I love trains. It's just so much more fun as a form of transport than buses or planes. You hop on one and mere hours later, you're in another ciy or country, even. At least it's that way in Europe.
Not only do you change location so quickly, it's so much more comfortable than in a plane or bus. You can get up and walk around. You can gaze as the changing countryside. Also, since the long distance trains in Eastern Europe tend to have 6-8 person compartments, you often get to chat with fellow travellers going your way, and swap stories. It's all good.

Anyway, the last week or so has been crazily busy. I caught a train from Prague to Wroclaw in Poland where I visited my other uncle's family. My train got there at 1:30AM and after a day of sightseeing I was on another train to Gdansk by 11PM of the same day.

Wroclaw:



Gdansk is a beautiful town in the far north of Poland, 20 minutes to the beach. Here, my cousin and I had a quick nap first thing in the morning when we arrived, then spent the afternoon lazing about on the beach with her boyfriend keeping us company. Golden sand, warm sun, gentle water in the Baltic sea, near-naked people to look at - what more could you ask for? We even managed to get sunburnt in the time we where there.

Gdansk:







The evening was spent walking around the town markets, eating the biggest ball of fairy floss I have ever seen, (it was at least half a metre in diametre) and drinking. Polish teenager style. That is, take a bottle of vodka, and pass it around. Everyone takes the biggest swig they can followed by a swig of juice to wash it down. It's thoroughly disgusting. There's also a version where the person who drinks the most gets money from the others.
Suffice it to say, I have never gotten drunk so quickly before in my life, and I still didn't win. It appears I need practice with this style of drinking.

The next day, heads still spinning, we did some more sightseeing before hopping on a 6 hour train to Warsaw to visit more relatives.

Visiting relatives is an odd experience for me. Having grown up so far away from them means I've only visited some of them a few times before, some none at all. The aunt we visited in Warsaw is one of my favourites, though. You can rest assured that once you step into her household you will be stuffed to the gills with excessive amounts of delicious polish foods until you're begging for mercy. This happens at every meal.

Other relatives are a more sobering experience, especially when you can see grandparents slipping away into senility. It's such a waste of precious memories and wisdom. I found it quite confronting that not only did my grandmothers not recognise me, but when told that I am their grandchild, they did not remember that they had grandchildren at all. They would promptly forget my name several seconds later, and my relation to them shortly afterwards. The scariest thing is that this has happened in both grandmothers at once in the last 2 years or so.

Poland is a strange country. The main thing that strikes me about it is that people don't seem to be nearly as friendly and nice as Australians. They don't smile at you as you pass them in your building or on the street, and won't say hello unless you say it first.

In fact, the first morning after I arrived in the country, the first interaction I had with a non-family member was having my arse slapped - hard- by one of a group of guys I had to pass on the footpath. I've been told to take it as a compliment, but dammit, it was annoying. Why can't they me normal and wolf whistle instead or something?
I also know that in Australia, at least, if you see someone trip and fall over you ask if they're ok,
Being the eternal clutz that I am, I tripped and fell on my face while passing a group of teenagers outside a Maccas in Lublin.
Far from asking if I was ok, they laughed audibly and made some comment about walking not being that hard. I don't know if I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I'm not taking the greatest liking to the youth of Poland. I've also been informed that these are standard behaviours in most Eastern European countries.