Why Poland? A question we often got when we told friends that we were going to Poland for our summer vacation this year. The plan was to go by train from Amsterdam, via Berlin, to the first city in the east and move from one city to another. As fans of the slow TV program Rail Away, our family of three did not mind hopping on a train for our 24-day adventure. We had done this in 2023 when we went to Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Vienna, Bratislava and back on a sleeper train to Amsterdam. We enjoyed long train rides while reading, observing how views change as the train moves, and chatting about what to eat when we arrive. It also saved us from traffic if we chose to drive, or from airport summer chaos if we flew. We were born to take the train!
It turned out to be so much fun - 24 days, 8 cities, 20,000 or more steps a day and a few train hours between cities - and an enriching experience especially for our son. It required a bit of planning though. First, we studied the map of Poland. We decided on the places to visit as if we were foot soldiers conquering a city one-by-one, from East to West, then to the North and South. Second, we considered the of travel and the logic of train connections, never coming back to the place we started (see map). To cover the must-see places based on our interest, we traversed (in this order) Wraclow - Krakow - Lublin - Warsaw - Gdansk - Sopot - Hel - Poznan, then back to Amsterdaim via Berlin. We made sure to stay at least three to four nights each destination to give us enough time to walk around, and not just to take photos, but really to soak in. Of all these places, Hel (that little peninsula on the map above Gdynia) was quite different. Many people have never heard of it and the majority of the Polish have never been here.
Rail Away
The choice of places was also based on our knowledge of Poland from watching Rail Away and the movie Real Pain. I was twice before in Warsaw and Lomza, first at the start of the winter, and second, in summer for a research and conference. These trips gave me a glimpse of the country, its people and its weather. Winter is harsh on this side of Europe but summer is perfect (almost) - already bright at 4am and dark at 9pm. My husband was in charge of checking hotels and apartments (with approval from our 11-year old son Marnick) while I booked the train tickets, given my experience with Poland before. Since we packed light (maximum a week of clothes), choosing places where we could wash clothes at least twice during the entire trip was a must. Train tickets are cheap in Poland. The national rail Intercity.pl offered a variety of discounts for families travelling. For each way within Poland, of train rides from 3-5 hours, we paid between 30-50 euro for the three of us. Hotels are also cheaper in this country than in popular destinations in Europe. With breakfast, we had lodgings for 60-90 euros a night, except in Hel (which is always expensive) and in the last city. We figured that after kilometers of walking, we needed a bit of luxury where we shelled out 100 euro a night.
Our first stop was Berlin for a night. To do a direct trip on a train from Amsterdam to Poland risked missing the connection due to Germany´s messy train schedules. We chose Ibis Hotel at Alexanderplatz because it was near many nice restaurants as well as parts of the Berlin Wall. If we were going to Poland to soak in Holocaust history, then this area was a nice jump-off point.
The following day, our train was to leave Berlin Haufbanhof at 11:35am for a four-and-half hour ride to our first city Wraclow (sounds like vrot-swaaf). By 11.25am, our trip was not yet on the departure board, only to be told by a staff at the counter that all trains to Poland were not departing at the main station but from a very lonely station near the border called Frankfurt Oder (not in the city of Frankfurt), about two hours by bus. The Germans like to fix the rail tracks during the busy summer holiday or sometimes, an accident or two happens, causing a domino-effect of delays and cancellations. A bus took the passengers going to Poland to Frankfurt Oder. Problem solved. It was like putting on an extra flixbus ride. The train ride to our first in Poland was cut to only two hours.
Wraclow (or vrot-swaaf)
A place I still cannot pronounce and when I did in front of my Polish friend, he just stared at me in confusion. Wraclow had a beautiful train station the color of an egg yolk. We walked about 600 meters to Hotel Savoy. The hotel´s name sounded like it belonged to another era. Indeed it was. One of the few locally-run, nostalgic and not (yet) taken over by hotel chains or turned into a candy-colored botique hotel. The hotel facade just had the signage, nothing fancy, next to an evergreen clothing store and a salon. The reception was on the second floor so we had to carry our bags up. Something to be expected in this hotel. However, the room did not disappoint, giving us the feeling that the Iron Curtain was still on. The balcony of our room faced a small pocket of forest where the shrieking children from a nearby daycare were heard. The breakfast (in a small room with a 70s-era bar) cannot be any Polish - cold cuts, hard crusted bread, cheese, sausages, scrambled eggs and an array of pickles and beetroot salad.
Read on the next post the story about Wraclow, the 800 or so little statues of dwarves who have taken over the city, free film nights at the square and the Cathedral Island.
TIPS:
Book international tickets (Amsterdam-Berlin-Amsterdam) months in advance from https://www.nsinternational.com or https://int.bahn.de/en.
For train tickets between Berlin and any city in Poland (or vice versa), bookings on must be made only two months in advance. For travel within Poland, tickets can only be booked up to one month before your departure date.
Pack light—ideally just a small trolley or bag weighing around 10 kg. This makes it easier to navigate cobbled streets from the train station to your hotel, and especially helpful if you need to carry your luggage up stairs. Many older apartment buildings and hotels in Poland do not have elevators.
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