Going to teach: but students 1500 miles away

---

The mission: Get to Białystok, for a weekend of teaching.

So what do you do when the skies are threatened with Icelandic ash, and your 10%!c(MISSING)ommitment to reduce your carbon is at stake? And Eurostar is too expensive?

Get the boat! Yep, Hull to Rotterdam and then up to Amsterdam. Then the train to Poland!
Kasia and me left Wharfedale late afternoon, and made our connection in Leeds for the Hull train which was overcrowded (again). We got a triple security check, just to let us know that the Tories had got in power and were making a statement that they took it all very seriously. So if they want to reduce government waste then perhaps checking our passports three times at Hull is a bit over the top? We enjoyed the big buffet meal that evening and had an elderly East German couple for company at out table. They had toured Scotland on a coach, which was nice, though the bloke was harbouring bitter memories from the post war period when his family was kicked out of Breslau - now Wrocław. I mentioned that it was bad, but then part of my family had to flee twice last century, and Kasia mentioned about the mass deportation of people on the Polish side from the Ukrainian territories.

Next morning on the coach from the Europoort oilscape to Amsterdam which once again had a small consignment of drug monkeys drivelling on. Thankfully I had a mp3 player for that bit.

We got to Amsterdam a bit late what with the motorways getting grid locked around Rotterdam - there are just too many cars on the road - and then proceeded down from the station to the Anne Frank House. There is it quite simply laid out but highly effective in conveying the atmosphere of the times and tragedy of Ann's story.

We then headed through the city for some lunch and wandered back via the red light area (a couple of dames in the windows) before retrieving our rucksacks an hour too early. Oops. Time for a pint at a nearby pub, mine being an over-fizzy Belgian brew.

So we staggered over to Centraal station in time for the overnight express to Warsaw. We got our couchettes (reasonably cheap) and eventually got to sleep, finding that I sleep better in the morning.

Now of course we were going to spend more than a weekend in Poland having spent all this time getting there...

---

Photos

Not the red light district
...but an antiquarian bookshop, of course! Amsterdam.