Making travel friends along the way is part of the charm and joy of travel.

We met Polish couple Justyna and Wotek in Guatemala in early March. At the time we had no firm plans to include Poland in our travels but it seemed a good idea now we knew someone there.

While in Berlin we had arranged by e-mail to meet up in the historic city of Torun in the Polish countryside for the weekend with a plan for us to come back to Warsaw with them in their car.

With much trouble due to language difficulties we were able to secure a ticket from Berlin to Torun with a change of trains along the way. This was quite an adventure. Nobody speaks English and there are no signs in English.

Standing on the platform in Berlin we had ascertained was the right number from Avan's rudimentary schoolboy German, we heard an announcement in German which we didn't understand then most people left the platform., Bewildered, we looked around and then a teenage girl came up to us, looked at the tickets in our hands then led us to the new platform for our train. Such kindness to strangers!

 When we reached the border into Poland the border officials held the train up which made us late to get our connecting train later on. When we arrived at Kutno to change trains we had 1 minute to rush out the train and find the next one. We saw a train and called out our destination to people and got the nod and threw ourselves and our luggage on just as it took off. 

We safeky arrived in Torun and were met by our friends Justyna and Wojtek. We had a wonderful time renewing our acquaintance, seeing the sights and eating traditional Polish food. Justyna and Wojtek had not been to Torun before so we discovered it together. Torun is a historic walled city with narrow streets and huge Gothic churches. What was of great interest to us was that there was an exhibition of Australian Aborigines in this towns museum! It consisted of artifacts and many enlarged photographs and descriptions in Polish of our aborigines.


Footnote: Medieval Town of Torun is UNESCO World Heritage listed.