Thursday, March 13, 2008

Hel Week

I'll preface this entry with something that isn't quite a correction, but something approaching it. Since the time of last writing, I've recieved a notification that I was perhaps misinformed about the nature of the bedroom fiasco. Let it be known that I was only relaying events as I heard and understood them, and since this isn't a court of law, heresay is plenty admissable. I would apologize to anyone who got their feelings hurt by my nigh-verbatim retelling of Bobby and Kellie's story, but the apologies frankly aren't mine to give. The story's considerably funnier as it stands, even if the firsthand storytellers might have been groggy and not seen things quite correctly through sleep-fog and insufficient light. So I suppose in summary I'm sorry for not being sorry. Now let's begin.

Hell Week.

This blog entry perhaps finds me at my happiest ever, but that's largely thanks to the enormous contrast between my present state of affairs and where I was a few days ago. I feel sorry for the staff here at Baltic Hostel; I must seem some kind of prodigal son to them. I tell them I'll be back in four days, I come back in five weeks. I tell them I'm going to Poznan for the day, and I end up staying three...though this time for reasons entirely beyond my control. We'll get to that dreadful adventure later, though. My attempted daytrip to Hel, Poland should've told me that any excursions I made during the subsequent week would be doomed. I'm sure it WAS a cold day in Hel, but I never got to find out. There are two ways of getting to the resort community on the peninsula: ferry and train. Trains don't run directly from Gdansk, so Ania, I, and her sister, Agnieszka, had to find alternative means. We got on the tram and headed for the new port. We trundled past kilometer upon kilometer of shipyards and factories and saw nothing resembling a passenger port...just the non-touristy face of a gritty port town. Then the tram got stuck in a series of traffic jams. The final jam, it turned out, wasn't a jam at all, but the final stop, the end of the line. We sat in the tram, waiting to go to something resembling a passenger port, and we were elated when we got moving again...it took me maybe three stops to figure out that we had just completed a loop and were headed back to the train station. So the week of transit nightmares began innocuously enough, with a lengthy tour of the Gdansk most foreigners wisely avoid.
From there we did some asking around and hopped on a train to Gdynia, from whence we could connect to Hel. Agnieszka was misinformed that we could buy tickets on the Hel Train (sounds an awful lot like Soul Train, doncha think?), and only after the doors closed and the train got moving did we ask the conductor, who said "absolutely not." I felt my heart in my throat as the ticket controller drew near--I didn't feel like paying a fine, even though I had the cash on me. So before we could recieve our hefty fine, we abandoned ship in a rainy, cold little smudge on the map called Reda. We bought tickets for the next Hel train. THEN we noticed it didn't come for another three hours and would take three more hours to get there. Combined with the return trip, we'd be back in Gdansk at...oh, you know...five am. This seemed unpalatable at best, so we went back the other way, past Gdynia, to Sopot, Poland's premiere seaside destination. I was cold as...Hel, because what I thought was going to be a pleasant little daytrip had become an all-day rainy chilly subarctic seabreeze festival. And there I was, in my hoodie. Only my hoodie. (Yes, pants too, of course, but no t-shirt). Every blast of wind elicited a curse in one of three languages. We ate delicious fish, but I was honestly a lot happier about the heat than the food. After wandering around the town center for a while, we decided to go back Danzigward. Then I saw a sign that changed my life. On the front side of the Sopot train station, there's a kebab restaurant. But it's no ordinary kebab restaurant; it is KEBABISTAN. It's like the missing link in the history of the stans, the missing tribe! An anthropological goldmine, I tell you! (The baklava wasn't bad, either.)

On a completely unrelated note, there's a town in Poland called Pszczółki PshchOOwki), which means "Little Bees" Maybe it's only funny to me.

