About a year after the death of John Paul II, my husband and
I spent a few months in Warsaw, Poland. We
spoke little English, but in the Warsaw train station there was an English
speaking office where we could purchase our tickets, with a discount for
seniors, for train travel. So on
weekends when we weren’t working, we’d often get on the train and visit a
different part of Poland. It was a
wonderful experience.
Not long before we left Poland, we spent about a week working in Krakow. While there we wanted to travel to some of the areas around Krakow, but in this train station there were very few employees who spoke much English. Since I was a little better at the pronunciation of Polish words than my husband, it fell to me to communicate with personnel at the train station. To do this I would take the train schedule and write down “Krakow > Czestochowa”.
This worked well until we wanted to go visit Wadowice, the home of John Paul II. When I wrote down “Krakow > Wadowice”, the woman at the desk kept shaking her head “no”, and saying something about a bus. So we left without a ticket.
“But it’s on the schedule”, I kept telling my husband. It was just a communication problem, I decided. Not one to give up, we went back the next morning. The woman who had told us “no” the day before was not there, and when I wrote down “Krakow > Wadowice”, we got a ticket. The employee on the previous day, I decided, had not known what she was talking about.
So we headed out on the train to Wadowice, a distance of a little over 30 miles. When we were out of Krakow a few miles, though, the train stopped and everyone except me and my husband were getting off the train. Since we had not arrived in Wadowice and we had tickets to Wadowice, my husband and I just sat there—until the conductor, who spoke little English and saw that we spoke little Polish, came to tell us something about a bus. So we exited the train and saw all the other passengers getting on a bus and the train tracks being worked on. Could this have been what the woman at the train station was trying to tell us the previous day?
It was a lovely drive through the countryside of Poland, though, that ended in Wadowice. And we visited the home of John Paul II as we had planned. After visiting the museum, we went to a local café for lunch—the Paradise Café. We’re from Tennessee and we’re sitting by the window in the Paradise Café overlooking the square of the small town in Poland that was the birthplace of John Paul II. There was music playing during our lunch, but we paid little attention to it until we heard the strands of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. I don’t know if John Paul would have approved or not, but we found it very amusing. Then we looked at each other and said, “Now, how do we get back to Krakow?”
Not long before we left Poland, we spent about a week working in Krakow. While there we wanted to travel to some of the areas around Krakow, but in this train station there were very few employees who spoke much English. Since I was a little better at the pronunciation of Polish words than my husband, it fell to me to communicate with personnel at the train station. To do this I would take the train schedule and write down “Krakow > Czestochowa”.
This worked well until we wanted to go visit Wadowice, the home of John Paul II. When I wrote down “Krakow > Wadowice”, the woman at the desk kept shaking her head “no”, and saying something about a bus. So we left without a ticket.
“But it’s on the schedule”, I kept telling my husband. It was just a communication problem, I decided. Not one to give up, we went back the next morning. The woman who had told us “no” the day before was not there, and when I wrote down “Krakow > Wadowice”, we got a ticket. The employee on the previous day, I decided, had not known what she was talking about.
So we headed out on the train to Wadowice, a distance of a little over 30 miles. When we were out of Krakow a few miles, though, the train stopped and everyone except me and my husband were getting off the train. Since we had not arrived in Wadowice and we had tickets to Wadowice, my husband and I just sat there—until the conductor, who spoke little English and saw that we spoke little Polish, came to tell us something about a bus. So we exited the train and saw all the other passengers getting on a bus and the train tracks being worked on. Could this have been what the woman at the train station was trying to tell us the previous day?
It was a lovely drive through the countryside of Poland, though, that ended in Wadowice. And we visited the home of John Paul II as we had planned. After visiting the museum, we went to a local café for lunch—the Paradise Café. We’re from Tennessee and we’re sitting by the window in the Paradise Café overlooking the square of the small town in Poland that was the birthplace of John Paul II. There was music playing during our lunch, but we paid little attention to it until we heard the strands of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. I don’t know if John Paul would have approved or not, but we found it very amusing. Then we looked at each other and said, “Now, how do we get back to Krakow?”
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