Fulbrighting in Germany!: The Poland Express

Saying goodbye to the family on the last night they were in town was extremely hard. We had such an amazing time together in Berlin, and I was so sad for them to head back across the Atlantic without me.

But I had scheduled a trip with 3 of my Fulbright friends to Krakow, Poland the very next morning. And it was so perfect, because I was able to hop onto the Poland Express with friends I hadn't seen since the end of September. All was very exciting as we set out on our journey, and I was so glad that I wouldn't be in Berlin by myself immediately after my family left.

I made it to our platform just in time at the Hauptbahnhof, gave hugs and hellos to everyone, and then we boarded the train - we were off on a 10 hour adventure!

The assigned seating was a bit tricky, with shuffling around, exchanges in Polish and German, and a little bit of confusion. But we finally settled in and began catching up on our Fulbright lives (Ashlan is living in Mainz, Marty in Stuttgart, and Shane in Munich). The 10 hours crept by pretty slowly as we wound our way through the Polish countryside. Around lunchtime we realized that the train did not have a snack car, and I began to panic that we wold not be able to eat anything for 10 hours! We pulled together all of the contents of our bags to look at our prospects for lunch - some tortilla chips, wine, bananna-chocolate granola bars, water bottles, and a tangerine. Dividing the contents, we saw passengers around us unwrapping homemade sandwhiches and other lunches. We were content for the time being and continued on our adventures.

At the next stop we were shaken in our seats as we felt a sort of collision from behind - something had definately hit the train. No one else seemed to be alarmed by this except for the 4 Americans. We started again on our journey, except for this time several people were getting out of their seats and wandering around on the car. Each of the passengers returned with hot cups of coffee, glasses of beer, and other snacks - we had hooked up to a snack car at the last stop!!

After stocking up on plenty of snacks, we settled in for the remaining 5 hours ahead. When we finally arrived in Krakow, I was ready to be off the train and begin exploring. We started rolling and backpacking along the cobble streets to our hostel, passing through the city center. There were so many sites already, and I was excited to experience Poland!
The hostel we checked into was really nice. We unloaded all of our gear, bundled up (it was so cold the entire trip!), and headed out for dinner and then drinks. With no Polish speakers in the crew, we always akwardly tumbled into a restaurant, cafe, or bar and just sort of starred at each other until someone had the nerve to just start speaking English. We were mostly understood throughout the trip, but each interaction was always a little unnerving.

We started out the firts night with great food and a lot of fun, which carried into the next few days of site seeing and exploring. We saw the market square, a Christmas Market, a castle, two grand Cathedrals, a giant statue of a head, the old Jewish Quarter, the salt mines and lots of other famous landmarks. Our time flew by so quickly, and we were back on our 10 hour train ride to Berlin before we knew it. I have lots of pictures of the Krakow kraziness : )