Planes, Trains and Metalheads

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the romantic experience that is the Czech and Polish railway system. Let’s begin with the Prague train “station.” TimeOut describes this transportation hub in the Czech Republic’s largest city as, “...dirty inside and out, it’s a haven for the homeless, junkies and cruising rent boys.” Charming. Thankfully, I was there bright and early Sunday morning, because, even though I’ve done things like walk out of clubs in NYC’s meatpacking district at 4:00 a.m. (before the meatpacking district was “hip”), this is not a place I’d want to be once the lights go down.
After frantically searching for the ticket windows (which were not by the track platforms but, instead, hidden in the metro station below) and buying a non-reserved ticket (mistake) to Krakow, I boarded my rusty, creaky train and promptly discovered that the only seating option was a plastic, pull-down seat in the center of the narrow train aisle. Accepting the fact that this would be my situation for the next five hours (five hours!), I sat my ass down (mistake), pulled out a book and began to read.

About one hour into the trip, we stopped in a small town in the Czech Republic that had just hosted a three-day, outdoor music festival with headliners such as Kasabian, Röyksopp and other various umlauted-named bands. Onto the train poured groups of hardcore metal-heads, ripe from what was surely an exuberant weekend of moshing, head-banging and air-guitaring in a shower-free, outdoor camp environment.

Don’t get me wrong – aside from the obvious assault on my olfactory senses, I had no problem being sandwiched between large groups of my fellow travelers and music aficionados. That is until I realized I had to pee and there was a rather large group of them sitting on the floor, blocking my access to the restroom. Oh, and did I mentioned they were stoned out of their minds and snorting bumps of heroin, which they poured onto their hands from rather convenient, tic-tac case looking containers?

Which brings me to….

Benefits of Group Travel #1: Protection from Heroin-Snorting Metalheads
Because seriously, if having a run-in with heroin-snorting metal-heads on the way to the train bathroom isn’t reason enough to have friends with you when you travel, what is?

After finishing my “business” and stepping back over my new “friends”, I returned to my plastic, pull-down seat, put away my bottled water and wept silently, making every attempt to empty my body of liquid substances so that I would not have to keep mixing with the locals. Luckily, within the next two hours, most of the metal-heads exited the train and I was able to breathe (literally) a sigh of relief.

Upon my arriving at the Katowice station in Poland, I disembarked to switch trains and met Shane from Nova Scotia. We narrowly escaped boarding a train back to the Czech border (no signage at the train station makes for some interesting travel shenanigans) and eventually boarded our train to Krakow. Turns out Canadian Shane has taught EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for more than 10 years, first in Korea and now, in Qatar, and so we swapped stories about the joys and stresses of teaching English language learners until we reached Krakow.

It was raining, so Shane and I shared a cab into town, where we separated to check into our respective hotels -- mine was Hotel Ester in Kazimierz, the former Jewish ghetto that served as the setting and location for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. After reuniting for dinner and drinks near Krakow’s massive town square, we called it a night and got some much needed sleep.