Country #8 (for this trip)

The train ride from Berlin into Poland was pretty boring.  I shared a 6 seat compartment with a Polish mother and daughter and a Polish girl in her early twenties.  The girl spoke some English, but the other two didn't.  When we reached the Germany/Poland border, two border officers came onto the train (maybe more than two for the whole train, but I only saw two of them) and went around checking and stamping passports.  I wondered what they would have done to someone if they decided they weren't allowed to enter Poland since we were in between stations as they checked, but I never got the chance to find out (probably a good thing).

A random food store

My first stop in Poland was the city of Poznan.  When I knew I was going to Poland, I sent Anna, a Polish girl I met in Ecuador, an email.  Even though she's currently living in London, I asked her for suggestions on where to visit in Poland and planned my itinerary based on her recommendations.

The goats in Poznan

Poznan is a nice little city.  They have completely rebuilt the Old Town Square after it was almost entirely destroyed during WWII.  It is a nice little city center that includes the biggest tourist attraction in Poznan - the clock on the top of the Old Town Hall.  Or specifically, the mechanical goats in the clock that emerge at noon every day to butt heads.  Crowds of people gather daily to watch the goats move back and forth with their heads moving up and down.  Afterward, everyone claps and cheers for the goats.  The crowd was far more entertaining than the goats - I even went back a second day just to watch the crowd's reaction and make sure it wasn't just that I was there on a strange day.  I wasn't.

The Old Town Square

Being in Poland was very different for me than being in Germany or any of the other places I've traveled to recently.  I have more of a "lost in translation" feeling here than anywhere else.  The Polish language doesn't seem to relate at all to English or Spanish, so I'm having a lot of trouble even beginning to read a menu and figure out what things are.  Thankfully, there's usually someone around who speaks English and is willing to help me out and translate things for me.  Even in Germany, I found I could decipher enough of the words to read a menu or order a bus/train ticket, but in Poland it's all so different than any other language I know that there's no hope of deciphering anything.

Even though the alphabet looks mostly the same as the English alphabet, many of the letters are pronounced so differently, that I need to show someone the written version to even ask directions to a specific street or neighborhood.  It took me two days to learn how to properly pronounce the word for thank you in Polish, or at least closely enough that they can figure out what I'm trying to say.  Don't ask me how to spell it because when I first saw it written I never would have known that it's pronounced anywhere near the way it is.