After another night in the very nice Wagon Market hotel/hostel we got up in the morning and walked half a block to the bus station to catch a bus to Lysa Polana, the border village, actually just the end of the line. It was a clear cold morning and it had snowed the night before in the higher elevations. The mountains were specatacular. I stood staring at them and watching my breath form clouds! It was fantastic! I was overwelmed!
The bus was a little late but not too bad. When it pulled in, it almost had a wreck... not a good sign! The first part of the ride followed almost the same route as the the train the day before, but the we went on around the mountain past small villages, ski areas and mountains and forests. There were more spectacular views of the mountains than i can possilby mention. It was great.
We were dropped off in a slightly plowed parking lot, there was about a meter of snow on the ground. Around the buildings and parking lot was heavy forest. No one was around and only a couple of buildings here and there. There were two kind of outhouses, with the door partialy blocked by the large snow drifts. The only human in sight was the older woman in traditional dress cleaning the outhouses.
It seemed obvious to us that we should walk down the road opposite of where we came from, to get to the border -- but i walked up to the driver and asked, "Polska?" really just for the experince of it. I thought it was a poininent statement. He smiled and pointed up the road.
We walked maybe 200 meters up the road past two abandoned snow covered buildings to a bridge over a small river. We figured that was the border -- but we wanted to eat lunch first, so we walked a couple of hundred meters to our left and plopped down in the snow and ate. On the other side of the river a steep cliff rose up perhaps 500 meters or more, very dramatic. The river was small and i made a snowball, figuring it would be amusing to throw a snowball into another country -- but when i saw the armed guard walking along the forest trail on the other side i figured any projectile violating the border might be misconstrued.
As we walked back to the bridge we saw a Polish and Slovak flag on the other side of the river. We crossed the snowy bridge in the forest hand in hand. It was exciting. There was a small Building with a wall down the middle. The wall ran through the heater, the desk... everything. On one side was the Slovak passport control and on the other side the Polish. We didn't get a Polish stamp, unfortunatly... and the Polish guy examined our passports for a long time... enough to get us nervous.
The we were in Poland. We walked past a sign saying only one gun per person, please -- things ARE different in Eastern Europe from Western Europe. We crossed the parking lot and tried to figure out the bus schedule -- as we were staring at it, a bus arrived and two guys with skis and snowboards got off. I asked the driver, "Zakopane"? (That was where we were going.) and he said "Nie Nie Nie Nie" which is how the Poles say no... i remembered that from 1990. One of the guys who had gotten off the bus spoke to us in very good English and explained where we should wait for the bus and how long it should be. He was very very nice... the first Polish person we met. The bus came in about 5 minutes and the ride was wonderful... many small beautiful villages, like in Romania. And like in Romania there was a very unique style to the houses as well. The bus was a local bus and people got on and off, including schoolkids, without staring at us at all.
We arrived in Zakopane, a tourist town in the mountains (now on the flats on the OTHER side of the Tatras!) and were attacked by people trying to rent us rooms for the night. We walked to the tourist info, which wasn't helpful, and on across town (still hard walking on the icy streets!)... Finally Cheryln stayed with the packs while i continued clear to the other end of the small town and searched out the hostel, which wasn't easy to find! But it was interesting and cheap and nice. On our way to checking in we passed a hotel which advertised saunas, and we figured we would have to do that. It would be VERY much appreciated!
We were wondering what was happening in Seattle and bought a Herald Tribune. There were people with gas masks on and police in riot gear. Wow! This was our home town. There were a couple of Polish people who had just finished a grueling 4 day hike in the mountains in our hostel room who we were talking to.
The guy asked us if the newspaper was from the USA and i explained that it was published in France by American companies. Then Cheryln pointed to the photo and said that was our hometown. He turned to his companion, pointed at the photo and said, "Look, WAR!" It was a strange experince. We felt very far from home in a number of ways.
We went out walking, and i, stupidly, neglected to put my motion sickness armbands away in my everything bag. I just left them in the pocket of my coat --- so sometime during the afternoon one of them fell out when i pulled out my hat. I can make it with only one probably, but busses are very difficult without the armbands. Just goes to show why organization is so important.
We wandered the tourist section of town (dreaming about our sauna!) and we kept passing these tables where people were selling... SOMETHING. We couldn't figure out what... it looked like a filled bread, but after some serious examination (which wasn't easy because if you showed interest, they started the hard sell -- in Polish of course) we decided it was very finely scuplted smoked cheese. The detail was amazing. Eventually, after a trip to the base of the EXPENSIVE funecular railway, we went to a booth thinking we might buy. There were two people there and we couldn't really tell if they were together or competing. We looked at the woman's wares and she spoke to us in Polish, but soon the man distracted our attention. Eventually he pointed to the three different styles and said, Cow, Sheep, Goat. That was enough for us and we got the goat cheese. It wasn't half bad!
We wandered looking for something to eat because we were about to collapse and finally went into a greek place, where we got something vaugely vegitarian, but not very tasty and VERY expensive!! (about $10 for two people). The guy was very nice and we had an interesting conversation (he spoke English) because he was from Turkey and didn't understand the way we nod for yes and shake our head for no!
Five minutes after we left we walked past a lovely looking building with an Alpine theme and a sign saying Bar Mleczny. I had heard about Milk Bars (we also heard the translation Cheap Bar) when i was in Poland in 1990, but never went to one. They are supposed to be cheap, yummy, veggieish places to eat. We went in and it felt very nice... but it seemed to be closing. We ordered a Kakao and the woman (who spoke no English) said they had none, but offered warm milk which we accepted. We were very bummed that we didn't eat there instead!!!
So we went to ask about the sauna. The woman there, who spoke only broken English, told us that it would take 40 minutes to warm up and we could reserve it for 2 hours for 12 zl (3 bucks). It turned out it was a PRIVATE two person sauna! We were excited, went to the hostel and collected our things and returned to the hotel, went down into the wonderful looking sauna and the maintence guy told us that it had broken and wasn't going to work today... but we could come tommorow! We were very bummed. They gave us a newer Hearld Trib as a consolation prize. There was another sauna about 3 km away, and we started to walk there, but gave it up after awhile. We walked in the snowy park for a while looking at the stars and the ski lifts, grabbed a (cheaper) bite and went back to the hosetl.
We slept well anyway, except for this WEIRD old guy who got up at 3am and turned on the light and packed because he was certain it was 7am. The next morning we walked to the train station, were attacked again by the people who didn't know we were leaving and caught our train to Krakow.
© Copyright Mark Canizaro 2000
