Polish Trains

I got up early this morning to catch the 9am bus from Vilnius to Warsaw. The bus was scheduled to take 9 hours, but this wound up not being the case. It got in an hour ahead of schedule and we had roughly 90 minutes of breaks along the way. Also, Poland is currently an hour behind the Baltic states and Finland. So it was a little after 4pm when I got off the bus instead of 6pm as anticipated.

This was a good thing. Unlike most of my other travels, the bus did not let me off within walking distance of my travels. But from my Lonely Planet guidebook, I knew that a train station was nearby and that I just needed to take a short train ride east from there into the city center of Warsaw. Sounds easy enough.

First thing after I left the bus, I needed to get cash since, although both Poland and Lithuania are EU countries, neither use the Euro; they both have their own currency. I had only Lithuanian money, not zlotys. I didn't think to exchange any currency beforehand, which kept me from enjoying today's lunch break as much as possible. But within a few minutes, that was easily accomplished.

Finding the nearby train station was another matter. I went outside briefly and looked and didn't see anything nearby like a train station. I then noticed a stairway underground that led to a tunnel. But the signage wasn't very helpful. It threw some initials at me that didn't match anything I could decipher or what my guidebook mentioned. So I wandered down one long corridor that mentioned "Taxi" and led to another set of stairs leading outside.

I went up the stairs and looked around. I saw a street and it was clear I was on the other side of it from the bus station. But I still didn't see anything like a train station. There were a few more stairways, but they all looked like they went to different parts of the same street. (There was a similar set up in Riga near the bus station with an understreet tunnel having multiple stairways to different directions of the same street to save outside walking.)

So I walked all the way back examining the signage more carefully, still nothing. I went back outside and got my guidebook out, found the map, and looked for the direction of the train station from the bus station. Then I got out my mini compass (it was completely overcast, so the sun's placement wasn't any help) and figured out where the train station should be. I walked out further in front of the bus station and looked carefully through the trees and finally, I saw something like a train. But I couldn't see any way of getting from where I was to there safely. So I went around the side of the bus station nearer to the trains, but a line of fences and trees separated me from my target as far as I could see.

So it seemed some portion of the tunnel must lead to the trains or I'd have to go way around the block to reach the station, which I still hadn't seen. I went back in the bus station found a kiosk and asked the nice girl there if she spoke English. No dice. So I tried to explain in broken Russian that I wanted to know how to get to the trains. Eventually she made it clear which way to go down the tunnel -- a direction I hadn't tried.

By now it had been roughly an hour since I'd left the bus and moving my luggage around up and down stairs was beginning to become tiresome. So, I went down the tunnel, went up some stairs, and started seeing numbers for tracks. There was a schedule there that I found indecipherable since it was for people who wanted to go to various cities and knew where they were. There was a small window with a woman sitting inside. The signage by here was entirely in Polish and seemed to indicate she might be able to help with tickets or where to get them. But her space was very small and her window was left shut and looked very thick.

I went up, got her to open up her window, and asked if she spoke English. Nope. I tried to ask about tickets and she eventually made it clear I needed to go down a long hallway to get information and tickets. So I set off there.

After walking by 10 stairways for different tracks, I got to the ticket office. There were some more schedules there, so I checked them out to see if I could figure out which train to take. No, they were still written for more long-distance travelers and were basically inpenetrable for me.

There were three windows. One was for IC (Intercity) trains -- Poland's fastest link between main cities like Gdansk, Warsaw, and Krakow. So that wasn't for me. So I picked one of the other windows and waited in line. When it was my turn, I asked if the woman there if she spoke English. No. So, I asked if she spoke Russian. No again (or didn't want to seeing as she was clearly 50-60.) Convinced I was a lost case, she was trying to move me out of the way of the people behind me she could help; so I asked her if anyone else there spoke English. She motioned to the other two windows and dismissed me.

So I went back to my guidebook and looked up the exact station it said was closest to my hotel. I then went back to the schedules to see if I could find it or the nearby Centralna station (Warsaw's Grand Central). None of them mentioned it. So, I got into line again and went to the other non-IC train woman. I asked for the station, but mangled the pronunciation, so it took a few tries and some broken Russian on my part to explain that I wanted the station near to Centralna. She then gave me a ticket and I gave her some money. And I walked away ready to catch my train.

Then I looked at my ticket for which track to go to. As far as I can see there's no indication. The Polish word for track is "Peron" and there's nothing on the ticket that looks like that or a "P" or anything similar. There's an "N" with a 1 under it, a "U" with an "X" under it, a "POC" with a "0" under it and a "Kl." with a 2 under it. The last of which I took to mean I'd be in 2nd Klasse. Furthermore it didn't list the train number or time or anything else helpful for locating which vehicle to get on.

So, having figured out that two of the three women in the office didn't speak English and seeing lines at their windows anyway, I went to the IC woman. Of course, she didn't speak any English either. So I showed her the ticket I'd bought and asked her the track in Polish. She pointed in a direction. So I asked her in Russian which one. She said "drugoi" -- the "other" track. Since I'd just walked by 10 tracks, this wasn't helpful. So I specified "which number?" and counted a few starting cardinals to make clear what I wanted. She looked irritated and flustered and kept saying things that I didn't understand. Finally she spat out "Track Number two!". I could almost hear her finishing the sentence "dipshit!". I thanked her and went off to find track 2 confident I could find my train.

Track two was almost back to the bus station. So I went up there and there was a train boarding. I looked at its side to see if there was any indication of where it was going. Nothing. So I looked inside for any sign of upcoming stops. Nothing there either. The train looked old and had nothing I could see that indicated its number, direction, destination. So then I looked around for any signage or schedule that would let me know which train I should take or which train this was. There were no signs by the track, no TV screens, no printed fixed schedules telling me which train this was. So there's no way I was boarding it, especially given my inability to communicate with train personnel.

After it left, I walked up the platform a little and found the same indecipherable (for my purposes) schedule that I had seen inside. I figured out the direction my train should be going and decided to look more closely at the next train that arrived headed that way. That one was just as poorly marked.

The platform was outside and it was getting darker every minute. Also, it was cold and the wind was picking up, occasionally with a hint of drizzle in it. It began to dawn on me that even if I found the right train and got where I wanted, I still would have a cold walk to my hotel from that station. So, annoyed, hungry, baffled, and tired, I gave up on the local train and went to find a cab.

I have to book and take a train to Gdansk tomorrow. I'm hoping that goes a little more smoothly.