Night trains.

This mode of transport is one of my favourite. If you try to cover long distances, planes are usually the best, given how quickly a flight gets you from place to place. Since planes are not really my cup of tea, instead of wasting a day travelling on train, I hop onto a night train, get myself comfy on my sleeping place, and before I know it I reach my destination the next morning.

There are downsides to such travelling of course. For instance, sometimes it’s difficult to get to sleep on a train, even if you can lie down. You wouldn’t have thought that a piece of steel can make so many different noises. And move in so many directions! When I was little I used to sleep like a log on our long holiday train rides to the seaside. Now it becomes progressively worse, and I wake up multiple times during the night. There is also a problem of co-travellers. This is not always a problem, but admittedly sharing a small space with a bunch of strangers doesn’t count among most pleasant parts of the journey. Especially when you have to deal with snoring, whining children and the like. And earplugs don’t always do the job. Finally, travelling by train remains a costly pleasure. Even bought in advance, long-distance night trains will cost you around €50 one way in a couchette carriage for six. And prices go up if you want more privacy or even your own toilette or a shower. There's also the problem of delays. On my inbound journey we had a delay of over 3 hours which we spent in Emmerich (again! there some sort of train Bermuda triangle there) waiting for our power supply to get repaired. Not ideal really when you cannot wait to get home.

I know for some this remains a mystery: why would you spend so much money on a 10h long journey while you could have taken an 1.5h long flight for 20 pound both ways? But there's something special about train travel. You feel that you travel when you're on a train more than when you fly. And you stay on the ground. This is a major advantage.

Are you going back?

I often get asked whether I plan to go back to Poland and my answers started in the past with 'yes, of course', then changed into 'maybe, I'd like to at some point', and gradually evolved into 'no, thank you.'

During those five years I've lost any sense of guilt about my alleged lack of patriotism. I simply don't want to go back to Poland. Recently I had a conversation that really encapsulated the reason why I, and many Polish expats around the world, don't want to come back. It's not so much about the money. Admittedly, you can earn more in the UK or Germany than in Poland. But what is more important is that in Poland you feel like the government is against you as a citizen all the time. And this is extremely discouraging. Imaging going to any governmental office, knowing for a fact that people sitting behind the desk don't want to help you, but want to make your life as difficult as possible. I'm so worked up now, that when I need to get in touch with any governmental offices, I look up the relevant piece of legislation to make sure my case is dealt with fairly and according to the law. It might seem paranoid, but if you don't know your rights you have none. It's sad, but this is how I see it.

After a right-wing candidate won presidential elections, those who voted for him were called stupid, and those on the losing side instantly declared that they would leave the country. I felt offended as a citizen, because for one thing, the president is supposed to represent the entire nation, and secondly, you shouldn't question somebody's mental abilities according to whether he agrees with you or not. Democracy works as it works, and you need to deal with it.

So I'm not coming back any time soon. Unless things change. And they might, because, as this election showed, people are ready to make unexpected and brave choices. In the mean time, I'll keep voting for people who might do something good for Poland.

Too much work. Or too little?

I was repeatedly told that I would have no work during my year abroad. However I was actually kept pretty busy for at least a good chunk of my time in Leiden. And it's only today that I've realised why.

It's not so much that Oxford's workload is so heavy that compared to it my year abroad workload is nothing. At the end of the day across this year I managed to do 11 courses, for all of which I had to read textbooks, cases, articles, write an odd assignment, and pass an exam at the end.

The real issue here is that Oxford workload is crammed into three eight-week long terms and here there are two semesters spanning over eight-nine months. So there's simply more time and the work can be distributed. This year, instead of panicking if I can get through all the assigned reading AND produce some sensible work, I could just plan ahead giving myself enough time for each task, not rushing through it. I simply don't have this comfort at Oxford at all. I need to meet all the deadlines, rush through excessive reading lists and somehow fit in attending lectures and tutorials around all this work. It's no fun quite frankly.

