Said a very emotional farewell to the gang,
whom I’d become very fond of, after the 65 dkk all-you-can-eat buffet-style
breakfast. (That’s too many hyphens there, methinks.) Anyway, just witnessed
Belgium being kicked out of the World Cup by don’t-cry-for-me-Argentina. I have
a feeling that it’s going to boil down to those few Latin American countries.
Am truly sorry that Columbia lost yesterday, since this means that I won’t be
able to see the delectable and delightful James Rodriguez in action any more.
Walked over to the Copenhagen central
station to catch a shuttle to Malmo. On my way to the station, I went by the
Tivoli theme park, which I didn’t enter. I’ve been on enough Ride of Deaths and
Pirates of the Caribbean to last me a lifetime. I hate those freefall ones,
where your stomach jumps into your mouth and your feet are ripped off the
ground by G-force.
The shuttle was operated by Neptunbus, cost
100dkk, and was the cheapest transportation I could find. Its prices are really
competitive, especially when you look at the tolls for the Oresund Bridge, the double-trackrailway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel spanning the Øresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. It’s a remarkable feat
of engineering, almost 8km in length. When they were building it, they
discovered 16 unexploded World War II bombs on the seafloor. Something rather
similar to this happened to me in Gdansk, but I’ll discuss that later.
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| A view of the strait from the Oresund Bridge, quite the once in a lifetime experience |
Arrived at Malmo airport without much
incident. One thing that really fascinated me was the fact that they have 7-11s here.
I met a lovely couple in the airport who
were also going to Gdansk, and we debated world politics, history and
vegetarianism when the Wizzair flight was delayed for an hour.
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| Wizzing through the air! |
They were kind enough to give me a ride to
the hostel, and we ended up having dinner together at Gdansk’s old city centre.
It was then that I decided that I was really going to like Poland, if their
people were all this hospitable and amicable.
The hostel. This was probably the best hostel I ever stayed at - the atmosphere, the price&value, the people, the city, everything about it was just perfect. Even the graffiti - although it must be said, this city has some very interesting street art.
And my room - 4 pounds per night and an
all-you-can-eat breakfast included. One of the many reasons why I love being in
this part of the world - you can live well on a budget. And the food is
MARVELLOUS, but I will get to that in a moment.
The kitchen. I simply adore hostels.
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| The football match on the screen, ha! |
I spent a considerable chunk of the night
talking to some of the other travellers here, all of whom were from former Eastern
bloc countries. You meet a very different bunch of people here from the ones in
popular destinations such as Copenhagen and Barcelona. All of these
central/eastern Europeans speak considerably good English (a lot better than
their Western counterparts to be honest), are smart, opinionated and passionate
about the world and life in general. I learned more from them during these days
than I did from my history books back in school. They told me all about the Ukrainian
situation, various Soviet leaders and the parts they played and how their
decisions influenced the 21st century, life under the Communist rule, and visa
problems.
Did not manage to turn in early, since we
had too much fun talking about Khrushchev and the annexation of the Crimean
peninsula. Was nevertheless obliged to get up early the next day, since I’d
planned to visit Sopot and Frombork. I bought a 24 hour pass valid for trams
and buses, which cost 6 zloty (about 1 GBP). These can be bought from random
vending machines located in subways, which featured very impressive graffiti.
Another city with interesting graffiti was Lisbon, which I realise I have
written up on either.
This one was my personal favourite. The
artists captured the essence of the people here perfectly.
This one reminded me of the Statue of
Liberty - which is probably ironic, given that they only shook off the yoke of
the USSR some twenty years prior.
On the way to the train station, and these
are tram tracks. I wonder why there aren’t any trams in England (not that I’ve
seen so far, anyway)?
And this was really interesting. It’s a
signpost pointing in the directions of what they probably consider to be the
more interesting cities in the world, including Barcelona (but of course), St
Petersburg, Rotterdam, and...Cleveland?
When I reached the train station, there were
people rushing around and the whole place was blaring with police horns. I
asked the rather good-looking gentleman at the information centre what was
going, and he told me that they’d just found a bomb from the second World War on
one of the train tracks, and that Gdansk Glowny was in a state of lockdown. The
bomb was undetonated, he hastily reassured me. I was really quite shocked, and
intrigued. In the Netherlands, I encountered a railway lockdown because someone
jumped in front of a train, and then of course you get all the normal train
delays because of various boring reasons. But I must say, it’s quite a novelty
for your train to stop operating because they found a bomb from the second
World War.
Shall end this entry on that particular
note, with the hilarious bomb notice the station personnel later tacked on to
the ticket booth.
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