6/30/15
Prague, Czech Republic → Kraków, Poland

The last few days I had been having trouble sleeping, and it seemed my best hours were in the very early mornings. Night was becoming a long period where I stared aimlessly at the ceiling in the hot apartment, worrying about nothing. It felt like I had just fallen asleep when Ash shook me awake to catch our bus to Kraków, Poland. I had even slept through her frantic bag-packing episode.

We were visiting Kraków for the sole reason that it was the closest big city to the Auschwitz concentration camp. I’d been obsessed with learning about World War II and the Holocaust as a kid, and I’d read tons of books on the death camp. I remember being intrigued by how horrifying the world could be. The fact that these stories of murder camps and one man convincing a whole country to commit genocide were true was actually unbelievable to me. I was drawn to the stories of survival in particular.

When we decided to visit, we decided there was only one Airbnb in the small town of Oświȩcim. Not only did the Airbnb not match any of our requirements, Oświȩcim was also directly outside of Auschwitz. Something told me we would want to get as far away as we could after experiencing the evil of the camp. We didn’t know much about Kraków, but we did know that there was only one bus that went there from Prague.

The bus station where we would catch said bus was two miles from our Prague Airbnb, a cakewalk. This trip had already drastically changed the way we looked at a few miles. Back in Denver, a two-mile distance was surely an Uber ride. Now time would be the only reason we wouldn’t walk when we saw two miles on the map. On the way out, it was nice to say good-bye to the city in person. Taking the metro would have been like breaking up with someone over text message.

We always built in about an hour of “mistake time” in case we took a wrong turn somewhere or couldn’t find the entrance. Our trek was mistake free, and we sat down at gate number 9 and watched as super charter bus after super charter bus, similar to our FlixBus vehicles, drove by. Unfortunately, FlixBus did not go to Kraków from Prague, and we had to venture elsewhere in the world of European buses.

We laughed at the sight of a raggedy-looking bus that entered the station. The pink-and-purple-striped vehicle had clearly been born in the nineties. (It should have died there.) All of a sudden the pink murder mobile banked a hard left and started approaching us. Oh God … please no, I thought as the driver parked the wretched vehicle at our gate.

“You go to Kraków?” the driver asked as he stepped off the creaking bus. He was a prototypical middle-aged Polish man. Bald, bold, and blunt. Two other Polish men were on the bus with him.

“Uhhh, yeah, but you know, our bus is probably coming soon,” I responded, still in denial that one, this bus was running, and two, that he expected anyone to get on it. I turned slowly and shot a quick glance at my ticket to check the name of our bus. When I looked at the cardboard sign hanging by a single piece of Scotch tape on the windshield of the Polish man’s bus, my stomach hit my throat. The letters match up.

The Polish driver looked at my ticket that I was trying to hide and said, “Yes. This bus,” and ushered us on.

Ash and I looked at each other as if to say, This is our only option, shrugged, and boarded the putrid-smelling bus for our journey into the heart of Poland. We knew this wouldn’t be a luxury ride, but there was no way to predict the awfulness of our next nine hours.

My first reaction was this must be hell. Dark, hot, and for people that made a really horrible decision in life. We sat down in seats 25 and 26, next to a band of misfits. Sprawled across the backseat, snoring, was a man with a blanket on, whimpering like a dog having a bad dream. In front of us was a sweaty man with sunglasses on; he had greasy hair and a very smelly neck brace. I only knew this because his seat was so far back. We were far from comfortable, but I figured I could use the nine-hour drive to get some work done. I searched the seat for the outlet the website had promised. I couldn’t find anything but trash and flies and went to ask the only one of the three Polish guys who spoke a lick of English where the outlets were.

“No outlet, sorry,” he said harshly, with no explanation, and turned back to the other two Polish men who came with the bus. I think they were a family; they were talking pretty harshly to one another and all looked rather mean. The back two rows, we noticed, were made into beds with sheets and pillows. I though this must be a glorified RV. I was assuming they just made their living driving people around on this piece of shit. No big deal. I have a few hours until the computer dies, I thought, and headed back to our row, where Ash was trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. I knew this situation was bad when Ash didn’t fall asleep immediately. She could sleep in a Dumpster.

I needed the code for the Wi-Fi to access Google docs and do some work, so I headed back to the Polish circle and asked them what the Wi-Fi code was. When the English-speaking one told the others what I had asked, they started laughing. I am unfamiliar with Polish customs, but I am going to go out on a limb and suspect they weren’t laughing with me.

