Poland day 1:
Now that I've officially learned 7 Dutch words, I decided to live up to my newfound heritage by bike riding to the airport. My flight departed at 5:45 p.m. and I arrived in Krakow in the late evening. My German friend, Basti, who lives very close to Poland in the East part of Germany, arrived shortly after me from a 15 hour bus ride. We immediately noticed a outdoor festival and purchased some good Spanish food and wine. Since it was already pretty late we decided to go to a 24-hour grocery store and go to our shitty hostel to stay the night.
Poland day 2:
All prior attempts to book a direct bus to the tatras mountain range had failed due to errors on their website. So we decided to ambush the bus driver at one of the stops and see if we could hop on. Once successful we were on our way for a 2-hour drive. The hike was outstanding. It was mostly uphill and we got a great view of two lakes by the famous hut Morskie Oko. While hiking uphill we saw lots of polish people coming up and down the mountain. I noticed that most of the polish men are extremely fat and ugly whereas most of the polish woman are incredibly thin and coated with makeup. It was also interesting to see how much gender stereotypes affect polish couples. The women would often seek to be guided and supported by their male partners and walk extremely cautiously and slowly. I wonder if this has something to do with Poland's strong orthodox Christian roots. After a few mishaps (including me almost losing my one water bottle at the peak of the mountain) we successfully arrived at our hut. My friend and I enjoyed a large beer and a traditional polish dinner and then went to sleep shortly afterwards.
Poland day 3:
This day was by far the hardest. Rain had pounded the mountain all night and had no intention of stopping throughout the day. Within only a few hours my "waterproof" jacket had absorbed a small swimming pools worth of rainwater which had fully soaked all of my clothes and food. This was also the longest hike we were planning to do: about 20km. There were lots of ups and downs, slippery rocks, and overgrown paths. Regardless we persevered and made our way to the second hut in about 12 hours. We were so physically exhausted and mentally drained from talking to each other for several hours that we decided to veg out and play computer games on our phones for an hour or so.
Poland day 4:
The rain was still going strong today but that made no difference to us because our clothes were already soaked in water. Fortunately the hike was only 9 km long and mostly downhill. We arrived in Zakopane and immediately paid for a taxi to drop us off at our hotel. The first thing we did on arrival is dropp down our water soaked bags and make our way to the nearest thermal pool spa facility. We spent almost 4 hours there just sitting in the nice warm traditional polish sauna.
Poland day 5:
This was our last full day in Poland and we spent most of it in the restaurant of our hotel enjoying the benefits of a free buffet breakfast. Once our carb levels had returned to their pre-hike equilibrium we tried to take public transport back to Krakow. This proved way harder than expected because the bus services in Poland are horrible. We missed the first bus because a guy in front of us asked the bus driver if it went to some obscure destination. On discovery that it didn't he left in a huff. The bus driver assumed we were with the other guy and drove off. We missed the second bus for a similar reason. On the third attempt we bulldozed our way in, shouldering our way in front of elderly person in queue. Once back in Krakow, we toured the city center one final time. I'd had enough goulash to last a lifetime, so we settled on some greasy burgers to finish our journey
