From Poland, we have the perfect plan to reach Germany.
We booked an overnight train that would take us to Würzburg and arrive the moment we have lunch and were all well rested. The German locomotive drivers' strike - planned for the very day our trip is to start, would you believe it - quickly throws a monkey wrench into our plans. Of course it's too late, not to mention to pricey, to book a plane, so now we have to scramble.
With a heavy heart I trudge to the train station in Warsaw to have my ticket refunded and ask for possible alternatives. Naturally, the customer area is packed with customers returning their tickets, so there will be another hour waiting in line. I am beginning to feel like Sylvester the cat chasing Tweety Bird. Not only will I not catch the bird, but the scolding hot water will be dumped over my head followed by Granny's frying pan rearranging my grille. As nice as the agents are, the process of returning the ticket is dreadfully slow and inefficient. Here, it's hard copy after hard copy, followed by stamps and signatures, copies, and more piles of paper to be shuffled. I am told I can still use the tickets for the first portion of my trip, Warsaw to Berlin. Excellent. That will give us a fighting chance to reach Würzburg once we arrive in Berlin, even if that means by rental car.
The next morning, we are up bright and early, check out of the hotel, and take a taxi to the train station in no time. We hop on the train with the kids and a bunch of suitcases, and somehow locate our seats. There is one lone Polish traveler who, upon seeing the two little boys entering the compartment, immediately leaves. If you are looking a for a peaceful, quiet trip, you will find the Titanic cruising down the Vistula river before there are any prospects of finding peace on a train compartment with little children (or traveling soccer fans). That traveler wanted no part of the boys, and nor do any others sticking their head in to look for vacancies, for that matter.
The sun slowly rises, and I look at the Polish countryside, wondering how many people have taken this trip before me, only in the other direction during WWII. This route must have millions of pages with untold horror stories, I am thinking. Too many people were probably wondering where they were going and whether they would ever return home again.
The villages we pass don't look much different than they did years ago when I first visited Poland. Only the vehicles and their plates have changed.
The first crisis presents itself when a voice announces, just short of the border, that Swiebodzin, Poland would be the final destination. Gulp. So much for Berlin. The passengers are herded to a Berlin bound bus outdoors, but that fills up quickly, long before we reach it. No backup bus means we are stranded for who knows how long. We shake our heads at this dreadful display of incompetence. One bus for an entire train? That is like putting up cardboard screens to protect your windows from a hurricane. Michael Brown, aka Brownie, formerly of FEMA, is now running the Polish rail system.
After weighing our options for a few hours, we decide to take a taxi to nearby Frankfurt on the Oder. We only need to get to Germany, I reason. From Frankfurt, I can still take my chances. At the train station in Frankfurt, we learn that a local train will be leaving for Berlin. YES! We arrive in Berlin a couple of hours later. Once in Berlin, we navigate our way through the Hauptbahnhof (an impressive building, to say the least. It makes most airports in the world look pedestrian by comparison). Then a taxi to the airport and to the rental cars. We rent a Renault Scenic, I nearly crash it several times before figuring out how the manual transmission works, and we're finally off, tearing down the autobahn at 100 plus miles per hour.
We reach Würzburg in three hours, or at ten p.m., we locate the vacation rental, and are off to la la land in no time. Of course the strike has ended earlier that day, so the strike lasted only a few days, but long enough to mess up our travel plans.
Somewhere my dad, a former union organizer, is probably pleased with the locomotive association.
0 comments