Transport adventures in Poland

Transport adventures in Poland, or what happened to us during our travels around Poland by car, train, bus or other means of transport. Of course, trips to or from Poland also count. I remember, for example, an "adventure" from Poland when the water in the engine of my Rover Vitesse boiled and I took the car to a nearby workshop for repairs. The workshop removed the radiator and sealed it, then installed it upside down. The car was given to me without fans connected to this large 6-cylinder engine. We found it out about six months later when the engine started to "boil" on the highway. Miraculously we arrived. Only the German mechanic few days later ran the cables and connected the fans.

I also remember my ride on the express train from Katowice to Warsaw in the 1980s. The train was traveling at an unprecedented speed of 120 km/h on the so-called coal line. My guest from England was traveling with me, a young boy, Alien was also young then. I wanted to show him Warsaw. The train was, as usual, terribly overcrowded, but I managed to find my Englishman a seat in the compartment, and I left the compartment and stood in the corridor. As is usually the case (in Poland), a moment later I entered into a conversation with a random young traveler who was also standing in the corridor. We talked about everything and nothing, and also about my guest from England with whom I was going to Warsaw. And then, after about 15 minutes of our conversation, my English guest stood at the compartment door and said he was bored and asked if he could join the conversation. At the same time, he asked me where I knew the boy I was talking to. When I told him that I met him exactly 15 minutes ago. he didn't want to believe me. And I suspect he didn't believe me until the end of his stay in Poland. Well, a difference in mentality.

We're halfway there, time to go down for breakfast.

I'll put a couple of weird stories about Polish trains later.

Good ones and bad ones.

I will never forget one and only time in my life when my car broke down during a journey and I had to call the road assistance. We were going to the seaside in two cars. We chose the wrong route and tried to go back. But we were on a busy road and I engaged the reverse gear so rapidly that it broke and remained in that position. The assistance was very efficient, they took the car to their own garage and the repair lasted 1 hour. We arrived at the seaside on the same day with 2 hour delay.

The location, the weather and the whole holiday were amasing!

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It happened 17 years ago but still feels like yesterday. This time!

Did this happen to you on a Sunday or a normal working day?

We never travelled to the seaside on Sunday. You are asking to find out why the garage was open?? Yes, it couldn`t be Sunday.

I was once returning from Poland to Germany. I stopped at a red light in one Silesian city. There were ruts on the road that were partially filled with water. Suddenly I saw in the rearview mirror a Ford Escort coming around the corner much too fast. He tried to brake but to no avail. I managed to put the car in gear and drove 2 meters before it hit me from behind. After some time, the police came, found me innocent and classified the incident as a road collision. They also called my local roadside assistance. My car, unlike the Escort, was still salvageable. The roadside assistance took me and my car to their yard. I asked them to call the appraiser, whom I talked to and convinced him to come, which he did in two hours. In the meantime, I asked the roadside assistance boys to prepare the damaged exhaust pipe and the rear wheel that was blocking for further driving. Which they also achieved. After the appraiser arrived and carried out the inspection, I gave him my address in Germany and asked him to send the assessment and the bill for the service. I also paid the roadside assistance service on the bill and got into the car with the broken exhaust pipe and continued on to Germany. I arrived safely, and everything happened on Sunday. Today it would certainly be impossible.

Alien hoped that maybe he would come across a great Rave-Festival that once had 1.5 million participants. As fate would have it, Alien arrived too early and instead of the Rave Festival he landed at the Folk Costumes Festival. While the average age at the Rave Festival is 22 years and a lot of naked body should be taken into account, the average age at the folk costumes festival was 74 years and the body was (fortunately) covered up to the last hat. The only advantage of this whole thing was that the color of the clothes was mostly green, so Alien didn't have to dress extra. 👽

Where are your stories?

They'll come.

Right now, I'm almost at the end of an overly long stint in Africa (this has got to change) and am severely lacking mojo (and have a crazy amount of work to do before going). Plus I've got a two day journey without breaks, including 12 hours by road through mostly rebel held territory (I was shot at on the same route once) and a couple of long haul flights with a transfer in the middle of the night, followed by 9 or 10 flights in four weeks.

So transport is not a subject I'm motivated to write about today.

I miss a gig I had once in Poland, doing training courses two weekends a month in a hotel near Łódź for a big cigarette company. I used to get the pospiezny train from Łódź Kaliska back to Poznań. It took a few hours (so wasn't really all that pospieszny) however it had an old fashioned dining car (one of the older WARS ones) with net curtains and proper tablecloths. It was nice to travel in the WARS car for the whole journey, eating schabowy and getting slowly drunk.

