Three months ago I arrived in Ukraine to embark on a beyond borders experience. Last week I experienced moving across borders, which is a totally different experience.
In just about every graduating class there is bound to be a group of people who make the quintessential European backpacking trip – this is true for my classmates that graduated this spring. Luckily one of them was coming far enough east and we were able to meet up. I had the privilege of spending my birthday week doing some travelling with my friend Mac.
Mac and I made plans to meet up in Krakow, Poland on July 29. Trains seem to be the most popular means of transportation so I bought a train ticket – and so started my train tribulations!
Travelling can be a challenge at home (in Canada) but there are added layers of difficulty and navigation when you consider travelling in a different country, travelling in a different language, and travelling across borders. The ticket that I bought for the train to Krakow – I missed that train! Not because it was at 4:30 in the morning and I wasn’t there to catch it, oh no! I was sitting on the platform, and had been for 45 minutes when the train pulled up, waited for 10 minutes and then left without me on it. I didn’t understand the announcement over the PA, and the Ukrainian person I asked assured me that it wasn’t my train. After waiting for another hour and a half, I went home to bed. I restarted my journey to Krakow the next day when I got on a different train, this time first to Lviv. It seemed like every time I got on a train some sort of SNAFU occurred. Whether it was missing the train, being almost abducted by border officials, or ending up way too far off the ground for my comfort in a train cabin with way too many people on the way to Prague, or losing my power cord at the Prague train station, or thinking the train was at 9am, and learning it was 9pm, or having to wait 8 hours while they changed the wheels of the train over…. You name it, I lived through it.
I am NOT going to into all of the strange and down right ridiculous things that happened on my excursion (in the interest of people who don’t give a $h!+, and because I cant seem to keep any of my blogs under 1000 words!) You’ll have to ask about those in person. lets put it this way... there was so much that went awry on the trip - including me getting really super excited about bagels with cucumbers and cream cheese but finding, much to my dismay, that cucumbers translated incorrectly as pickles - Mac and I dubbed the weekend the 26 Pickles weekend!! (26 being my age, and pickles being representative of all the oopses of the weekend) But I’ll give you some hightlights, and some reflections....
Here’s the basic itinerary:
July 28 – Missed train
July 29 - Night train to Krakow
July 30 – Krakow – Wawel Castle/City/Hooka (photos)
July 31 – Krakow - Auschwitz/Birkenau (photos)
Aug 1 – Krakow – Salt Mine (night train to Prague)
Aug 2 (birthday) - 15km walking around Prague (photos)
Walking tour
Charles Bridge
Lennon Wall
Dinner
Aug 3 – Prague city centre (night train departure)
Aug 4 – train
Aug 5 - train
I want to make a comment about Hostels. What an interesting microcosm of the world! In one I had my iphone stolen while I slept, in the next I felt like I was part of the family and didn’t want to leave, and then in the next I felt like a faceless person with a dollar sign around my neck. What an interesting way to live for a week.
And now on to talking about backpacking. I think you would have trouble finding a jackass backpacker; I think this because there is something unbelieveably humbling about living out of a bag, and carrying your life on your back and struggling through daily activities complete with obstacles like language, directions, sickness, sadness, theft, loss etc. There is something so unique about the people that I met who were backpacking – some across one continent, some across a few different countries, and some across 3 continents. I can’t even explain to you what was different about them, a kind of je ne sais quoi that was deep and interesting , and you could tell that they had seen things and done things that had totally changed who they were and how they saw the world. I was envious of their travels and their experiences (in fact most of them were envious of my opportunity to stay in one place for a while and really get in touch with one culture) and cant wait to do some backpacking at some point in my life – really only because I want to loose all possible chance that I am a jackass (hahahah)
One of the observations that I made while I was in Krakow and Prague is that the average person travelling Europe has skewed views of what is “Eastern Europe”. Many people do not travel much further east than Poland and Czech Rep. because of a train/railway issue that precludes Ukraine and Russia from all of the Eurorail passes and plans (essentially the tracks in Ukraine/Russia are wider than those of the EU and so trains must be kept at the border and retro fitted which is expensive both in terms of time and resources). Most travelers skip over the idea of a trip to East-Eastern Europe. It is true that both Poland and Czech Republic were formerly part of the Eastern Block, but both countries have moved leaps and bounds away from their histories as oppressed communist territory. As a result of incredible tourism, walking around Prague is like being in New York City: There are people and digital everywhere, and everyone is trying to sell you something, the museums and main attractions can afford to be kept in tip top shape – it’s astounding. Some of the scars of the USSR are still visible in the less populous parts of Poland and Czech Rep., but the differences between these two countries and how far behind Ukraine still is is palpable. Part of me took offence to this idea that these two locations were a sufficient observation of “Eastern Europe” mostly because I got the idea that the travelers that thought like this had satisfied their mind that everything left over from communism and the USSR has healed nicely – which is NOT so in Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the only countries of the former Eastern Block that has not yet fully been released from Russia’s control, and so has been unable to really move forward. It is a shame that more people are unable to experience life here in Ukraine because I think it would change their outlook drastically.
One of my fellow Beyond Borders mates has title her blog “Out of my bubble” this hit me like a ton of bricks while travelling, seeing other countries and meeting other people – most of our bubbles are so incredibly small! Never in my life before had I met a Dane (from Denmark), and I was one of few that had ever met anyone from Malta. I have no idea what education systems look like anywhere other than Canada and America. There are cultural intricacies that I would flub if I went to Saskatoon, let alone India! There are so many people, and so many places and so much to see and so much more to do. I have always had this idea that there’s so much
more out there (which is what brought me to Beyond Borders) but how much more is out there is way too much for my brain to even begin to think about. I am definitely liking my roomier bubble but it’s not like moving from a house to a mansion, it’s a different philosophy – I want my bubble to get so big it pops!!!!!
*POP*
Just kidding,
*love*
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