I hadn’t slept last night, so I figured I would try to work on that instead. Before I went to sleep, I went to relieve my overfull bladder. I had drunk a ton of water, trying to hydrate before the ride. I stumbled up the moving vehicle and opened the semi-broken door to the bathroom and found what looked like a bedroom closet. Clothes on hangers lined the small space, and the toilet had been removed altogether. The last thing I heard before falling asleep while holding my bladder shut was someone with broken English from the front of the bus, yelling, “Next shtop, Brno, tree howers.”

Ash sat across from me on an empty row of seats so we could sprawl out. I dozed in and out of awful sleep. At one point, I dreamed of someone tickling my face. I woke up to find that two flies had landed on my forehead. How do flies get on a moving vehicle like this? I realized I was also sweating profusely. There was clearly no AC on this rolling hellhole, and the seats were made out of that fuzzy material that trapped heat and was often found in old vans. This was a nightmare.

We sputtered to a halt at a city bus stop. There were people waiting there, but they were clearly waiting for a different type of bus, probably a bus that didn’t reek and that had a bathroom. One of the family members got off and started to talk to the people. I watched as the others peered through the curtain at the representative outside. The brother (I’d assumed by this point the men were brothers) outside was negotiating with the people, and after a minute or two, a couple of them boarded the bus and handed him some cash. In anticipation of these additions to our crew, Ash came back to her seat next to me. Sure enough, a woman sat down in the seat across from us and began eating.

Suddenly I smelled smoke. I knew this thing was going to break down; I knew it without a doubt. I hadn’t expected it to light on fire, though. To my surprise, we didn’t slow down to pull over. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed that our bus was clearly on fire. The woman across from us kept eating, the man in the back kept sleeping, and the neck brace guy … kept neck bracing. Finally I stood up to see what the deal was and saw the smoke; it was coming from the driver’s cigarette. His window unopened. We continued to Brno.

When we finally pulled into Kraków, we hit a bump at the station, and the door of the bathroom/closet fell completely off the hinges and hit the ground. This bus is literally falling apart. We quickly exited to gasp fresh air. Welcome to Kraków.

I had not done a ton of research on Kraków. We really didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect this massive, immaculate Kraków Główny station that dually served as a mall. This was easily the cleanest and richest-looking station we had been in yet, and we walked, dumbfounded, through the massive domed area. We passed a nice grocery store, luxury boutiques, and even an H&M that I made sure Ash missed by pointing at a cute baby in the other direction. We had imagined Kraków to be a cold, desolate Polish farmland.

We went outside and started walking through nice quiet roads with lush green parks and cool boutiques. We entered the Old Town by passing a protective castle barrier. I could feel the history of this city with every structure we passed.

After entering the city center, we found our Airbnb for the next few days. It was located in the very center of Kraków and on a classic European street with an ice cream shop, jewelry store, coffee shop, café, and boutique. Kraków looked like it had all the good qualities from the other cities without the negative ones. There were just enough people to make it busy.

Our apartment on the fourth and top floor of the building was amazing. There was a washer and a massive king-sized bed. The bedroom window had a view down onto our street. I took two showers, because the first one just didn’t feel adequate enough after that bus ride. I felt like I had cigarette smoke infused into my hair and beard at this point.

We found the best Italian place in Kraków and ventured in that direction. It was only 0.4 miles away, and the walk led us right into the main square. The large open space was as vibrant as anywhere we had been. It is actually one of the largest open squares in all of Europe. There were street performers, shoppers, diners, locals, and tourists crowding the square in an orderly chaos. We had that feeling we had in Prague, where all of a sudden we felt a jolt of energy from all the people enjoying their evenings.

The two towers of St. Mary’s Basilica and the Town Hall Tower overlooked the square like proud parents. We promised to spend more time here, but our stomachs would not permit it at the moment. We arrived at Ti Amo Ti.

An Italian family owned the highly rated restaurant, and we were intent on checking it out. We sat down, a little unsure of what to expect, and ordered two big Polish beers called Zywiec. We started the meal with a platter of meats and cheeses that came with pizza crust bread on a giant slab of wood. When it arrived, I looked to Ash and saw her whisper, “Shut the fuck up,” under her breath. I was proud of her discretion.

We happily ravaged the food, but there was simply too much to finish. Our young Polish waiter brought out diavola pizza with homemade tomato sauce. After consuming all we could, I decided if I were ever on death row, this would be my last meal.

Kraków had been the biggest surprise of the trip thus far. We were staying right downtown for fifty dollars a night, and had just witnessed a gorgeous city square and eaten a meal sent from heaven for twenty-five dollars. Speaking of heaven, it may have been the hell we went through to get here that made it all so good.