Warsaw to Bangkok

This corner of the web will be dedicated to my travelogues from 2004’s Warsaw to Bangkok excursion. (Note: IMHO, it only gets really good at St. Petersburg, so if you find the early stuff less than stellar, please skip forward).

And so it Begins
There is a lot I could say about the pre-trip preparations. They were extensive, but perhaps that aspect of a six-month voyage is the most personal, so I will launch right into the journey itself. I wanted to see some places in Europe, start the trip light. So I ended up starting in Poland, in part due to the prodding of my friend Radek.

The first thing was the debacle known as the Hindu Meal. Word on the street was that if you order special meals for your flights, you get better food. I’m not one of the airplane food haters, but I thought I’d give it a go. I ordered the Hindu meal on my LOT flight from Toronto to Poland. I had visions of chowing down on chick pea curry or palak paneer while everyone else was suffering with some sort of potato or pasta dish. Boy was I wrong. LOT, quite frankly, could use some sensitivity training or at least some culinary training because their version of a Hindu meal included two forms of meat, and no spice whatsoever. I mean less spice than a typical airplane meal. It was absolutely ghastly.

Otherwise the flight was without incident and I arrived safely in Warsaw. My bag, however, did not. Because I was due to meet my friend Per in Vilnius the next week, I was on a rather tight schedule. Warsaw wasn’t in my plans at all, and the net result was that time spent there was time cut from other Polish portions of the itinerary.

My bag at first had not even left Toronto. Then they sent it to Zagreb, then to Prague. It took two full days to arrive in Warsaw.

Arrival of my Backpack
So immediately, my traveling skills were put to the test. I got a public bus into town and headed for the railway station. I had expected to depart almost immediately for Wroclaw and thus had done no research on Warsaw hostels. Lonely Planet? I like reading them, but hauling them around while traveling is actually a nuisance, and I don’t like being tied to their recommendations anyway.

But the train station I figured would have some sort of tourist information and sure enough I picked up a couple of good hostel options. I ended up going to Nathan’s Villa, which was brand new. I was booked at their hostel in Krakow and now had to change my reservation so I figured that was easily the best choice for me. It turned out to be a great hostel. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, my tunes, a spare shirt and a baseball hat. I bought soap and shampoo. I also bought lunch. The hostel has a great fully-equipped kitchen and I made my own food. I thought I’d do this a lot of my trip but as it turns out this was a rare occurrence. But with my own tunes on the stereo and my own food in my stomach, I felt pretty good. I bought some beer and found the fridge was full of other people’s beer. So the hostel was rocking that night with one of the best crowds of people I’ve met on the road.

The next morning I had inexplicably set my alarm but slept through it, pissing off the other 15 people in my dorm. D’oh!

Warsaw I found to be a fun city. There aren’t any particular attractions but to me that was part of the appeal. It was pleasant, old, and interesting without being heavily touristed or centered around a big public square like most cities in Europe are. It was mainly a wandering kind of town, and I was happy with that.

When my backpack finally arrived, not only did I change my clothes immediately, but I also made plans to head to Wroclaw. The next morning, I did just that. The sun was shining, the doughnuts at the train station were terrible but dirt cheap, and life was good. The train rolled through the countryside of central Europe and it felt good not just to be on vacation but to actually be moving. The mere act of taking my backpack off of my shoulders, and hoisting it on the luggage rack was accompanied by an amazing rush. I’d talked with people in the hostel on my first night about my trip. It seemed strange at the time, that I had barely arrived on the road and had basically no idea what was in store for me. Now I was starting it for real.