Whirpools in Aachen, Red Wine in Warsaw

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Leeds - Aachen - Białystok

So we have a 12th anniversary and Orthodox Easter to celebrate. The idea: visit Kasia’s folks and have a relaxing dip in the thermal baths of Aachen on the way. How can we do it in face of the high price of rail travel?

Well, we got to Aachen for about £75 which is not too bad. Then a “Spar Night” from German Railways got us the overnight sleeper to Warsaw at a reduced price.

From Leeds to Brussels we booked through with Eurostar. That ticket includes any Belgian destination, and that means the German border, if you are prepared to go on a regional express, train wait an hour in Verviers (grab some food there) and then chug down the hill on a local train. So for £75, that got us from Leeds via London to Brussels, Verviers, and Aachen.

Once in Aachen we saw the sights of the town centre, and spent most of the time immersed in pleasantly warm water de-stressing from the English winter. Aachen is indeed a very pleasant town with a fine pedestrianised centre and the spa surrounded by parkland.

Our departure from Aachen was followed by a visit to a Lebanese establishment purveying food of inferior quality in Köln, before finding our train. German Railways, in their wisdom, had decided to advertise the train as going to Copenhagen and Prague, despite the fact that the majority of carriages were going through to Warsaw. I know the railways are neglected in Poland, but that is no excuse to ignore the destination all together! Once on the platform, some cleaners decide to water our platform, just on our platform mind, and no one else’s, minutes before the train arrived. So nowhere to dump a heavy rucksack!

The best news is for the “Jan Kiepura” Köln-Warsaw train is that there are no overnight passport checks, thanks to Poland signing the Schengen Agreement. In fact we would not need our passports until we signed in to a Slovak hotel much later on.

We got to Białystok early afternoon, after a short stop over in Warsaw. First impressions after 16 months: traffic’s worse than ever.

In fact Białystok is the sort of place you can go to see all the mistakes in urban development of the early twentieth century in England being repeated again. What’s these guys’ model, Rochdale? A marketplace in the centre has been pulled down to rubble before a buyer for the plot has been found. Very scenic. A new dual carriageway severs a bike route, another is planned to cover the allotments and best of all, a new airport just about 2 kilometres from the city centre next to the Park and Nature Reserve. You can imagine going for a nice family stroll in the park to look at the anemones and enjoy the- whilst a 737 thunders overhead, air full of kerosene, trucks roaring through. Brilliant! This area was known as the “Green Lungs of Poland”. Not for long…
Please don’t think that I have it in for the city: it is just that the very things that I like about it, the things that I remember coming from Kraków to enjoy, are being destroyed, and I am upset about it.

Next: trips to unspoilt Podlasie before our journey to the Mala Fatra of Slovakia.

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Photos

Smart pub that played Rock...
..and desert blues. We ordered Sekt - German champagne here, to celebrate 12 years of marriage. Our order initially flummoxed the barman, who suggested we go to the supermarket! Not when it's on the menu!

Aachen Dom by night
The seat of Charlemagne's empire.

Bike park
..Aachen style.

Town Hall cafe
With a plastic horse, obviously. Odd, respectably tacky and ever so slightly disturbing.

Bialystok Park
Spring leaves. But how long will this place be tranquil?