Tuesday, August 7, 2012

DAY 8: Adaptability


So the plan changed a bit. Or some might say "a lot".

Yesterday morning I was in a cafe in Krakow, writing my 'Clash of Civilisations' essay, when I got a message from my friend Scott. The message was basically this: "I'm in Leipzig, and I'm going to see a man about a bike. Riding to the Polish border after that – can you meet me in Görlitz on Wednesday?"

To put that in perspective: the distance between Krakow and Görlitz by road is 428km. In my first five days, making my way slowly by bicycle and super-slow regional trains,  I'd managed to cover a little over 200kms.

I'd actually determined some rules of thumb before leaving Lviv, which were these:  if you can get there in a day on the bike, do it. If you can't, get a train. If it costs more than 10 Euros to get to the next destination by train (paying for myself and for the bike), you're going too fast.

So yeah ... this was a bit of a change.

Meanwhile, Muhammad had caught up with me. I'd more or less done the research for the essay, but hadn't started writing. The plan was to stay put in Krakow for two nights and one full day, and write it there. (It's due today, btw.) As it turned out, my full day in Krakow was taken up with other stuff, so yesterday I had a mountainous task before me: write 2,500 words in a single day, and get to the next city, Katowice. That meant either a 2.5 hour train journey or a full day's bike ride.

My decision: "Alright, then, let's do this thing. I'll start the essay in Krakow, get myself to Katowice and finish writing there. Then I'll race over and join Scott."

So I sat in Krakow and wrote for as long as I could, then grabbed a train. At 7pm, having just arrived in Katowice, I had a little over 1,000 words written. So I wandered into the centre, chose a cosy-looking cafe as my venue to finish off the work, and sat down to coffee and Greek salad and Islam.

Six hours later I was still at the cafe, and I'd been befriended by the Moldovan family who run it. This was great on the one hand – they were extremely warm and friendly, and even gave me a lift back to my hostel afterwards – but it meant that I hadn't quite finished writing when I got back at about 1:30am.

I finally submitted the essay just before 4am, and collapsed on the bed to be woken five hours later by my alarm. Some helpful advice from the receptionist got me to my next destination, which was Gliwice, and from there I travelled to the low-key, moderately cute town of Opole, where I am now. So far today I've done two 'short hops' by regional train and 33kms of cycling, but there's more to come. I'm booked at a hotel in Wroclaw tonight, and that's another 100kms from here. So we'll see how long my 'rules of thumb' can last!

One of these days, I'll have a 'normal' holiday ... you know, the kind that are advertised with phrases like "Relax, unwind and recharge your batteries in beautiful xxxx" and "Put your feet up and forget the cares of everyday life in xxxx".

Right now, though, this holiday seems pretty close to perfect )))

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