JUNE 13 - Spend morning on logistics, some of which is fruitless. Planning forward on the road is sometimes complicated by not being at home, with easy printing and scanning resources available. Also, occasionally there is need for some document, and unless I happen to have it on hand, getting ahold of it is impossible.
Happily, the apartment we are in is quiet, with a large dining area, couches, and as much as one would ever want in a short-term stay. When I book places, I read a lot of reviews, and now have a feel for the sorts of things people complain about. About half of those complaints are for aspects that really don’t matter to us, and can be selectively disregarded. Others, like how hard it is to find the place, or difficulties with contacting the owner, are given more consideration. Some of the places we’ve rented would have been great to stay in for a week or more, had we the time to go slower and not be hitting the tourist trail every day.
A lot of rain today, dark storm passes over us while we sit in the train station. For once the train shows up on time, and at the platform listed both on the platform reader board, and on the master screen in the station. After four days taking train rides in and out of Gdańsk, we have a good feel for the little complications of Polish train travel, when sometimes it is not clear which train will be at which platform, until the very last second when it shows up. Any speaker announcements concerning schedule changes are lost to us, so it is all about reading the details.
Cram into our train cabin, only to find that there are six seats for seven people. A lot of talking (some English, some Polish) to figure out what happened. I suspect the culprit is an old woman by the window, but no one seems to want to make her prove she belongs in the seat. We wait 20 minutes for the ticket collector, who eventually determines that the old woman I suspected belongs in a different train carriage. Once out, we are less crowded. Its a 5.5 hour trip to Łódź, across the same flat farmlands we’ve been looking at for a while now. Several storms pass by, and there is some excitement late in the day for Odette when we get a view of a full rainbow.
A huge, modern train station greets us in Łódź, very different from that of Warsaw and Gdańsk. We are fortunate that the rain has stopped, making the long walk to our apartment easy.
Łódź, unlike Warsaw, is not an anglicized name for this city. All your first instincts about how to pronounce it are probably wrong. It sounds like ‘Wooge’. A lot of street beautification has taken place along our walking route. The entrance to our aparthotel is down an alley bedecked with ivy and quiet restaurants, almost a southern European vibe. It is already 8 pm so we quickly get something to eat and rest.
Poland