Daytrippin'

Tarnow Train Station

Tarnów – This small town is located about 50 miles east of Kraków, making it a prime candidate for a daytrip via train. Almost as exciting as the destination was the voyage via a decrepit 1935, Poland-built train running on decrepit tracks. Chugging along at a snail’s pace, it took a whopping 90 minutes to cover such a short distance, making the Amtrak trip between LA and San Diego that I’ve used on occasion to visit my folks feel like the TGV. The town was very interesting because, similar to Krakow, much of its medieval center was spared the bombing and razing that have occurred in this part of the world over the centuries by the Swedes, the Tatars, the Germans, and others.

It was practically a ghost town - I was definitely the only American tourist there. The striking thing about Tarnów was that, due to its small size, the Jewish history of the town was much more in-your-face. There were memorial plaques, monuments, and evidence around every corner of how integral Jews were to the Tarnów community. Before the war, they numbered close to 40,000 and made up half the population. An interesting fact about the town is that it was the origin of the first transport of prisoners to Auschwitz.

Ruins of 17th-Century Synagogue

Zakopane – Most Poles rave about the beauty of the Tatra Mountains, which are located along the Polish-Slovakian border to the south of Kraków. This is a sub-range of the Carpathian Mountains. After spending a month in the urban flatlands, I decided it would do me some good to see snow-capped peaks and breathe the fresh mountain air. The bus ride to Zakopane, the main alpine village/jumping off point for outdoor adventures was filled with spectacular vistas as the bus ambled up and across the foothills to reach an elevation of about 2,500 feet. In the wintertime, people come here to ski; during the off-season there is hiking and trekking. All year around, people come here to drink the śliwowica (plum brandy/moonshine), which is more or less lethal with an alcohol content of between 70 and 80 percent.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to secure accommodation. After my unpleasant hostel experience in Amsterdam, I was trying to avoid another hostel so I roamed all over town knocking on doors asking for single rooms. None to be had. One of the pitfalls of traveling solo is that most lodging options are geared towards double-occupancy. So I ended up at the local hostel and it was WORSE than my previous experience. My 6-bed dorm was really an 11-bed dorm, as it was two interconnected rooms sharing the same door and the same bathroom. I just can’t catch a break with these dumps. Oh yeah, and the hostel was at-capacity because it is off-season and the other two Zakopane hostels are shut down until winter.

The Only Photo Evidence of My Presence in Zakopane

I hated all the snoring, stinky, know-it-all, in-your-business foreigners in residence with one exception. I met a really nice kid from Warsaw named Tomasz who was there killing time before starting his new job in November. He knows the town very well because he is there about a dozen times a year. Apparently there is a bus from Warsaw that, if booked far enough in advance, costs only 2 zloty, which is less than $1. And it's an 8-hour trip! You couldn't pay me to sit on a bus for 8 hours. Anyow, we hit it off and afound all kinds of trouble to get into surfing the local bars and sampling all the beers/vodkas/etc. that Poland has to offer. My plan to go for a hike and take photos of the refreshing mountain scenery the next day was shot to hell when I woke up with a sore throat and a hangover. I high-tailed it out of there on the first bus so that I could get back to the comfort of my own bed in Kraków and the cold meds/vitamins that I imported from home!