Exploring Poland

Thought I would take a few moments and give a brief report from the road. I took a 20 hour ferry ride from Helsinki to Gdansk, Poland on Tuesday night. There were a few engine problems on the trip, but otherwise it went well. I had two complete strangers as bunkmates. One was an older Finnish gentleman who spoke little English, but he was very friendly. The other guy was named Gregory and he comes from Poznan, Poland. Gregory was a bit flakey. He was a yoga instructor who sold music CD's to make money. He had been in Finland for 3 weeks looking for a wife, but all attempts appeared unsuccessful. He said he will save his money and go back and try again next year. He had some wild travel stories and some that were very entertaining. He told me that 4 guys once "stole" him in Dubai, so he was never going back there. He talked alot about the energy in objects and the reason that the bad guys die in so many American films is because they have bad karma. I nodded my head in agreement and then checked my watch to see how many more hours I had to travel with Gregory. I will talk in later posts about some of the other characters I have met on this leg of my journey.
After arriving in Gdansk, I browsed around for a few hours and then bought a train ticket for Krakow. Several things struck me immediately about this area of Poland. Very few people spoke English and there were some very rough areas in the city. I tried to keep my wits about me and not look lost even though I felt somewhat out of my element. The price of the train ticket was dirt cheap and it took only a minutes on a Polish train to figure out why. The train cars were filthy and the bathrooms reeked something terrible. There were no services or food/drinks on board, so I knew it was going to be a long night. AND IT WAS! I will report on this leg of the trip next time. I do have some great pictures to post when I get back to the states. That is all the computer time that I have left for now at the hostel here in Krakow.

Lights out.