So I was really happy to see that, not only was the snack counter open at the Trebon train station but it looked as though it sold real coffee, not the ubiquitous Nescafe I keep running into no matter where I go. I come from Peet’s country… Nescafe isn’t even taken as a serious alternative. But I saw no Nescafe signs here, so I ordered a coffee. The lady behind the counter repeated my order to be sure, “one coffee.”
“Ano,” I said. Yes. “One coffee. Prosim.”
She went back behind a wall, where I could only see her elbow rising and falling a couple of times as she scooped spoonfuls of something into a cup. Scooping was a bad sign. So much for real coffee. But I’ll take anything with caffeine in it, I thought, and I waited. And waited. Inside, the lady was stirring furiously. I couldn’t see her but I could hear her. What was she doing back there? Was it old Nescafe that had crystallized into chunks that weren’t dissolving? Was she trying to make it frothy for me because she’d seen me hesitate between cappuchino and regular?
Finally she came back, and the answer was immediately clear. They do have real coffee at the snack counter of the Trebon train station. Unfortunately, the lady working there this morning didn’t know what to do with it. Scoop and stir… it works with Nescafe, why wouldn’t it work with grounds? She’d stirred them really well, but they just kept floating back up to the top. She looked a bit frustrated. Why would anybody want to drink their coffee like that?
Why indeed.
I paid my eight koruna and took my pretty silver tray of coffee accessories and thought about what to do. There was always the machine. But no… there was real coffee in this cup. All I had to do was scrape away the mucky bits that had floated up to the top and avoid upsetting the silty bits that had sunk down to the bottom. Easy.
So I sat down and chewed my coffee, thinking how lucky I was to be getting on a train at last instead of a bus. I do have to say, though, that buses in Middle Europe aren’t as bad as buses in the US – not as smelly at least. And they’re not anywhere near as loud as in Vietnam or as crowded as in Thailand. Actually, the buses I’ve taken here have been pretty comfortable so far and you can’t beat the price. But I like old trains. And the train that pulled in to Trebon station exactly on time was wonderfully old and slow, with hard wooden seats and operable windows. It stopped every seven minutes or so, grinding to a thudding halt just long enough for one or two people to get off or on before the whistle blew, the engineer engaged the traction motors and the wheels slowly started to move again, reluctantly at first, overcoming inertia, then gaining momentum until that big chunk of metal was once again chugging along, da-da-dumf… da-da-dumf… da-da-dumf… for another seven minutes.
That was at eight o’clock in the morning. By eight o’clock at night I was less entranced by my ride’s rhythm. It hadn’t helped that I’d had coffee grounds for breakfast on an empty stomach. If you’ve ever been so unlucky as to try a chocolate covered espresso bean, you know what I mean. Who needs cocaine when all you need to do is chomp down a single bean and ten minutes later every blood vessel in your body is on high alert, whirring and buzzing like a hungry hummingbird. Only you’re not flying. You’re just sitting there. On a train… which is also whirring and buzzing. It’s not pleasant, actually… buzzing from the inside and the outside at the same time. In fact, depending on the speed of the train, it’s almost enough to make a person sick. Almost, thank god. Eventually, I dug into my supply of emergency Payday bars and managed to dilute, or absorb, or however that works, my blood caffeine content, but it still took a while before I felt completely back to normal.
It was around eight in the evening when the train – now the EuroCity Comenius – made its last stop before Krakow. Even though it was dark by then, it was ominous just to read the name on the station boards – Oswiecim… Auschwitz. How many people got off at this station, never again to enjoy the rhythm of a moving train or have the luxury of being finicky about their coffee. I knew I would visit Auschwitz while I was in Poland, but it’s not the kind of visit you look forward to. I was glad when the train creaked back into motion and, for the moment, left it behind.