But, oh, readers, this was only the beginning. We made a decision to go to Poznan the next day to see a Californian expat play a concert. Imagine a washed-up Mick Jagger (I know, seems redundant) who plays guitar pretty well but sometimes doesn't remember the words to his own songs. The concert was fine, but then things started going wrong. I tried every ATM in central Poznan, and each and every single one declined my card. After burning the number off my card, demagnetizing it, cutting it into tiny pieces and throwing it into eight different trashcans (what's funnier than a dead baby in a trashcan?), I began coming to terms with the fact that I was broke. Ania spotted me on meals and fun expenses and the like, and our lodging was taken care of. I tried to leave for Gdansk the next day, but there were no trains. We stayed an extra night, and Agnieszka headed back to Warszawa with her remaining money. Ania thought she had more money than she did, apparently, because every ATM in Poznan said "insufficient funds." So we were stuck in central Poznan with no percievable way to get back to our hostel, much less our respective cities, or even contact anyone (Ania and I both hate celphones with a passion...they're like little leashes). Since the hostel was in the middle of nowhere, we'd taken taxis to the center everyday. That was out of the question at this point. It was ten till eleven, and the last trams to ANYWHERE ran at eleven. I had ten minutes to pore over the public transit map and figure out how to get back. I did, with two minutes to spare. The next morning brought the harsh realization that we both had places to be and no way to get there. I had an ATM card for which I didn't remember the pin, Ania had no money, and we were ostensibly screwed. With a whopping combined wealth of four zloty and fifty-two grosz, we had little recourse. My last-ditch idea I suppose I owe to my mother, since I can't help but think that I got my memory for long important numbers from her. I recalled the number of the card I'd thrown away, and, given our circumstances, I thought it couldn't hurt to try buying the tickets online. So we spent the last of our collected resources on half an hour of internet time. Sixteen digits, a hell of a hurry, and probably a (mixed) miracle later, we had two e-tickets in hand and we were headed to Warszawa. It merits mention, though, that because the internet at this particular cafe was total crap, we had to reset the form several times, and apparently the one time I got the form to go through was the time I forgot to change the date from the eleventh (the default) to the tenth.

Since the Polish Train Service just introduced e-tickets the previous week, the controller looked at the thing like I had a hole in my head. He called his posse of fellow bureaucratic cogs over and they pored over it for a few minutes. They validated it, but he came back a few minutes later and said "come with me." Huhboy. I followed him and he said I had bad tickets, and there would be a 500 zloty fine ($215) if I couldn't buy new tickets like...right now. The tickets were for the wrong day, and while that wouldn't be a problem with a regular ticket, bureaucracy works in mysterious magical ways. I explained I had no money, no card, no phone, no ability to get funds...period. It was a good thing I put my ATM card elsewhere, because he insisted on rifling through my wallet. "So do you believe me now?" He then asked if my friend had any money.
"No."
"Does she have a card?"
"Yes, but there's no money on it."
"Does she have a celphone so she can call someone?"
"No"
"Does she at least speak Polish better than you do?"
"Yes!"
"Then go get her."
So I did, and then through more bureaucratic hocus-pocus and a friendly Pole who let us use his phone, we made a deal. I gave them my passport as collateral and we called Ania's stepmom, who was to meet us at the platform with the appropriate funds. From there, we could go to the information office and get a refund for the improper tickets. So, basically it was just a lot of hassle for no purpose. With no money and two hours' sleep to my credit, this was NOT my idea of a good time. But it all worked out. After a night in Warszawa, Ania's stepmom loaned me 200 zloty, just enough for the taxi ride to Warszawa Centralna, the train home, a night at my Gdansk hostel, dinner, and my trip to practice the next day. The good lord does provide. I will buy much flowers for that woman when I get the chance.

I arrived in Gdansk on Tuesday afternoon, just in time to go talk with my travel agent about my Belorussian visa. Everything was in the works, but it just seemed to be a continual source of annoyance for people that I had neither money nor celphone. She was very displeased when I told her I might not be able to pay her til Thursday. I told her I was sorry, but that was pretty much the way it was. Then it was time for my first practice in a month and change. The trainride to Gdynia was uneventful, and practice was great, considering how out of shape I thought I'd be. I kept up fine and even netted a couple goals in the scrimmage. I caught the night bus back to Gdynia Station in time for the 00:01 train to Gdansk. Since the primary intercity platform is under maintenance, I had to get on a platform that wasn't...really a platform. I waited, and at four minutes to midnight, the station announcer came on the loudspeaker and said something about "...no train...*crackle*...bus...thank you and sorry." The interstices were lost between train noises, crackles, and my far-from-complete understanding of the Polish language. So I wandered down and got a hamburger that was neither ham nor burger nor hamburger and took my seat close to the burger stand. I was still waiting there half an hour after I'd finished my burger. I was holding on to the vain hope that the 01:26 train would run, and the burger stand was the only place that was free of gutter zombies and the stench of sundry human discharges. Then came the police.
"So, what're you doing here exactly?"
"I'm waiting for my train."
"Most people wait for trains on platforms"
"But it's cold up there..."
"mmm-HMM. Well then, which train, son?" (said with extreme disbelief)
"The 01:26 to Gdansk"
The officers walked over to the schedule and looked. Sure enough, it said "Gdansk, 1:26".
"Okay son, as you were. Have a good night."
The train station is crawling with the living dead and the dead drunk, and they decide to pick on the only person without food in his beard. After killing a few more minutes, I went up to the Gdynia equivalent of platform 9 3/4 and waited a little more. The same voice came over the speaker and said more or less the same thing. I sighed and hauled my hockey bag and tired little butt down the stairs and back to the main station hall. I decided to check the bus station. Compared to the train station, the bus station is basically a new level of low at 1:30 am. The smell is indescribable and the people in corners and under things barely look human. I walked toward what I thought were the bus stands and instead ended up at the end of a hallway where a man was peeing and chugging vodka at the same time. The bus station was very. clearly. closed. For those of you who play video games, it was like Doom 3, only I had no BFG or chainsaw. For those of you who don't play video games, this is a pretty adequate synopsis of the above: you're in a poorly lit room and in perpetual fear of being attacked by things that don't seem quite human but probably were at one time. By this point I was trying to prepare myself for sleeping in the fetal position in my hockey bag, but I had a final recourse. I asked the public transit driver "so, where exactly do I get the bus to Gdansk?" He pointed me in the right direction, and, oh thank you Jesus, I made it back in one piece. I'd like to say that I've fulfilled my quota of transit woes for the year, but lying (even to oneself) is immoral and unadvisable.

