This Travel Day Almost Made Me Want to Go Back Home

Currently 60 degrees Fahrenheit. That is 15 degrees Celsius. A little, uh, cool but sunny here in Krakow or Krakow or Krakowa, Poland, where I'm trying not to get hit by a car or a bicycle or to be trying to tell this story walking right next to somebody. All of that is going to be challenging. But I am going to walk towards the main square of Krakow here, which is one of the best. Absolutely beautiful. So this is my second time to Poland and to Krakow. I was here in 2021, stayed several days in Krakow and then rented a car and went on a road trip for several days to a few places around the country. There is a lot to see in Poland. It is a fairly large country and I think really an underrated one. It's just very, uh, safe, clean, just relaxing vibe, beautiful cities, a great variety, really classic European cities and culture. And so I'm happy to be back even though yesterday was a really rough day getting here. I actually wasn't even going to stay in Krakow because I had been here before and head straight to Zakopane, if I'm saying that one right, which is in the Tatras or Tatra mountains just south of here near the border of Slovakia. So I had mentioned in previous videos that I wanted to go back to Slovakia because I had only seen Bratislava, the capital, and Slovakia looks really nice. And so I was just on the island of Sicily, Italy, for the past week and while I was there I was considering what to do, including go see much more of Sicily and Italy. Of course, there is always more to see of Italy and Sicily itself is somewhere you could spend weeks or months, but I just spent a month before that in Greece and so it had been five weeks of Mediterranean islands and beaches and stuff. And so decided it was time for a change and this was one of my main destinations, getting to the mountains here for this trip to Europe, so decided to go for it. Also it was a matter of flights and so I was checking the flight options and found this direct flight from Catania, Sicily on Wizz Airlines to Katowice and so that is a city that is about an hour west of Krakow here. And so I was considering maybe staying for the night in Katowice a night or two and maybe make a video there and then researched it a bit and it looked pretty nice but nothing super special and so I decided to just plan to go straight to Zakopane, Zakotepane, and get to where looks really amazing and I will be staying there for... I have five nights reserved there starting tonight. I have a train there this afternoon so my original plan was to catch my flight at 9 10 in the morning yesterday, two-hour flight, land 11 11 15, something like that, get my luggage and then be leaving the airport, you know, by 12 noon and have the whole afternoon to get to Zakopane. But things did not go nearly as planned so the plan was yesterday to probably come through Krakow in order to change buses or trains or whatever but not even stop and then just get to Zakopane yesterday afternoon. So let's go back in time a little bit to when I bought the flight. So I found the flight on skyscanner.com and went to book it through edreams.com because Skyscanner just then directs you to other websites where you book the flight and so one of the reasons I went for this flight is it was 38 dollars, 38 bucks, so like 35 euros. Now of course with those flights there's going to be additional charges and so I go to book the flight and the bag adding luggage is 80 bucks and I need to check my big backpack because I have things in there, a pocket knife, shampoo, you know, various things that can't go on the plane. So you have to check So I have to check a bag. So 80 bucks, more than double the price of the flight itself just for the bag but still that's 120 dollars still a good flight. Good price. And so then I go to reserve a seat. Here we are at the main square. I had dinner just over there last night. Great dinner, really tasty. The waiter had lived in America. He was Polish but spoke really good English. I mean fluent, you know, American accent English. Okay, quite a lot going on around here and I am just barely getting started on this story so let's wander a bit more in the square here and then wander and show more of the lanes around here. That was the idea with this video was give a taste of Krakow rather than making a full video tour. So I go to book the seat. The seat is like 22 bucks so perfectly reasonable and so then it's getting up to like 140 something and that is going to be the final price and so I go to book it and then it says the price has changed. It is now 187 but I want to get here and there are very few direct flights basically just like one a day from Catania, Sicily to anywhere in Poland. They only go to Katowice, the direct flights, and so whatever. Another 40 something bucks. Okay, let's just do it. So I book it. 187. It leaves at 9 10 in the morning so that was several days ago that I booked the flight and so let's fast forward to the airport. So yesterday morning I pack up, get out of my place there, walk down to the train station. Okay, one little glitch at the train station there in Catania, Sicily. Then I go to the platform. I'm waiting for the train. It's coming in like five minutes but then I realize nobody is there on that platform and it isn't displayed up on the sign that's up there. It isn't saying my train is coming and so I'm waiting to see what happens. Finally I see the train coming and then I realize that it is on a track going to a different platform. They had changed the platform at some point and so I have to run down, run over, get to the other platform, get there in time, get