The bus was stuck in traffic for about 4 hours. I was supposed to arrive at Krakow in the evening before sunset, but by the time I got there it was dark. I did not know what the currency was in Poland, or the exchange rate. Getting off the bus I found a nearby Burger King and was able to get a good guess at the exchange rate from the price of a meal. The name of the currency still eluded me though.
I took the short walk to The Little Havana Party Hostel, the city was almost fully booked and this was the only cheap option. The downside was that I could only stay for two nights and then had to move hostel again. Fully exhausted from my delayed bus, it was now about 10pm and the streets were full of people out partying. I walk up to the hostel and the street outside is full of people drinking and talking, the building that I think is my hostel is being guarded by bouncers. When I try to get in they point at my ratty tracksuit bottoms and "Bounce" me. I turn around and point to my big backpack and ask for the hostel and I'm let in. The hostel it seems is also a nightclub.
I walk through the very crowded corridor with little tables on the one side for people to put their drinks. I then proceed upstairs thinking what have I got myself into, I would ask myself that question more and more over the next two weeks. Not sure if I am in the right place but at the top of the stairs is a reception, the whole place is Cuban themed and very well done. I start to check in and the woman grabs a glass of what she thinks is water, drinks it, only to find it is a glass of straight vodka. The room I was saying in was nice, very crowded with almost no space for my backpack to go, but each bed had a curtain for some privacy. I unpack, have a shower and clean up.
In my room a random guy starts talking to me and he is with some woman. The guy seemed to want to intimidate me, I guess to impress the woman? He for some reason wanted to shake my hand and then just squeezed it with the intent on hurting me. Whatever he wanted to gain by talking to me he didn't get it because I just went to bed for 20 minutes to check up on my emails. By the time I came out of my room it was quite late and the hostel had almost emptied out for a bar crawl. I spent the evening on my laptop on the common room on my own and then went to bed.
The next day I had hostel breakfast and walked to the Galeria Krakowska Shopping Mall. I needed to buy some new clothes, specifically a shirt. The clothes I had brought with me were not appropriate for going out to restaurants or bars, never being to a bar before going backpacking I had not even anticipated bringing appropriate clothes. So I purchased a black and white flower print shirt. I also found a watch that had a map of the world on which I really liked so I purchased that as well. I then headed up stairs to see how much the gym access cost and signed up, I was still stuck with this idea of staying in one place for a while.
I can't remember what I did for the rest of the day, I likely walked around the centre aimlessly. I had a burger from the hostel burger bar and I had no intention of going on the bar crawl. I met a few people but they all left for the bar crawl. I recall a conversation with a woman who was planning on flying to the country of Georgia simply to have sex with someone, curious.
I woke up the next morning and had more hostel breakfast. I still had a beer in my backpack from Leipzig which I decided to leave behind in the hostel dormitory, maybe someone else would want it. I then threw away one of my t-shirts that had started to unravel itself. I checked out the hostel and made my way to another placed called the Pink Panther's Hostel. I checked in and noticed the great hostel breakfast that had been laid out. I then went to the gym in the shopping mall and ate KFC.
In the evening I met a few people, two older women from the UK and two other random guys. The hostel provided large amounts of free vodka, just placing the bottles in the common room. Now I started to drink a lot. I would spend the days walking around and going to the gym and the evenings drinking free vodka. I visited both the Wawel Castle and the Jewish Quarter, eating at the restaurant Alchemia. The hostel employed a guy to run the bar crawl but not once did I see him run a successful crawl. For 4 nights in a row he would get utterly drunk in the hostel on the free vodka. Only on the 4th night was he able to get guests outside, only to be brought back by some guests 15 minutes later as he was entirely drunk. He then crawled into bed with a woman sleeping on the bed next to me and proceeded to both apologise to her and also avoid her at the same time, clearly very embarrassed. It was around this time when an Easter market sprung up around Town Square, Rynek Główny. I discovered this food called a Pierogi which I started to eat every day.
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My Backpacking Memoirs
Non-FictionIn 2017 I embarked on a three month backpacking trip around Europe. Motivated by the many accounts of travel from within religion, I went to learn. But what I experienced was not what I was expecting. This was my first time leaving the UK since I wa...
