Warsaw Pact

I learned recently through the enlightening power of the Interweb that the Warsaw Pact is officially called the "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance".  

For the record, I was lost in the Warsaw train system for nearly an hour and a half yesterday, but encountered very little friendship, cooperation or mutual assistance in the process.  Though I acknowledge that I was mostly asking for one-way assistance, and on top of that, rather boorishly expecting it in English. 

Maybe I was feeling a little overconfident.  

The last time I went to Poland was in 1996, when my friend Scott and I traveled by night train from Vienna to Kraków.  We slept through the Kraków stop (note, gentle readers, the lack of any friendship, cooperation, or mutual assistance from the conductors) and ended up quite inadvertently in Warsaw, face to face with a ticket agent who shook her head ruefully when we asked if she spoke any English.

The only reason that we're not still stuck in Warsaw is that Scott was able to trot out enough German to buy us tickets back to Kraków.  

So this time, when I bought a train ticket from Kraków to Łódź via Warsaw, I felt good, at least, about going to Warsaw intentionally.  And even though the train left at 7 a.m., I was reasonably certain that I wouldn't sleep through Warsaw and end up in Minsk.   

But as it turns out, the Poles are not so keen on signage.  Particularly not interactive signage.  On the trains, on the platforms, or anywhere else, for that matter.  The primary source of information in Polish train stations is a series of scratchy announcements, which is fine if one speaks Polish fluently and has dog hearing.  And is not so fine if you have a tight connection and you're me. 

Long story short(er): I took the wrong train into central Warsaw, where a conductor urged me back onto the platform based on the incompatibility between my ticket and the train's destination.  From there, I wandered into a labyrinthine underground station complex and found even less friendship, etc.  

Only through the power of paying €8 for an hour of Internet access in the Warsaw Marriott lobby did I sort my train schedule back out, let John know not to meet me at the train station at 11:20, luxuriate in the non-train station bathrooms and enjoy, somewhat unexpectedly, music from the American Beauty soundtrack piped into the lobby.  

One Snickers bar for lunch and an hour of waving "bye-bye" to the Polish baby in the seat in front of me later, I made it triumphantly to Łódź. 

(And vowed, in a pact between me and me, never to set foot by train in Warsaw.  Ever, Ever Again.) 

As it turns out, Łódź is a pretty interesting city, in the decrepit-and-weird-but-still-architecturally-lovely sense of interesting.  John has already been here for a week, as one of 800 physicists who have descended upon the city for the 2009 International Cosmic Ray Conference.  

And if "International Cosmic Ray Conference in Łódź" doesn't sound like fun, I don't know what does.  

My plan for the week is to be a hotel bunny until the conference is over on Wednesday, then we'll head into the hills of the High Tatras for a few days of hiking in the mountains.  Though I'm pretty sure that "Łódź hotel bunny" is a phrase that has never been uttered.  Ever, Ever Before.