Warsaw is Home

Anyone who doesn’t believe in a place called ‘Europe’ has never travelled from Kiev to Warsaw.

Arriving at 7:05 in Warsaw, we decided we better buy our ticket for Cologne or, failing that, Berlin. This would be the third time in a week that we’d queued for tickets. The first two times, it had taken over an hour. Ladies with expressions of varying degrees of boredom and indifference had dealt with our requests, scrawled in (admittedly poor) attempts at ukranian on scraps of paper, with varying degree of unhelpfulness and downright hostility.

The tickets themselves had been slips of thin, brownish paper covered in all kinds of incomprehensible numbers, codes and figures which remained incomprehensible even after we’d decoded the Cyrilic labels. These were tickets that appeared to be some kind of Soviet hangover- tickets designed by committee and designed to primarily to meet the needs of an impractical computer system rather than to be read by passengers.

And the trains- well- the first time we were robbed, although second time round, we were a bit more lucky. Either way though, rickety wooden boxes with charmingly flowered carpets, vinyl beds, dangerous-looking metal fixtures and even more dangerous-looking toilets had ceased to be a novelty.

I don’t point out these things to complain, by any means. Real travel means living as much like the people around you as you can, accepting inconvenience and discomfort with a dose of good humor, and savoring every moment of it. If you’re prepared to do that, then places like Ukraine will more than reward you for your efforts.

But the point is, Warsaw was different. I’ve never been to Poland before, but the border guard on arrival only had to glance at my British passport before handing it back with a smile, and none of the anxiousness or severity I’d come to expect at borders. I don’t know Polish, but the letters which formed it were easily comprehensible, and my ticket had symbols such as a clock and a picture of a train to indicate which platform to go to, and the time my train would be leaving.

And as much as I hate to take it for granted, the lady at Warsaw ticket office was efficient and spoke comprehensible English, and getting a ticket to Berlin was done and dusted within ten minutes. Checking my European rail timetable, we can be there in time to catch a train to Brussels, and, although it’s a bit tight, conceivably be in London by tomorrow morning.

That’s just over 24 hours from the edge of Europe to London. The woods this familiar looking train with automatic doors is speeding through has seen countless armies sweep across them, centuries of trade, cultural exchange and unimaginable barbarity. Empires and kingdoms have been built and have receded across these few thousand square kilometers of trees, rain and farmland, but it has never seen anything like what has transpired over the past 15 years.

There’s still a few hundred miles to go, but, as much as it may irritate some of you to hear it, I’m home already.