Now I have money, I have my visa application turned in, and life's utterly and completely grand. I'm going to Belarus in five days, and I'll have my visa (and my final game in Gdynia) tomorrow. I won't be online much, and I'll need all the luck I can get in my first-ever totalitarian country! My first dictatorship! I'm getting all weepy...

Thanks for reading. Please comment, but remember that while constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, abuse will be deleted aggressively.

Back on top, baby.

J. Brandon Harris

6 comments:

GMarc said...

Sorry if I am repeating myself, but when you're back stateside I hope you'll pick up one of Michael Palin's travel accounts, either the North Pole to South Pole or his recreation of Around the World in Eighty Days. You and he share a comparable sense of being in the moment and finding humor in bizarre circumstances. Thanks for the IMs and phone call yesterday. Mom was only too happy to assist with the debit card mess. I still find it unsettling that Master Card tells the bank they suspect your card has been "compromised" and yet they won't tell the bank what has led them to that conclusion. Your situation brings to mind your perspective on the interview process for the Watson last year: the interviewer was tough, but I believe she had reasons to be that way. She wanted to see if you were up to the challenges your project would present. Way to go, bud! Hockey's taught you to improvise, think on your feet, and make the best of uncomfortable situations...oh, I also believe that Sewanee may have had a hand in shaping some of your responses. Thanks for turning out another entry so soon. I look forward to a report on your totalitarian adventure. It will be interesting to see if you get tailed. Lovingly, THE OLD MAN and some bayrs

Anonymous said...

"at the end of a hallway where a man was peeing and chugging vodka at the same time."
Way to go! You found Melo! That's actually a reference to my time in London. And in your last entry you apparently found my darkest and most twisted self from another universe who happens to be stopping by. To get out of the conversation you should have shouted "sleep" while making some hand gesture. Hopefully, his LARPing instincts would have kicked in and he would have konked out immediately. Good God though that was one hell of a story. I'm just imagining a bunch of nerds crowded around a tv during the LA riots, when all of the sudden one of them screams, "now's our chance!" and they put on a bunch of chain mail and grab swords with no edge on them and charge into the streets.
And Josh found a buddy! Yeah!
Whitters is looking forward to seeing you and the other way around is true I would assume. Try to make it back in time to see her. In other words, don't get detained in your first dictatorship by fun or legal reasons or both.
Daniel M

JEEEEEEEEED said...

While you've been gone, I stumbled over a cookbook of kebabs from all over the world. We must try a few when you return. I'll even let you start the fire :) Glad everything is working out, finally. Travel safe. And don't be too hard on the sub-human types. With the wrong kind of luck, it could be any of us.
JEEEEEEEEEED

cris_the_great said...

and I think I've been to interesting places...good luck on your very first dictatorship, quite an accomplishment. Do remember to come and meet me in Krakow. Keep writing, I love to read it.

Leah Kanna said...

Yay! I finally have read all you have posted so far... not too shabby. I love reading of your adventures where others only dream of going, seeing places that appear only in dreams to some. So far, I have cried little, laughed much, and play it over in my mind... although the facebook pictures helped out with that. I wish you well as you head toward your next destination, and can't wait till you make it back to the states. Go Josh! ^_^

Life on the Sunny Side said...

Hi Josh!

Glad to see you're getting yourself into the kind of trouble you so enjoy! :) I miss you a lot and hope you are happy and safe!!

All my best,

Hesley