This has probably been the best part of my year abroad. Having time to do work. And other things beside it. I'll miss it in October for sure.

Never as easy as you predict aka Joys of travelling.

It was supposed to be so easy and comfortable. But it never turns out this way.

Obviously something had to happen to my nice and straightforward trip to Munich on a night train from Amsterdam. Obviously. And it obviously did. The Germans decided to go on strike on the very day of my journey. It happens, I had to deal with multiple travel strikes in my life. So after checking my travel options, I’ve cycled to Leiden Centraal in hope that they would be able to help me rebook my travel. They weren’t. Leiden cannot deal with international travel at all. The lady at the service desk kindly sent me to Den Haag. It was just past 11am at this point.

So, with not much choice now, I’ve cycled back home, and no one has ever seen me cycling this fast on an empty stomach. Within less than 30 minutes I managed to: attempt to reach the NS International Customer Service 3 times (no response), pack myself for the week (although packing is a bit of an exaggeration, since it was pretty much just throwing random pieces of clothing, cosmetics and an extra pair of shoes into a suitcase) and unload the washing machine and hang all the wet clothes on a drying rack. I think it’s pretty impressive for 30 minutes.

Then I raced back to the station, with a suspiciously heavy suitcase tucked into my front basket, and caught the first available train to Den Haag. It was 12:02 when I got there.

Of course the ticket service place was crowded with people trying to sort out their journey, thankfully, thought by my entire Dutch experience of queuing, I did acquire a number ticket, which probably speeded things up a bit. The lady at this service desk made a funny face when I showed her my ticket. Presumably I wasn’t the first one enquiring into the German strike situation. After a series of data input operation and a call to someone more competent, I’ve finally got my rebooked ticket. Well, I didn’t actually get a new tickets, instead I got a beautiful blue sticker with a lot of German on it and some scribbles. I was a bit unsure how legitimate such a solution was, but decided to have faith in the competence of the service desk lady.

With my revised ticket in my hand, I caught the first possible train to Utrecht Centraal. Apparently this is the biggest and busiest station in the Netherlands and indeed there was a lot of people running around. With over two hours to spare, I had to organise snacks for the eight-hour journey and some lunch since at this point I could no longer ignore the rambling of my stomach. I’ve had some ready-made AH sushi, which I wouldn’t recommend. It was filling, but you’d probably be better off splashing out on some proper sushi. Not as if I had my choice being rather unkeen on leaving the station and potentially getting lost in Utrecht.

Finally, at 15:02 I boarded the ICE train which was supposed to take me to Dusseldorf. But it didn’t. Somewhere around the Dutch-German border we managed to hit a car. After over an hour of waiting we were assured that the driver was fine. As much as I appreciate the fact that the train I was on did not kill anyone, at that point I was already late for my next connection train and would appreciate some information about the length of the delay, but the only thing we were told was that ‘the waiting time is yet unknown’.

It turned out that our train was unfit for continuing the rest of the journey, so we managed to very slowly roll to Emmerich, which is a small German village in the middle of nowhere, and change trains. At 18:42 I made it to Duisburg. From there, another train (it turned out that the change was completely unnecessary, although this particular train seemed to be going much faster) to Dusseldorf.

At 19:27 I happily sat down on a train to Munich. Or so I thought. When the ticket controller came  round it turned out that I’m on a wrong coach. That part of the train only ran to Stuttgart. And no, it wasn’t possible to simply walked over, I had to wait until we get to Cologne and then get off the train and back on onto the next coach. To be honest I was pretty lucky that the man came over at this time and told me that I was in a wrong place, otherwise I would have ended up in Stuttgart, not knowing that I wouldn’t be going any further.

00:27, finally there. Without any surprises. At a certain point I honestly thought that I would not make it to Munich, I simply had enough of all these train problems. Hopefully when I’ll be getting back next week it won’t be so complicated. But you never know with me. I tend to attract weird chains of events. Just to keep me entertained at all times.