the ground- these were the most attractive). As time passed, the amount of snow we saw increased, to the point where the world seeemed covered in a white blanket. I was a bit worried that Gdansk would be too cold. When I went to Berlin three years ago it was really cold, -15 on some days. That was awful, you needed to wear two pairs of trousers just to get around. The train went quite slowly as far as Bydgoszcz, where most of the people sharing our compartment got out. Then it picked up some speed, and it didn't take all that much time to get to Gdansk.

However, as we pulled into Gdansk, there was no snow. Architecturally- at least from the train- Gdansk seemed nicer than Poznan, or Bydgoszcz. We got out of the train and hugged each other. Finally!! Outside the station we hailed a "Hello Taxi"- our first of many. We showed the driver the address of the hotel, which we had on a piece of paper. We didn't think our Polish pronounciation would get us anywhere. The Hello Taxi whisked us off to our much dreamed of hot shower....