Naivety

Day 5: Warsaw (PL) – Minsk (BY). “I am going to write a very strong letter of complaint to Polska EuroLines”, Karen said tongue in cheek as she walked towards the taxi rank. I said nothing as I lugged my rucksack back on to my shoulder and blew on my hands to keep the night's cold at bay.

We had always intended the first few days of our adventure to be a 'trial run' for both our abilities and our sentiment for travelling before we reached the 'hard core' demands of Central Asia. And tonight, as part of our initiation, we learnt a very big lesson: Back home we assume all systems work and then we complain if they don''t. Out here, we now knew that you had to assume that nothing works and then if it does you can celebrate!

We had booked a bus to take from Warsaw to Minsk, departing at midnight from the bus station. Simple enough? Well yes, until we tried to find bus at the bus station! We arrived with about half an hour to spare only to realise that the bus details weren't posted anywhere. We then tried to seek help only to be defeated by the language barrier exacerbated by the fact there seemed to be (at least) three Minsk's; one in Poland, one in Belarus and one in the Ukraine – all apparently served by this bus station!

The security staff locked the bus station buildings shortly after we arrived leaving us (and a number of other people who seemed to be having similar problems) to stand out in the cold and wait. And wait! After we had given the bus company the benefit of the doubt for a further hour we decided to cut our losses and find a hotel for the night concluding that a) we were in the wrong place b) the bus had broken down and nobody had informed the bus station or c) the service we had booked was actually 'discretionary' depending on the mood of the driver!

At the crack of dawn we awoke and camped out at the train station information office to see if we could find an alternative route to Belarus. At first it appeared as if we were out of luck, with none of the available trains making it in time for our onward connection to Russia. But fortunately for us, one particularly diligent member of the ticketing staff realised that if we took the service train to Lukow we would just be in time to catch the sleeper train coming up from Hungary getting us into Belarus in the early evening.

The next problem we had was that the service train left in half an hour. We had to get back to the hotel, pack, check out, get to the train station and have breakfast in just 30 minutes. It was very tight but we just made it.

So for Karen and I, some important lessons learned and some great experience to help us in the next round of our travelling adventure. More importantly though, we had made it through our first set-back: We were still smiling and miraculously, still talking to each other!

All in all, this naivety had cost us about £300 in un-budgeted hotels & alternative travel arrangements, had lessened our available time in Minsk and had caused the loss of a pair of my underpants in the haste to check out of our hotel. The money was a concern to us as we had a strict budget but it was still early days in the adventure and we believed we could pull the deficit back – so our diet in Russia needed to be more aligned to Potato Stew rather than Potato Supreme! In term of Minsk, well we had to live with that – the guide books were fairly non committal about the city anyway. My pants on the other hand was a different matter. I only started with 5 pairs and now after just 5 days I was down to 4 pairs. If our adventure continued like this, I would be going commando by the time we reached Siberia. And it's bloody cold there!