It was almost ten at night when the Comenius pulled into Krakow. That was two days ahead of Robert, who would be taking a detour from a business trip in Heidelberg and joining me. Yay! I enjoy traveling alone, but it’s nice to have a friendly break now and then as well. Only one problem… well, two problems. One was a Patti problem in that I found the décor of Polish hotels oppressively old fashioned. Part of this could have been the sheer contrast, having just spent more than two weeks in the Czech Republic. Everything the Czechs touch, it seemed to me, becomes light, open, warm and beautiful. My $20 a night pension in Trebon, though it was so new it hadn’t yet made its way into the local tourist handouts, had at the same time a thoroughly tasteful sense of continuity with the past and a color scheme that made you feel like you were walking into Spring when you came inside – you need that sort of thing when it snows for days on end. And my room in Prague wasn’t really much more than a closet in the attic of an old building, but that space was handled in a masterful way to achieve a sense of spaciousness it had no right to claim.
My first room in Krakow, however, had plenty of space, you could almost call it a suite, but was so stiflingly heavy I could barely breathe. It’s not just that the fixtures were old and shabby, but the room contained five or six completely different fabrics – thick drapes, lace doilies, velvet pillows, patterned wallpapers, tapestry cushioned chairs that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned since decades of Communist butts in unwashed trousers had graced the room. I couldn’t tell if the place was dirty or just worn out. Maybe a person in the right frame of mind could consider such an atonal jumble of decorative themes charmingly old-world, but to me it was just old. I knew before even setting my backpack down that I couldn’t stay there more than a day or two. Finding another room, then, became the mission for my first day in Krakow.
This turned out to be an unfortunate mission. In general, I arrive in a new place ready to be charmed by it. If I didn’t think I would like it I wouldn’t go there, right? So, in general, I am easily pleased and assume that I will adore the place until proven otherwise. Well, Krakow slapped me around a bit on my first day. Aside from finding a place that didn’t feel like it had been decorated by somebody’s great grandmother, who had merely shaken the dust out of a thing or two from her attic, I also had to find a place that had beds big enough to accommodate Robert’s six foot three frame. Well, they just don’t make them like that here. Not the singles anyway. The vast majority of single beds I saw were about six feet long and had a footboard at the end so that, even if a tall person were OK with having his feet hang off the end of a short bed, hanging off the end would not be an option. Going diagonal isn’t an option either because it seems to be a rule that all single beds must be pushed up against at least one wall, and if at all possible they should be recessed into an alcove with walls on three sides. Guests should be of average height and sleep straight, that’s all there is to it. And forget about rolling over… the twins here are not much wider than my massage table – you can flip, but you can’t roll. “It can be a problem for tall people,” one woman acknowledged, “but it is the standard size. In some hotels they have bigger ones, not standard size. Usually in the…” she paused, “the old hotels. Before the standards.”
Before the standards. That didn’t sound good.
I asked another tall person what he thought. How important is it, really, to have a bed that is long enough to stretch out in without coming up against a wooden board at the end of it? I mean, is that something you just learn to deal with as a tall person?
“Yeah, I’ve had to do that,” he said. “In prison.”
Great.
Sometimes they got more creative. In one place, supposed to be one of the best hotels in town, we walked through a hallway done entirely in black… black carpet, black paint and strings of black beads hanging from ceiling to floor… to a room decorated in, I kid you not, a cowhide theme. Not leather mind you, but hairy, bristly black and white spotted cow skins. Holstein cows, I think they are called. This place had it all. Cow carpets. Cow cushions. Even cow bedspreads. I didn’t dare look in the bathroom.
Well, compared to the cow room, the room I already had was starting to seem pretty inviting but… it wasn’t available to extend. Valentine’s Day was coming up on Saturday. It turns out that the Poles really enjoy their romance, and the ancient city of Krakow is as romantic as it gets.
In the end, though, I found a room that was acceptable, as long as I didn’t look directly at the screaming red carpet, and now, in fact, I’ve gotten quite used to it. On my second day in Krakow it started to snow, and that made up for everything.
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