Vienna-Bratislava-Katowice

This whole post is pretty much dedicated to an entire day spent in transit, which, relatively speaking, would be somewhat boring, but intercity travel is such a big part of backpacking, and all these endless posts about tourist spots can get rather banal too, so might as well. Anyway. Got up fairly early to catch a bus from Vienna to Bratislava, which took little over an hour. Weather was dismal again, so I ended up staying in Bratislava's rather dreary main bus station.

Didn't get any further than this.

From Brat, it was a 6 hour PolskiBus ride to Katowice. The mountains on the Slovak/Polish border were surprisingly beautiful, and if you didn't fall asleep, there were quite a few ruinous castles on hills to be seen along the motorway.

And another one.

Halfway through our journey, when the driver stopped to let himself and the other passengers take a smoking break.

The highway, and you now get an idea of these Polish mountains.

And it's back on the highway. Weather's clearing up.

Arrived at the Katowice hostel, which was very conveniently located right next to the main train station. Katowice was a boring, small town about two hours from Krakow, the erstwhile capital of Poland. I went there because I wanted to visit Auschwitz, which was also about 2 hours away from Katowice. Katowice's one of those rather dreary Polish towns which was flattened during the second World War and rebuilt again during the communist era. I honestly don't know what else I can say about it other than the fact that it was really quite boring and sort of depressing. The main train station was built right next to a rather fancy mall, though, which I visited about three times during my stay.

The main town square...

The hostel itself was rather all right. Cheap (6 euros a night), as all Polish hostels are, right next to the PKP, and the showers were..interesting.

The one thing that made me very unhappy about the hostel was that they gave me the wrong information on transport to Auschwitz. Nothing wrong with the bus itself, apart from the fact that they forgot to mention the bus didn't run on Sundays, which happened to be the day I wanted to visit Auschwitz. I ended up doing a LOT of unecessary running between the PKP and the PKS, with my bag bumping uncomfortably behind my back, wasted a polskibus ticket, and wasted an entire morning. Not to mention the fact that I got up early for nothing!

Anyway, the food here was wonderful - in Katowice, I mean, not the hostel. I went to the city centre and ordered...this.

It was a Greek restaurant, but the Polish food they served seemed authentic enough. I enjoyed my meal enough to come here again the next day.

More to come soon. I am starving. Will take advantage of the 24 hour stores to go downstairs and get some food. Just not crazy about having to go past the security guards.