Day 2

Up, pack, pay, pastry, phone bank. There are no restrictions on my card, last night must have been a fluke. Good. I am now a man with a plan. Tom is good to go.

I get on the train, and have a compartment to myself. I'm given a form to fill out - it's for Russian customs. Turns out Kalingrad is in Russia.

Who knew?

There's a space on the form for my visa number. I don't have one, but I'm in transit, so it should be fine, right? The guard doesn't think so and, optimistic as I am, he may have a point.

I doze off and wake up when the train comes to a stop. A young man in a black uniform and a holstered pistol enters my compartment and says something I don't understand. On the basis that he's probably not here to try to sell me anything, I give him my passport. I'm told that we're not at the border yet, but I won't get across. There's no point making a scene, so I pack up and leave.

Look, I realise I am responsible for my current situation. It was up to me to check my journey, up to me to research countries and visas. Any reasonable person would say I have no one to blame but myself.

I'm not in the mood to be reasonable though. Why didn't those brain-dead morons in Gdansk tell me about the visa when I bought the ticket? Everyone is incompetent. Sadly, today the "everyone" includes me.

I'm in a tiny town called Braniewo. I follow signs to the Tourist Information and two very helpful girls tell me if, in three hours, I get the bus to Olsztyn I can wait there over 24 hours for a bus to Vilnius. This is apparently the only way. That bus will get to Vilnius at 9am in two days time.

I buy a hat because I'm fed up of having a cold head and chill in a pub where it's 50p a pint. I get to Olsztyn and check the trains. If I get the train to Bialystok it gets in at 11pm, and I can get another train at 2am to Vilnius. This gets me in a 9am tomorrow. Seems like a plan, it saves me a day on the bus plan.

I get on the Bialystok train and a Polish chav called Daniel gets into my compartment. He speaks Polish to me, and I speak English to him. It goes on slightly longer than is funny. I worry that he can actually understand me and is taking the piss. Hopefully he is thinking the same thing.

In Bialystok, it turns out that a) the 2am train is actually a 2am bus and b) it isn't running. There is a train tomorrow which gets in at 5pm. Fine. I copy down the address for a hostel that's advertised in the station, but the ticket lady inturrupts me and gives me directions to a different place. As I have no map and no idea where "my" hostel is I decide to follow her simple instructions.

I arrive at a hotel.

This isn't very funny but I'm too tired to really care. They want £30 for a night, I manage to haggle it to £15. This is literally all the cash I am carrying, bar change. With luck I'll be leaving Poland tomorrow though.



Estimated number of units today: 4
Estimated number of units total: 6

Estimated number of girls taken to bed today: 0
Estimated number of girls taken to bed total: 0