A morning of Amazing Race moments - not the good kind.

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I'm trying to keep clam and remember that it always takes time for me to orient to a new language and a new phrasebook. In 2005, I suffered through many very sad attempts at Czech and it took until several days in to a second visit in 2008 for me to render one word, any word in a way that any Czech person was willing to recognize as Czech. It was a triumph when it happened. Let's just say I haven't triumphed in Polish yet and things aren't looking good for this visit.

So yesterday, Saturday, I had a leisurely morning at the mall, magic ruby Merrells and all that, and was basking in just experiencing Gdańsk and trying to see examples of everyday life in the city. In the afternoon, I met Aga and got a jump-start on Solidarity. But then, as our relaxing afternoon was winding to a close, Aga spoke a few terrifying words that changed my entire perspective on the day and the visit: "... and remember, that museum will be closed on Monday."

OMG museums are closed on Mondays. And it's late on Saturday, so they're closed now. And I leave for Kaliningrad bright and early on Tuesday morning. And I have a CouchSurfer date tomorrow afternoon.

And I really wanted to see Malbork Castle. Suddenly I remember how the guidebook clearly says the indoor exhibits at Malbork are closed on Monday and it's pointless to try to see it then. In fact, I cancelled plans to stay overnight there en route to Kaliningrad specifically because it would have put me there on a pointless Monday.

All this means that if I want to see Malbork, which is a 1:15 train ride each way, I have to find a way to do it and get back to Gdańsk Główny (main train station) by 13:40 tomorrow.

Anyone who knows me understands that there was no question I would try to find a way, or make a way, and that's what I did. I visited the PKP rail website and searched the train schedules, and determined that I could indeed get from Gdańsk to Malbork at opening time, spend a few hours inside the castle, and get back to Gdańsk in time to meet my date (who had conveniently already suggested we meet outside Gdańsk Główny). I wrote down the desired trains, and some alternate trains before and after. My B&B hotel even packed me a generous breakfast to carry on the train. Things seemed to be lining up nicely.

I knew the trip would be challenging given my nonexistent Polish language skills. I mentioned Czech earlier, but I didn't point out the most important difference: in Prague's tourist center, English works as a fallback option when Czech fails. In Gdańsk English does not work reliably, for two reasons: one, most people don't speak it, even in the center, and two, I still can't successfully say "do you speak English?" in Polish. Not kidding. I can't even form the Polish word for 'English'. I mix it up with the Russian word, or I just mangle it, and all I get are bewildered or pitying expressions from the poor Poles. It's sad to be trying, yet failing so badly.

As it turns out, on the way to Malbork, language wasn't even the main barrier. I did miss my train, and I did lose half an hour of castle time, because for all my worrying about language I didn't realize I had forgotten many key European train-travel skills. I arrived in plenty of time, and had little trouble purchasing my ticket since I had the train information written down. It all went wrong when I tried to figure out which platform to wait on. Gdańsk Główny has electronic readerboards, but I had no idea which screen said "arrivals" vs. "departures". I didn't know the Polish word for "platform" so I wasn't sure which column on the screen showed the platform number. I don't know the Polish counting numbers, so when I asked "gdzie jest?" it might have worked, but I had no chance of understanding the reply. I forgot that I needed to look for the name of the city where the train would end, not the name of the city in the middle where I would be getting off. It didn't help that my ticketed route involved a change of train - this meant that I actually found a person on a platform who spoke a little bit of English, but she couldn't figure out which platform or which train I needed, either. I found a big white poster with a long list of trains on it, but they all seemed to be arrivals, and I had forgotten that I needed to look for departure information on a big yellow poster instead (this is standard in European stations, I think).

This meant that after I left the English-speaking person on the platform to go look for train information back in the station, she got on her train and it left, and I figured out that yes, it had been the correct platform and it was my train and I'd missed it.

Argh.

