Frightening Frontiers...

Reflections on a different time and a different place. How often, when we are in one place, do we wish we were somewhere else? And then, when we get to the place we wished to be, we yearn to go back to that which we know?

Icicles clung to the eaves, all the passersby were breathing white mist, gravel crunching beneath their feet. Scarves were wound tight, hands stuck deep into coat pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.

Into this unfriendly, gray world I stepped with hope around my ankles, dragging me down. As you know, the bus I was supposed to take to Poprad wasn't running anymore. Surrounded by sour, non-English speaking faces, even the bus station Jedi's blessings didn't give me any hope. The task before me was comparatively small, but it felt like I had to move a mountain! All I had to do was convince a bus driver to take me to Poprad.

For those of you who haven't been to the Zakopane bus station, if you walk out the front door, there is a fairly big road in front of you - double lanes going both ways. On both sides of the road you get bus stops, but not in normal style. For about 50 meters the road splits into four lanes in both directions, with the two 50m lanes separated from the street by a curb (once again on both sides). These extra lanes are stuffed to the brim with 16 seat minibuses. Well, not stuffed to the brim exactly, but there were at least 8 small buses on each side of the road. Walking to the closest bus and from there to the next one, and the next one, and the next one asking for help gave me no joy and no outcome. Conversation was the same every time and it was short. It went something like this:

Me: "Poprad?"
Bus driver: "No."

After going through all of the buses present at that time, I still had no way of getting across the border. Needless to say, my anxiety levels were a fair bit higher than normal! Back in front of the station, my eye caught a group of touristy looking people across the road from me. Having absolutely nothing to lose, I walked over to them and asked them If they were going to Poprad. Of course they weren't. What was I thinking? Dejectedly I told them my story, because two of the four could actually speak a fair amount of English. After listening politely they said they couldn't help me. Thus I took my stuff and shuffled back to the station in defeat.

Sitting on a bench, staring vacantly at the potted tree in front of me I didn't see one of the touristy people approaching. She told me that I needed to take my stuff and follow her, their little bus was going to drive almost all the way to the Slovak border, and that the driver knew of a little town in Slovakia from where I might find a bus. Well, when you are drowning you don't consider whether a branch would keep you above water before you grab onto it, you just grab it and hope. So that is what I did! The bus driver couldn't speak any English and all that he kept saying was: "Lysa Polana! Lysa Polana!" when I asked him about Poprad. You've heard of Lysa Polana before, haven't you? At least the people who read my blog regularly should have seen the name before. Yes, it was (is) the little town across the Slovak border that consists of three houses and a liquor store.

After the bus driver dropped me off in the middle of seemingly nowhere and gave me directions to the Slovak border, I took a deep breath and started walking. Apart from the fact that I wasn't sure where I'd sleep that night, the walk was quite pleasant! With a beautiful cliff face on my right and a little river bubbling along on my left. Snow hanging thick from tree branches and no sound apart from the gurgling of the stream, the sound of my suitcase wheels scrapping more than rolling across the road and the crunch of my boots, I felt almost at peace. Eventually I came to a narrow bridge crossing the stream, and there, on the other side of the bridge on a big blue notice board was the emblem of the European Union with one word written beneath it: Slovakia

The smaller sign next to the blue one read "Lysa Polana". I had made it. I was in Slovakia!

Pulling my suitcase up the steps to the liquor store alerted the shop keeper to my presence, and he came out to greet me, in Slovak. Haha, I greeted him in English and told him my story, in broken English he said that I could wait inside his shop until the bus to Poprad arrived. Gratefully I sank into a chair in front of a small television, showing a news reporter blurt out something about a place in Greece. Not long after I got seated the kind shopkeeper told me that the bus had arrived, and took my suitcase outside. I thanked him profusely and got on the bus to Poprad. My troubles were over, or so it seemed...

It only started up again a couple of days after the arrogant youth rejoiced in the kind strangers failure, though. So I guess I have to come back to that incident before I carry on with my story. Hopefully next time I'll be able to share a few tidbits about human nature and what makes us rejoice in another's failure.

For now, stay calm and read on...