Trip to Venice - Part 5
rip to Venice, Part 5 – The Problems of Travel
After we left Auschwitz-Birkenau, it was time to take the train back to Warsaw. Due to the obvious complexity of buying train tickets from people speaking Polish, we thought it would be better to buy our train tickets from American Express Travel Service before we left home. The tickets arrived three days prior to our departure, and I promptly put them into my carry-on. Going out to Auschwitz was fine, but trying to return to Warsaw – not so good...
We got on the little one-car, 10mph train and started off. As the train was beginning its trip however, we heard banging on the rest room door. It seems that some teenagers on a summer school trip had gotten on the train with us, and one had managed to lock himself in. The conductor spent a lot of time trying to free him, but eventually he gave up, and didn't let him out until Krakow. This delayed his ticket checking for several stops.
When he finally got to us, he looked at our tickets, and said they were no good. Since his English was poor (but better than my Polish), he couldn't explain in detail, but got one of the students to translate for him. She explained that instead of Auschwitz to Krakow and Krakow to Warsaw Central, the ticket said, Auschwitz to Katowice and Katowice to Warsaw Central. Being totally ignorant of Polish geography, I did not know that Katowice is on the other side of Poland from Warsaw. He made us pay for the ticket from Auschwitz to Krakow, and said to take the ticket to the booth for a replacement.
In Krakow, however, they were unwilling to change the ticket, because they claimed that they were still good – for Katowice to Warsaw. The fact that we were on the other side of Poland, and had no way of reaching Katowice from Krakow didn't seem to make any difference to them. We were forced to buy new tickets to Warsaw, at a cost of 306 Zloty ($150), and wait another 2 hours fr the next train. We found...