Jon, please remember to mention to PF readers that Google Earth allows you to virtually travel through rebel-held territory, which slightly reduces the imagined dangers!

That would be more comfortable and also safer however sadly it has to be the real thing.

43zl now. Still worth it tho.

In a new ranking of European cities where people are most satisfied with their lives, Poland's Gdansk is in the top 5.
At the same time, the quality of life in many Polish cities is rapidly improving.
In particular, several Polish cities have made it to the top 10 in the ranking due to positive changes over the past 5 years:

Bialystok (first place); Gdansk (second place); Krakow (sixth place); Warsaw (ninth place).

msn.com/en-us/travel/article/polish-city-among-top-5-in-europe-for-highest-life-quality-unique-features/

It goes up all the time. I remember when it was less than 20zl.

To be fair, that's their big seller and occasionally the dining cars are empty (or stuffed full of people not eating or drinking if the train's packed) so they may as well make some money. I like the way that the dining cars are rented out (by the state) to one-person businesses.

In a week or so I'll be on the Warsaw-Berlin Express and will have zurek and schabowy. So will everyone else.

Not a fan of that myself, results in lots of abuse of staff and PKP just shrugging its corporate shoulders at such stories when they're printed in the papers.

That's very Polish, sadly. Poles wouldn't see it as unusual.

They have standardised menus across all the franchisees or whatever they are; they should have a standardised contract for workers and an HR Dept to enforce best practice.

They certainly don't. Just have a look at this article: wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,159911,30159220,praca-w-warsie-jak-w-zabce-byly-pracownik-ujawnia-jest-gorzej.html

To satisfy your hero complex, I will try to relay what happened truthfully. With his concave chest puffed up to the max, waving a pride banner furiously flapping in the hot desert wind, Jon stormed the defensive position of an 87-year-old grandma-rebel hiding in a mud hut. All male rebels left in a panic attack after the rhythmic beats of the tam-tam drums announced Jon was coming; so relax, Jon; your hero status is firmly established and indisputable.

Normal enough in PL where things are so often not thought through and where the institution is everything and the person is nothing.


No, they were all youngish men. I just ducked behind a car with some locals.

Some local behinds, you say? How devilish, cunning, and slippery. I propose a more careful approach, particularly in Northern Sudan. Those fanatically adhering to
their religious beliefs are incredibly intolerant of even slight deviation from sexual practice and are treated harshly, starting with being blindfolded and wandering the top of tall buildings. You can pretend to be hetero, checking some potato sacks walking by, but their intolerance knows no limit, so it's a tall building for that offense, too.
To be safe, follow your instincts and go as a neutered gender individual. As a rule, South Sudan would be much safer. Saveges are primarily Christian, so deviant behavior, even though discouraged, is widely tolerated. But let's say you got caught probing some savages behind, 'Shayk's cousin, and the chieftain gets mad and orders you to be pushed off the tall building. So they lead you to the tallest mud hut, 6" tall; you fall and, by pure luck, land on the random chicken.Sh*t, how lucky can you get?

You think of nothing else.


Last time I went there (in 2011), I was sat next to the Orthodox Archbishop on the plane. He was certainly religious (probably a fundamentalist too) and had a long beard and funny hat.


The only South Sudanese people I've met weren't 'savages'. They were religious though. Protestants as I recall.


Who is Shayk? Is he a member of your Swingers' Club.

Google might be able to expand your vocabulary. Oh, what the hell, sheik, rings the bell? Don't blush Jon. The PF is full of ignorant people. Not that I call you ignorant, but getting involved in the Swingers Club affairs might be my guess.

There have been a lot of them in Zakopane lately, with their entire families.

I remember one episode from a trip when I was young. Even in communist times, Poland was something special. For example, there was a direct railway connection between Katowice and Dortmund. Trains ran every day. Before I got my driving license, I used to travel alone by train to Germany. At the German-German border, passports were checked on the train while traveling. A West German customs officer entered the compartment and, after checking the documents, asked me how many cigarettes I had. I told him I didn't smoke and didn't have any. This naturally aroused his suspicions. He looked at me again and asked me how many bottles of vodka I was carrying. And this time I replied that I was not carrying any. This, of course, was unacceptable to the West German customs officer who asked me to show him where my suitcase was, told me to open it, put on rubber gloves and started looking for vodka and cigarettes... He calmed down only when he found nothing and left the compartment. The American sitting with me in the compartment asked if I actually had any vodka or cigarettes. He was very surprised when I told him that the bottle of vodka I brought a year ago was still in the closet, unopened, and I didn't see any need to bring another one. He was amazed.