I trudged back to the ticket window and pointed at my ticket and stubbornly repeated "zmienić" out of my phrasebook until they figured out I wanted to "change" for a ticket on the next train. I also stubbornly repeated "EuroCity" to try to describe the train I wanted - alas - about half an hour later I remembered that that isn't what "EIC" stands for at all. It stands for "Express InterCity". "EuroCity" was entirely wrong and probably very confusing for the ticket agents. Fortunately, I had "EIC" written down and pointing at it eventually worked. I paid the difference between the two tickets, found my new EIC train's info on the big yellow poster, waited at the correct platform, and successfully boarded.

I didn't mention the sudden unexpected downpour on the way from my hotel to the train station earlier, nor how I had chosen not to wear the magic rain shoes because a glance out the window of the hotel seemed to suggest that the day had dawned sunny and too warm for rain shoes. The point is not how much worse all of the above inconveniences may be when one is also soaking wet; the point is actually that on the new, modern, comfy EIC train, I had a reserved seat by a window and there was heat coming out of a vent right next to me! There was only one other woman in my compartment, and I have no idea what the poor lady must have thought, but I immediately peeled off my soggy socks and draped them over part of the heat vent to dry. Which they did! Things are finally looking up!

In the Rick Steves guidebook pages for Malbork, he gives information about getting from the Malbork train station to the castle either on foot, or by cab. He recommends the taxi as an inexpensive option and says not to let any cabbie try to rip you off by charging any more than 10 zł for the trip. I had already decided that I was willing to pay a rip-off premium to avoid having to haggle, which I hate doing, in a language I don't speak. So I snagged the first cab (by apparently successfully saying "zamek?" or perhaps it's just obvious what clueless non-Polish-speakers want to see in Malbork) and the cabbie quoted me... 10 zł. So far so good!

I love it when reality turns out to be better than a guidebook. In this case, Rick devotes a good amount of time explaining the difficulties and workarounds involved in securing an English-language tour of Malbork Castle. This is in the latest edition, but it's out of date. Malbork now offers an inexpensive audioguide in a variety of languages, and it's the coolest audioguide I've ever seen (which is a lot): it's an iPod Touch hanging from a lanyard, with a custom guide app on it! The app is well-designed and easy to use, and includes pictures, text, and even little videos on the iPod screen. It's brilliant and and for me, gadget girl who's really short on time, it's way better than a guided tour with a group.

Armed with Rick's self-guided tour from the guidebook, and the audioguide's self-guided tour, my visit to Malbork became exactly like The Price Is Right's "Race Game": you know the one where they have four prices, and four prizes, and some small number of seconds to run around matching them up and pulling the handle to see whether they got them right and won? Yeah, like that, except without the handle.

I think I kinda won, though. I got a good look at, and good pictures of, all the parts of the castle. I think of all the various castles I've ever visited, Malbork is the most like my ideal of what "castle" means. Originally known as Marienburg, it was the headquarters throughout the middle ages of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a bunch of fighting monks who first provided medical help to Crusaders and later sought to Christianize (by force as needed) pagans in north central Europe (pretty much the areas where I'm traveling on this trip). That they made themselves wealthy and powerful in the process was a nice bonus for doing God's and Mary's work. This castle was constructed for comfortable monastic living (not an oxymoron) and above all for defense. (In its armory, I saw several "hand-and-a-half" swords just like the reproduction my sweetheart just bought at the Renaissance Faire back in Seattle!) One of its highlights is the Dansker Tower, which served as a far-removed latrine most of the time but was designed to be held as the last bastion if the rest of the castle were ever captured. Its defensive design was never tested, as the castle never fell in battle or siege. Instead, a weakened Teutonic Order eventually sold it to pay debts.

After hurrying for a last look around the still-ruined (post-WWII) main cathedral within the castle, I turned in my audioguide in presumably plenty of time to make it back to the station to catch my train. And that's when I encountered my first seriously Amazing Race moment. That handy taxi from the train station? Yeah... no taxi stand with any cabs waiting at the castle to take anyone back. At least, not at that time of day. It became clear I was going to have to walk it - about 15 minutes for Rick Steves means about 20-25 for me - and that meant my plenty-of-time might be more like just-enough-time. Fine. Now where's that train station? I pulled out Rick's guidebook and discovered that he provided detailed directions to walk to the castle from the station, but not back. And the waypoints simply didn't work reliably in reverse: "take your second left, then at the end of that street, turn right and go until you see a castle". In other words, I had a rough guide but at some key points I was going to be on my own.

