It has been a very long journey to this moment: I am finally home, and I finally have my computer. I am no longer cut off from the technology that I became so dependent on in the past. Perhaps it was a good thing that I was without it for so long, but I am certainly not going to give it up just to make this good thing better.
The trip from Sopot to Lipnica was hellish. Saturday morning I left with Julie N. and Grace on an 8:50 train to Warszawa to pick up my computer. I got to Warszawa around one and decided it would be best to get a little more money, so I headed to the poczta in Centralna and waited in line for half an hour for my money. Then I went to pick up a ticket to Kraków, waiting in line for another half hour. “Prosze jeden bilet do Kraków, druga klasa, na ‘Express’ pociag,” I said. “Nie ma druga klasa,” said the lady behind the glass. “Pierwrza bedzie dobra,” I said. After a moment, she said it: “Nie ma.”
“Crap!” I yelled so loud that I’m sure the whole station heard me. I stormed out of the station and the tension continued to build. I asked a taxi driver how much it would cost to get to Bukowinska. The answer: about thirty zloty. I knew that Julie was supposed to be at the Marriot for a while, so I headed over there and we chatted, allowing me time to calm down. She loaned me 50 zl as a precaution and off I went. I bought a tram ticket, road out to Bukowinska and picked up my computer. Then I went back to Centralna to try to decide what to do. I decided to go to Zabrze and stay with Mike D. I knew it would take a little bit more money, but not as much as getting a hotel room in Warszawa. First I went to Katowice. The train was thirty minutes late, leaving at 8:10, so I ended up waiting about two hours for that train. The actual trip took three hours, then I hopped another train for the final half-hour to Zabrze. I found Druker’s place; I knocked on the door; no one answered. I finally got a hotel room for 23 zl and just crashed. Then today I took the 10:53 to Kraków and from there the 1:00 bus to Chyzne. Mike M. was on it, so we chatted for most of the way. Just outside of Spytkowice we ran into traffic problems – an auto accident due to all the heavy vacation traffic. We spent an hour there, then I had about a forty-minute wait in Jabłonka for the bus to Lipnica. All told, it took me ten and a half hours to get to Sopot and thirty-two and a half to get back. That’s forty-three hours of traveling.