Busy Monday morning.
Because my brain doesn’t want to shut down properly, I am really good at getting stressed during my sleep. Then I just jump for the bed and brutally get things started, feeling like I’ve been ran over by a truck. I accidentally woke up at 5 am thinking I had to immediately plug my laptop & phone, finally post those articles, do an urgent thing for work, transfer a few series to my new laptop, book my train reservations and get on a train to Krakow. A little overwhelming for a Monday morning.
People are not joking when they say you have to plan your interrail trip well ahead of time. Reservations are not always easy to make and trains are never on the time showed on the websites (I had to wait three hours for a train today). Sometimes you have to book it on the local train company’s website, sometimes in a real-life railway station (but only on the international desks). Sipping on a chai latte (to reduce any caffeine related unnecessary stress), in my now favourite huge shopping mall, I was trying to juggle between my work and the organisation of the trip, in a very constrained time.
But during this relatively hard moment, I’ve managed to :
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Get my train reservations for the next three trips : Krakow, Prague and Budapest.
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Get rid of the work I had to do this morning.
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Send some articles here
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Find an accommodation for Krakow and Budapest (thanks Dora).
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Hop on a train to Krakow and leave this damned city.
And suddenly I felt a ton lighter. My bad-ass attitude, the sunshine and my smile are back and it feels sooo good. Warsaw really did a number on me. Laugh at me all you want, Polish friends, I don’t mind. It seemed to me like London, with non-sensical transports and grumpy Polish people who are not happy you’re speaking English.
Direction Krakow then… I’ve loved it the moment I stepped out of the train. Krakow hasn’t suffer, as much as Warsaw, from the War and the generally über-tragic Polish history. It’s got lovely parks and beautiful old baroque buildings and is a lot more « walkable » than Warsaw. I had to make a few changes to the itinerary in order to keep a sane mind and body. I won’t be stopping in Brno or Bratislava but I’ll be staying longer in Prague and Budapest. So nevermind, I’m more than happy with that, especially because I already have some drinking buddies in Budapest thanks to my Birthday mate Dora.
Let’s rock Krakow !