I got lucky - at the major failure point, trying to find a pedestrian underpass to get across a main avenue, I was able to stop a woman and ask (having looked it up in my phrasebook whilst walking), "dworzec?" ("station?"). In retrospect I'm 99%!c(MISSING)ertain I pronounced it incorrectly ("c" = "ts" in Polish, not "k"), but she got what I meant, and pointed that I could simply cross the street at the handy crosswalk we were standing at, then follow the signs which I could see on the other side of the street. Which worked great! Dworzec, here I come!

I arrived with enough time for the train, and even figured out that the ticket desk was weirdly situated out on one of the platforms (due to station renovation). And here's where my language and train-riding skills somewhat failed me again. I knew, and had written down, that two different trains would be leaving Malbork within about 15 minutes of each other, arriving in Gdańsk within about the same 15 minutes of each other, and I knew I wanted the earlier one because the second one would make me a few minutes late for my meeting with Emilia. I succeeded in buying a ticket for the earlier one (by the ticket agent pointing at a schedule), and then things went wrong when I tried to ask which platform. I think I annoyed the agent, and she waved her hands in the general direction of all the platforms while probably saying in Polish in several different ways exactly the answer I wanted but couldn't understand. Sigh. I made my way outside to the big yellow poster, and it told me to wait on Peron (Platform) 3. I had to walk around a bit to find signs for any of the platforms, and it seemed that the entire area was Peron 3, both left and right sides of the platform, which I'm not used to (they are often numbered separately).

Soon after, a grungy old eastern train rolled up, and I had also learned my lesson from the morning and knew to verify that its final destination would be Gdynia (a few cities past Gdańsk up the coast). Excellent. Platform 3, Gdynia, boarded, found a seat on a grungy little regional train bench thing. The train kinda sat there. Oh well. Eastern trains, whaddyagonnado? Out the window to my left, I noticed a sleek, shiny, brand-new double-decker commuter train glide in on the other side of the platform. It also said "Gdynia". I watched with envy as passengers hopped on, and seriously considered jumping off my train to take this second one - but I knew better, because often there's different pricing and I'm sure my ticket wouldn't be valid over there. Oh well, it's too bad the earlier train is this grungy one, I said, but at least I'll get to Gdańsk with that extra 15 minutes before I go meet Emilia.

Yeah. You guessed it. The sleek train glided right on out of the station at exactly 12:14, while the train I was sitting on stubbornly remained at Malbork. As the shiny new train rolled past, I caught a glimpse of some name or brand painted on its side: Koleje Mazowieckie. Wait. "K"? "M"? I pulled out my ticket: train number KM 15531. Dammit, I got the destination right, but I forgot to check the sign outside the train door when I boarded. The sign would have confirmed, or in my case corrected, my choice of train. Dammit. So I'm going the right way, but on the slower train. I spent the next 1 hour and 14 minutes bitterly imagining how much more comfortable the seats must have been on the KM train, while alternately trying to reassure myself that I was having a more "local" and "authentic" experience.

After all this, I have no idea how any of the teams on the Amazing Race get anywhere at all!!

Thankfully, at the end of my irritating ride, Emilia waited for me! See Looking for Lech in all the wrong places for a full account of our wonderful afternoon at the historic Gdańsk Shipyards. And now, I have fabulous memories of a great castle I wouldn't otherwise have seen, plus a good story which I hope was reasonably entertaining.

See all my pictures from Malbork on Flickr: Malbork 2010 Set

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Photos

It seemed to bode well
The problem with a rainbow in front of you is it often means there's a downpour coming behind you.

Authenticity? Yeah!
A sword and dagger set looking an awful lot like someone's I know. Are you sure you don't need a Teutonic Knight costume?

The Grand Refectory
Guidebooks show this as an empty hall, but I found a great exhibit of sacred art!

Coolest Mary altar ever
What's with that apple?

Ruined cathedral
It had been painstakingly restored right BEFORE the war. :(