The Polish Pauline Fowler

As of about Sunday morning I started filing my t-shirts into groups. Reasonably smelly, pretty damn stinky and holy-sh*t "are you a tramp" smelly. As of yesterday I realised that 75% of t-shirts were falling into the latter two categories. So I went in search of a launderette.

Having asked at the hostel reception where the nearest one was I was told to show her my map of Krakow. She placed the map on the desk and proceeded to point at a street just a few minutes away from my hotel. "Great", I thought. She then proceeded to run her finger along this street, moving further away from my hostel, her finger then slid off the map and onto the desk and continued to travel another 2-3 inches off the map. She then looked at me and said, "Here, you turn right onto this street" and she wrote the street name down for me. Joy.

So my trek began and I was pleased to realise the walk was nowhere near as bad as her finger slide led me to presume. She had no idea of scale. Or she decided to ignore the maps scale and create her own. Either way, it did not matter. She was helpful and I found the launderette.

Inside I was expecting Pauline Fowler. Instead I got a 6'5", well built, Polish man jogging around the washing machines. I filled the washing machine up with my stench, gave the guy the equivalent of £18 (seemed very expensive to me, especially as Krakow is relatively cheap - but I know nothing of launderette prices so I did not query) and as I left he told me that he would drop my clothes off at the hostel that evening. I wondered if I'd ever see my clothes again.

Fortunately I did and I feel like a boss walking around with wonderfully smelling clothes again. :)

When solo traveling it is inevitable that you will have to go to a restaurant by yourself. For me, this was the toughest part of the day. I would spend ages walking around trying to find the perfect restaurant where I wouldn't look weird sitting by myself. I'd make excuses not to go in one, even though I would be ridiculously hungry. Too busy, too quiet, too expensive, too exotic, too posh, that one is part of a hotel, too much fast food, not a good view. The list goes on. There becomes a time though when you stop making excuses (or at least most of them) and now I just do not care about sitting in a restaurant by myself.

In fact, once you get over the slightly awkward beginning where the waitress'/waiters are unsure if you are by yourself then it becomes quite an interesting experience. You get to see restaurant life from a new angle. You look around and notice, quite often, but not all the time, that the customers who look most relaxed are the ones on their own.

Of course sometimes you want that extra person for company but sometimes it's nice just being by yourself. Solo travel forces you to become independent. It makes easy situations, such a getting food, a lot harder but when you do it, by yourself, you feel good and you improve. So, what if you get sick of being by yourself? You're own thoughts start annoying you? Well, in your next city book a more sociable hostel (one with a bar and pub crawls) and force yourself to get talking to other solo travelers in the bar. That's my plan in Warsaw but for now, in Krakow, I'm enjoying my own company - it's something you don't get that often in "normal life".

(P.S. - I'll do a separate post on what I've been up to in Krakow some other time and photos will be uploaded when I get home).
 

To Prague!

It's been a while since I updated this blog and quite a lot has happened since. Eminem at Wembley stadium kicked my "career break" off quite nicely. The following day we headed to Milton Keynes to see the likes of Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Avicci do their thing. The Sunday after was a welcome chill out day followed by the World Cup final in the evening. A brilliant weekend.

I then headed to Germany and worked on a farm near Mannheim for one week. A lot happened on the farm so I'll type that up on a separate blog when I have more time.

Wednesday I said my goodbyes to those on the farm and I headed 90 minutes east by train to Würzburg. My intention being to keep going east until I hit Prague but breaking the journey up with a night at a few different German cities - Würzburg, Leipzig and Dresden.

So Würzburg was the first pit stop. A surprisingly really beautiful city. I'm surprised it is not more well known as it would be a nice, relaxing place for many Brits to go for a weekend. One off the beaten track.

A day was enough for me there so I continued my journey east by taking a 3 hour train journey to Leipzig, a previous East Germany city just south of Berlin. Not going to beat around the bush - Leipzig was a bit rubbish. Cloudy, cold and wet reminded me far too much of the U.K. and bar a moderately interesting Stasi Museum there wasn't much to see or do.

I decided to skip Dresden. Germany is a wonderful country. Beautiful cities and towns, tasty food, far too perfect beer and some of the friendliest people I have met have been Germans. But I've got bored of the country and I thought it'd be better to spend an extra day in Prague (a new country for me) rather than do Dresden. Also I heard the weather was better in Prague.

I was right about the weather. Hitting the 30's here in central Europe which will even out my unusual tan lines (my hands and wrists are white, my arms are brown - if anyone can work out why that is I'll give you a virtual high five).

I'm just reaching the end of my first full day in Prague and it's fair to say I'm really impressed with what I've seen so far. Friends and family have said a lot of good things about the city and they were right. It's great here. I had a beer, one of the best I've ever tasted, for the equivalent of £1.10 and a good sized burger and chips for about £4. Albeit this was in the hostel, but still, these prices are ridiculously good. To top it off, I paid 0.03 Czech Koruna to use a public toilet. That's the equivalent of £0.0009. Unreal. London take note.

It's not just the fact you can save a lot of money in Prague (compared to other European cities) that makes it so appealing - there's actually a lot going on in the city to make it even more value for money. It's very busy, lots of traffic, lots of tourists, lots of bars and restaurants to choose from and plenty of sights that takes a lot of walking to see them all. All signs that ring true in cities such as Paris, Rome or London. Prague is right up there.

The nightlife is also pretty decent. Last night I met a few other solo travelers in my hostel. Kevin from the USA, Xabia (probably wrong spelling) from Australia and Spencer from Canada. Kevin headed off early to try an ice bar in his shorts and t shirt. Fair enough. Not sure the alcohol blanket will work in there though.

So us three joined the hostel's pub crawl which was pretty decent. Lots of free drink and a good opportunity to meet some other people. It ended up at Karlovy Lázně, "the biggest club in central Europe". It had 5 floors, each with a different type of music and from what I remember it was pretty good. Staggered back to the hostel and then walked around the city today to take in the sights of Prague's Old Town area.

I'll chill out tonight and then see the rest of the cities main attractions tomorrow. So until then, sbohen.