Hello from Krakow, Poland! I’m super excited to be here not only because everyone has been telling me I just have to come here, but because I’m part Polish. I’m wondering if I’ll get the feeling I had in Ireland, where I immediately felt a sense of belonging. I’m only here for a couple of days and only in this city, unfortunately, so I’m not sure if I’ll get the full sense of what the country has to offer. Still, I’m so grateful to be able to explore my heritage in a way that so many people never have the chance to.
I ended up staying in Berlin longer than I expected. I was just having too much fun, and why leave when you’ve got a good thing going? After finishing up my last post (which I’m sure you read and thoroughly enjoyed and showed to everyone you know, right?) I walked around the bit more, took a few pics of the city, and then headed back to my hostel to meet my American friend for dinner. We started at the hostel bar (which has actually the best staff ever, unlike the actual hostel) and then we found a restaurant, which had 5 euro happy hour cocktails and for some reason happy hour lasted all night. Don’t understand but no complaints. We had the nuttiest waiter, drank a bunch, drank at another bar, and then went home to my thankfully empty AF dorm room.
The next day we went on a super fun trip to Sachsenhausen- the second concentration camp built during the Holocaust. It was a fittingly cold, rainy, and dreary day, and it didn’t even occur to me to complain about it. I went with my American friend and a lovely group of girls -an American, a Brit, and an Aussie. Our tour guide was incredible: she was passionate, sober, and gave you your time and space. She knew and understood so much about the history and the camp, and she cared so much about doing whatever she could to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. Walking around the grounds was difficult and important, and I’m so glad I went. Towards the end of the tour, our guide told us that the part that always gets to her is walking out the gates: we chose to come here, and we are choosing to leave. The people that lived and worked and died there had no such choice. How lucky we are to simply be able to walk out the front gates.
After a long and depressing day, the group of us decided that the only thing left to do was get really fucked up. A jager bomb started the night off, and then we grabbed some schnitzel and headed back to the bar from last night because who can turn down 5 euro cocktails? We drank a lot there, got to know each other probably too well, and spent hours talking and laughing. We also ran into a couple other guys from our hostel, who accompanied us back to the hostel bar. By this point in the night, we were all pretty far gone, so we thought it was a good idea to do a boot. I don’t know how big a boot is or why we thought it was smart, but we passed that giant beer-filled thing around and drank the whole thing. And then we did another one. I only have vague recollections from this point on.
And here’s the part you should either skip over if you are my parents or tune in for if you want to enjoy the ridiculousness of my life.
Me and American Guy ended up in my empty dorm room, top-bunking it in the dark. Suddenly the door opens. It’s one of my goddamn roommates. “Uh…can you give us a few minutes?” “Nah, I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.” “Okay…well enjoy our noises!” We continued on in this manner for a few minutes, then decided we actually felt bad and left. Then we somehow decided it would be a good idea to go to a couch we had found a couple of nights previously, hidden under a stairwell in a low-traffic hallway. Plus, we didn’t see any cameras…so there we went.
We did that, and didn’t run into anyone the whole time which we thought meant we were successful. NOPE. As we were finishing dressing, there was a hostel staff member just…standing there. Staring at us.
“We’re done!” I said quickly, trying to run away. And then he started interrogating us. I honestly don’t remember everything he said, but he definitely asked us if we were both guests. We insisted that we were. And then he wanted to see our key cards to prove it. And he kept asking us questions.
Meanwhile, we were giggling because of course we were. We were drunk – drunk enough to be doing that, and then we got caught, and then we were being treated like children. So yeah, the situation was a little ridiculous and funny, but the guy of course thought we were laughing at him. So he brought us all the way down to reception, possibly to humiliate us? I’m not sure, but we didn’t really care. Like, either we get kicked out or we don’t. Just let us know either way, thanks. Normally they’d just tell us to break it up and go back to our rooms, but apparently this hostel has a giant stick up its ass.
And then the guy goes to get his manager (and at this point we were like wow fuck this let’s just find another place to stay) and tries to get him to yell at us I think? But the manager didn’t care at all (because I’m guessing this happens on a relatively regular basis) and just kind of chilled there while the first guy came over and stood over us.
“So…like what do you want us to say…?” I was angry and completely out of fucks at this point.
“You could at least apologize,” he said huffily.
We looked at each other. And then together: “Okay…sorry?”
He stormed off.
And that was it.
I was still mad, so we went for a walk and I accidentally ate some pork because I thought it was chicken. I a little felt better after ranting for awhile, and a lot better after realizing what a hilarious story this would make.
The next day I wanted to die of tiredness, but we got up, found a great breakfast spot, and wandered. We found this awesome park with statues that made me laugh (there was a TURKEY!) and drank Gluhwein at a Christmas market and designed and made our own chocolate bars. But we were so exhausted that we both almost fell asleep waiting for our chocolate to freeze, so we headed right back to the hostel for some WiFi. We ate dinner and drank a lot because it was our last night, and after a few hours I headed off to the bus station, somewhere in the grey area between tipsy and drunk.
This bus, though. I couldn’t book it for the actual day of the journey: the only way I could find it on GoEuro (this app where you can search different ways of getting around Europe) was when it was suggested to me as an “alternate date;” when I tried to search the actual date of the journey, it didn’t pop up. And then when I was trying to look up my reservation before I left it was like lol this reservation number doesn’t exist and then my ticket didn’t even tell me where the bus stop was. Eventually I figured it out but it was a huge pain in the ass.
After waiting for my connecting train to get to the bus station for about 20 minutes just to find that it was cancelled, I walked the rest of the way to the bus station, and then I couldn’t figure out which number bus I was going on. It was seriously so poorly organized. It took a lot of wandering -good thing I had left so early- and I found the stop right as the bus was pulling in. The didn’t do anything to check us in. Nobody even asked to look at my passport, which was the first time that happened to me on an international bus journey. The bus was almost full, but I did get a seat- they were EXTREMELY small seats and really uncomfortable. I tried to sleep but I had a seat buddy so I didn’t get a whole lot of rest, and it didn’t help that the driver was exclusively speaking Polish so I had no idea where we were and would get paranoid I was missing my stop. It was supposed to be a direct journey, but I think something might have happened with the bus, because we got herded off of one bus and onto another at about 8:30 am. And then we didn’t move for like 45 minutes. We got into Krakow over two hours late, and I’ve been resting and dealing with some stuff ever since.
The stuff I’ve had to deal with is stupid bullshit stuff like health insurance and ATM card shit. Things that would be a lot easier if I had a phone that I could call people on, but I don’t have minutes, only data. So then I have to tell my mom all the information and have her do it, so then I feel bad making her deal with my things. It’s made me a little stressed about going back to the States. Going back to real life. As it turns out, the stuff that makes me the most anxious is well, that. And I think that’s one reason I’ve been so calm on this trip; I haven’t had to deal with any of it.
The thing is, I don’t want to go back to real life. I want my life to remain exciting and scary and interesting. I want to try different ways of living. I actually want to explore more of the US: I haven’t been far west or south yet, and I’d like to have a go at those. I need to surround myself with things that keep me calm.
But like, I’ll also eventually need to make some money, so there’s that.