Zakopane - Polish trains, gofry and snowboarding

Short facts:
Distance - 400km from Warsaw to Zakopane
Length - around 4 days
Music - Death Note soundtrack and Chinese audio lessons


I was considering for quite long either to go to Zakopane with Erasmus people or not. Main concern was what will I do there if I don't like skiing and trekking was not possible because of the snowfall. But eventually I decided to go. Me and other 3 people were late to have places in the bus, but we had places in hostel so all we needed is to get there by train. Which made me happy as I like trains.
We bought our tickets for 00.44 am February 26. While waiting for others to come I was walking around in the station and talking to myself in Mandarin, which apparently was scaring other people.
What I knew that the train we had to get was so called "normal" so it had no reserved seats and if you do not get one for yourself, you end up having nowhere to sit. I heard some almost India-like train stories about Polish trains. So we got into train and were just walking through wagons as we had no idea which one should be ours. And as usual no one spoke English. But somehow magically we got 4 seats and were happy about it. It was 10 hour ride in train compartment with other 3 people. Wasn't that bad, but not too pleasant as well.
So eventually we arrived to Zakopane, found our hostel and I decided to walk a little around the city. It was cute, although quite touristy. So that was how the day passed. In evening we all went to old style pub, where I tried hot beer for the first time (most probably fro the last time too). Spanish, Italians and Portuguese gave us a concert which could be summed up as "If we sing louder in our language we are better". Was quite unique cultural experience. After that we went to club with awful music. End of day one.
Day two began after 5 hours of sleep and trying to find waterproof clothing for snowboarding. Luckily I was successful and soon I was on the top of hill (I can't call that mountain) with a snowboard and two teachers - Hungarian and Korean (they were other Erasmus students who had experience in snowboarding and they took up this difficult task teaching me how to snowboard). First half way I was falling a lot and thinking "I am sliding down the hill on some board, people are really creative to think about such activities". Eventually I started getting the feeling of how to balance myself. Second time was better, third even better and fourth was the last time. All in all I just loved it. After coming back 4 of us train travelers went to buy ticker to Warsaw. It was quite difficult but I managed to communicate in my Russian-Polish. Later that day we had the "surprise" thing from our organizers. It was a horse carriage ride through Zakopane. It was really great and a lot fun. Not to get cold we warmed ourselves with some vodka. And after hat we played some card drinking games and went to club. Which was real peak of happiness as they started playing rock music and even around 8 rock songs in a row! After that they switched back to r'n'b so after few songs I went out. That's just a thing I have - no matter if I am drunk or not, I cannot enjoy that mainstream club music.
Again after 5 hours of sleep I woke up. First things first I needed something sweet so we went to buy some Gofry - waffles with cream, ice cream and more stuff on it. Along with coffee that was a blessing. And right after we went to aqua park. The most exciting part of it was going on that water-tube-slide which goes outside and the outside was around -5 degrees C. And jacuzzi was nice too for my sore muscles. Right after we had dinner and snowboarding again. It was a little harder as it was late and snow was icy, but still it was fun and worth it. Eventually I was so tired I could hardly get up on my board. In the evening I was so tired I couldn't do anything. That summed up my day, while most of others went to club.
So on Sunday after breakfast we went to train and it was better this time. Apparently we had 1st class. It had seats and it took just 7 hours. Most of the time I listened to Chinese lessons. I guess people around me were thinking that I was crazy or something.
6 pm back to Warsaw. The underground passage in center is really troublesome, so hard to find the right place to get out. But a nice English speaking person helped us and I happily got back to my dorm.

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