Hanging Out At the Train Station For 7 Hours

There comes a time in every traveler's life when there are many hours between checkout time at your last hotel & train departure for your next city. This is when you join the ranks of People Who Spend Many Hours at the Bus or Train Station.

                                                   Other hanging-outers 

Come to find out, there's a mall connected to the back of the Kraków train station. A huge, dazzling mall. It's a world away from all the Old Towns, the WWII ghosts & shadows, the cobblestones. It's closer to Disneyland. Anything you want, you can get. Things you didn't know you wanted, you can get.

                         January 3rd & their Christmas decorations are still up

                                            You can get fresh juice

                                   Oh....I'm delirious....lotions & potions

               I spent 30 minutes spraying perfumes onto little strips of paper to sample them

                   Night creams full of Polish ingredients designated for ages 40+, 50+, 60+

                            Do my eyes deceive me??? Knitting needles. Goodbye pencils.

                                     You can get very pretty gelato

A bouque of flowers (I have learned that European men very often greet their sweethearts at a train station with an armful of flowers...American men take heed).

                    You can buy yourself sexy underwear to please that flower-holding man

                              

                                       Polish romance novels

                                    Cinnabon, in case you are in withdrawal

                                     Loooooong strips of sour power

I'm so happy with my girlie items, far happier than I'd be with these same items at home. Long term travel is rough & tough on the face & body.

Best of all -- you can walk into a hair salon & have your roots expertly colored after a 10 minute wait. Look! No roots!!

Uh oh...my sleeper car to Prague has 6 closely stacked, very narrow bunks. Even the Trans-Siberian Railway has 4 per car. But wait...I have the whole place to myself.

Happiness is snuggling up on your bunk, cramped & hard though it may be, putting on your headphones & listening to an audiobook on your iPad, watching the night stream by out the window, rocking & rolling with the motion of the train, & occupying that divine space between "was" & "am."

     The lights at stations along the way are yellow, creating brief sunny flashes in the night