Trains, Trains, Trains

Day 227
The plan for the day was to wake up early and go to Brno in the Czech Republic. The problem was that there weren’t any hostels, the cheap hotels were full as were all the couch surfers I contacted. I think this is why I kept hitting snooze, my roommates were at class at this point, and just ignored the problem for a few hours.

When I did wake up I grabbed my guide book and the hostel computer. I tried all sorts of things in Hostelworld and the train website. I even looked at going back to Dresden for a few days, it was only four hours away. There wasn’t any hostel availability though. In the end I went with three nights in a little Czech town called Olomouc that I had never heard of.

I had some time to kill and went to the post office to send a package home as well as send off my absentee ballot. When this was done I felt like I had done my job as an American. There was still some more time so I went to the mall and picked up some food for the journey and used up that last of my zlotys on a book.

There was some confusion in buying my ticket. I couldn’t find the international office for the life of me. Once I did it was ok though. I spent pretty much the entire ride reading a fabulous book called Dreamland about 1910 New York. It was a great way to kill the eight hours it took me to get to Olomouc.

Once in Olomouc I was greeted by Francis, part of the Australian couple that runs the fabulous Poets Corner Hostel. In minutes it became one of my favorite places ever. Everyone had gone out for someone’s birthday and she made a few calls trying to figure out where they were. In the end she figured that they were in an underground bar and didn’t have any service. She gave me a great map though and I set off to the places looking for a large group of English speakers.

I never found them. At the first bar I went, a rock climbers bar with a free rock wall, I ran into two Americans who were also at my hostel and had gotten separated from the group. We ended up meeting a few locals and heading to a different bar. After some nice Czech beers we were ready to call it a night. One of the Czech guys was a bit crazy and gave us an impromptu tour that included where all the wastebaskets were. Luckily he also told us where to get the best kababs.

The American guys had to get some stuff out of their rented car and I headed up to sleep.

Gnoming

Day 225
I woke up refreshed but definitely later than I would have normally been awake. Stupid Polish guys. Why did they have to go and do that at the end of my stay in Poland? It just puts a damper on the whole country.

I felt like looking for gnomes wasn’t enough, I needed to actually get some culture. I was heading to the Raclawicka Panorama. On the way I found a happy little gnome holding a sunflower. Just around the corner a rather irritated one glared at me.

In Gettysburg there is a panorama of the battle. From what I remember it is really quite well done and I was hoping that this one would be the same. It wasn’t. The audio guide began with a history of Polish panoramas. Yawn. In the late 18^th century the Polish and the Russians had a series of battles. Poland lost all but one battle and this panorama is meant to represent this victory. The guide explained different aspects of the painting, but unlike the one in Gettysburg the point of focus wasn’t lit any differently. The guide would say if you look past the third tree on the left, and then past the broken wagon and dead horse you will see a man with a red and blue striped hat, an orange shirt and red boots. It was all very confusing and I never knew just were to look.

My panorama ticket also got me into the National Museum. This was quite good, but I was not able to take pictures. I decided to try and get serious about knowing which saint was which. I was pretty good at the saint guessing game, but I knew that I could get better. I started writing them down and noting what they were holding. Problem was that a lot of them seem to be holding churches or books, confusing. And then they would throw in a random saint like St. Hedwig. All this time I thought that was Harry Potters owl. Eventually I just gave up.

The paintings section was also pretty good, if not rather random. Next to a garden of eden painting was an Egyptian mask. One portrait had cut out eyes, very creepy. In the modern art section one display was of about 20 over sized boots with nails in them. I just don’t get it.

When my stomach began to grumble I decided to leave. I went back to the milk bar just because it is so impossibly cheap. I got the same entrée but managed to get something better for dessert. There weren’t any other museums that I was interested in so I went to the internet café and blogged a bit. I think I was more up to date than ever.

I also looked up the gnomes. No one I asked seemed to be able to tell me how many there were. It turns out that it is just some artists doing and that they keep adding more. I found pictures of a few that I hadn’t found and even some locations. Perhaps this is cheating.

Hidden in an alley the size of my NYC bathroom a gnome checked me out as I passed. Next to Pizza Hut there was one that had had a bit too much for dinner. Down a pedestrian street four gnomes made fun of the passerby’s from the tops of streetlights. That makes 8 gnomes for today and 22 in all. There is one more that I missed that I know of. It is a bit out of the way and it was raining, I couldn’t be bothered. Considering that everyone I asked gave me a number fewer than 20 I think I did pretty well.

At the hostel I made myself some dinner and chatted with the girls in my room. They were both taking two-week classes there. I read for some time before calling it a night.

