warsaw

In Warsaw I splashed out and got a taxi from the bus station where I collected my baggage. On the side of the taxis it said 2 zloty per a km which I reckon was rather cheap. So I got in the taxi pointed to where I wanted to go on the map then proceeded to get ripped of with a 80 zloty bill for a 5km journey. I have no idea how that worked or if I was ripped off.
I got to the bus station and then tried to book my ticket to Tallinn. To find out that they were all sold out. The best they could do was get me to Riga, a little later than i had planned to get there. This was ok, it was not like I had any other option and at least I was heading in the correct direction.

Waiting for the bus I bumped into a cute little Irish girl, small world hey? So we
chatted and watched the sun set as our bus headed toward Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. She was spending a couple of days in Vilnius and I had 2 minutes to get onto my connecting bus to Riga.

Inspired by watching Michael Palin's mainly travels through Europe on trains and my last visit to Prague where I saw the old trains leaving the station I decided that on my next backpacking adventure I would skip the planes and travel over land.

This started off with my journey from Brno in Czech. My colleagues got me to the station and hooked up with a ticket on the over night train to Warsaw. I tried to book a sleeper, which the lady at the ticket office told me I could buy on the train.

Once on the train this did not seem possible and I was little to freaked out to even bother so ended up on a couchette. In each compartment there are 6 seats which slide out a little. I got into one of these with two other guys, pulled the seat out as much as possible and slept with feet on the opposite seat.