Gnomes, Gnomes Everywhere

Day 224
When I woke up I could see that the crazy lady had returned. Oddly she didn’t seem to have her bag with her. I made a quick decision, instead of going to the salt mines I would just go straight to Wroclaw, pronounced Frot-Suave. This, of course, had nothing to do with the thought of running into crazy lady again.

The train ride took forever. There was an old man in my compartment that just couldn’t sit still, he was drinking too, at 8am! He was sitting near the window and I was near the door. Any time a stop was near he would open the window, hang way out and then leave the compartment bumping into me to check the window just outside of the compartment. The crazy thing was that he was going to Wroclaw as well and it was the last stop. There was no missing it. All he really succeeded in was preventing me from taking a nap. I about cheered when I walked into the station.

My hostel was easy to find and I soon was checked in. The girls at the front desk set me up with a cup of tea and several maps of the city. They were really friendly.

I went through the maps and figured out a game plan. It was a bit late in the day at this point so I figured that I should get some lunch and then just explore a bit on foot. Krakow has been calling itself the new Prague and Wroclaw is calling itself the new Krakow. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

It was quite beautiful. I was wandering through the main square when I saw a group of girls bending over something and laughing. That’s when I remembered something that I had read in one of the maps. Wroclaw is home to a population of ancient gnomes. Apparently some of them are so well hidden that even locals don’t know exactly how many there are. Besides just being cute they are also symbolic. In the 1980s a group of performance artists called the Orange Alternative staged an anti-communist protest dressed as gnomes. Some say that it was these gnomes that brought down communism.

Suddenly my afternoon had a purpose, to eat and to find gnomes! The first one I found was fixing a wall, the second was reading and the third eating a perogie.

I was hungry and popped into the local milk bar. The line was thick with students from the nearby university. Nothing was in English so I ordered a main meal from one of the three pictures available and asked the girl in line behind me if she could tell me what the desserts were. Her English wasn’t that great, but she told me which one everyone seems to order the most. My entrée was some sort of yummy potato thing but my dessert looked like and had the consistency of pink snot. I chatted over lunch with my near friend. She told me that there were about 20 gnomes and that new ones were periodically added. After lunch she headed off to class and I went off gnoming.

Almost immediately I found one that was in jail. I then found an interesting bear fountain. A couple of minutes later I found a gnome holding something, maybe money. It took me another 20 minutes to find one that was sitting outside of the entrance to the secret gnome underground. I then found some barnyard animals who had all just gone to the bathroom. Further down the road was another gnome entering a different secret door. When some locals saw me taking a picture of a gnome that was traveling they directed me up the street to a sleeping gnome. I hope that I didn’t disturb him.

I went back to the hostel at this point. It had been some time since I had found a gnome and I was growing bored. Back at the hostel I decided to see a movie. On the way I found a gnome with walking sticks and another riding a bike. The later was in the middle of an intersection and I almost got myself run over getting the picture. I also found statues of people walking into the sidewalk, it was weird.

After the movie I wanted to do a bit more wandering and ended up with a cup of tea and doing some writing. On my way there I found a pair of gnomes play a game and two more trying to push a marble ball two different directions. The last find of the day was a gnome playing the guitar while another watched on. That makes 14 gnomes for the day.

At about 11pm I decided that it was time for bed. I was in a room full of boys, most of them one group of Polish guys. Usually when one person in the rooms wants to go to sleep everyone clears out and goes to the common room. That is why there is a common room after all. These guys wouldn’t leave. I asked nicely and they basically said too bad. I then went to complain and the guy at the hostel talked to them and told me that they were leaving. I tried to sleep. They were just going for a smoke and in just a minute they were back in the room talking. I asked them several more times nicely and then not so nicely to leave. They started to call me names and got louder on purpose.

I complained again. The guy at the hostel told me that he couldn’t ask them to leave the room and that it was my own fault for booking a dorm room. However, I could pay about 4 times more for my own room if I would like. I told him that wasn’t and option and tried to explain to him how hostels work and that I have been traveling for over seven months and no one had behaved this badly, including him. Then a creepy older man offered to let me share a double room with him if I paid half the price, I said no.

At this point it was about midnight and I told him that I wanted my money back. He said are you sure you want to go out there now, you will never find another place. I replied that it was a week night, that there were several other hostels in town and that I would get a better nights sleep if I ended up on a park bench for free than if I paid to have a group of Polish men talk all night an call me dirty words.

I got my money back and packed quickly to a hail of insults. I walked about five minutes down the street to the next hostel. There I got a bed in a small all girls dorm for almost half the cost. Even though I was definitely in a better place I was livid and it took me some time to calm down and cool down before I was able to fall asleep.

So, if you are going to Wroclaw do not book the hostel called Babel, formerly Stranger, instead book the much better Avant-garde hostel.