on the train, get to the airport and get checked in. After I'm through security and everything then I'm relaxing. I have, you know, maybe an hour and a half or something to spare and so I'm getting started working on editing my latest video and then I get an email and text message. The flight is delayed. Actually, no. This delay I saw on the board before I checked in. Instead of leaving at 9 10 it was leaving at 10 01. So no big deal. 50 minutes delayed. And so I get through security and I'm hanging out. Now I have extra time and then I get the email and text message. It's delayed again. Basically the flight is now delayed until 11 40. So it has been delayed two and a half hours. So now I got a whole lot of time and this is squeezing my time for yesterday trying to get to Zakopane. But no big deal. I hadn't reserved a hotel exactly for this reason in case things didn't go as planned. Oh yeah, I need to add something that I skipped over when I was checking in. So I'm in the line. The lady at the check-in desk calls me up and so I go up there and put my bag on the belt and she like kind of freaks out and was like, no, grab your bag, grab your bag. And so I see that the bag is trying to go on the belt and she's trying to stop the bag. And so I grab the bag and pull it back and I'm like, what's going on? This is what you do. You put your bag on the belt and she's acting like it's, you know, what are you doing putting your luggage on the belt? Like, okay, I don't know what's going on here, but whatever. So I pull it back and then she checks me in and then she says put the bag on the belt. And so I put my bag on the belt and this time it stopped like it hadn't been stopping before. So that's why she was freaking out. But she should be able to stop the belt. I don't know what happened there. But so anyways, I put my bag on there and she weighs it and she says, you're allowed 10 kilos and it's at 12 kilos. So my $80 for the luggage only covered up to 10 kilos. And so there you go for anyone who is curious how big my backpack is, how much it weighs, 12 kilos. So 2.2 pounds in one kilo. And so 12 kilos is like 26, 27 pounds, something like that. Now, I had noticed this, but generally they let it go when it's a matter of a kilo or two difference. But that wasn't going to be the case with her. So she says either you can try to take out two kilos of stuff from your bag or pay extra and it's going to be another 34 euros or like 37, 38 dollars. And so I say, okay, wait, I'm going to try to take stuff out of my bag. So I step out of the line. And then as I'm opening up my backpack, I realize there's no way I'm going to come up with five pounds of stuff out of here. And then it's in my day pack and I have to carry it around. Let's just pay the 34 euros. So I get back in line or I'm at the front of the line. She lets me in right there. And so pay the extra. And then I get through security and get the messages about the delays. So finally the flight goes. Two hour flight. I'm really tired out from the super early morning. I had to get up at 5.15 in the morning. And so I kind of like don't sleep, but I'm just kind of hunched over sort of through most of the flight. So it kind of flies by. And then we land and arrive at, you know, 1.30 to 2-ish, something like that. So now my plans for getting to Zakopane are, you know, it's still certainly possible because it's an hour to here and then it's a couple hours down to Zakopane. And I'm not that concerned about that anyways. We land and I head over to the luggage area. So there's no customs because this is an inter-Schengen flight. Italy and Poland are both Schengen countries. And so no customs leaving Italy. No customs entering Poland. So it's like a domestic flight. So you get off the plane, walk into the airport, and just walk to the baggage area. So get there and waiting a while for the baggage to start coming out. Takes a little while. Finally it starts. It's a pretty big crowd. A full flight. There's a lot of bags. And so I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. The bags are coming and then they stop for a while and then they keep on coming out. It's turning into one of the longest waits for luggage. And so the crowd of people there waiting to collect their bags is dwindling, getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. I'm, you know, still fairly optimistic that my bag is going to in fact show up because it is very rare for them to get lost. In all of my travels I can only think of twice that my luggage was lost in terms of not showing up. And in both cases then they found it and I got it. So I'm waiting and waiting and the people are dwindling and dwindling. And now there's literally just a few people left. And then there's only one or two people left. And then there's nobody else standing there. And a bag comes out and it isn't mine. And there's one bag left on the luggage belt there. And it's not mine. And I wait a few more minutes. Wait another couple of minutes. Not happening. Damn. This really sucks because for one thing there weren't that many flights, direct flights, Catania airport to Katowice. I wasn't sure at the time but I was pretty sure that they don't go every day on WIZ airlines. And I checked this morning and sure enough they don't even go, like, every few days. Most of the direct flights are on Ryanair but still they're only one a day. And so if my bag is stuck back in Catania, how the heck does it get here? And how long is that going to take? And of course I'm also now considering the possibility, well, what if they just lost it entirely? Even though it's unlikely but you can't help but think that. And so you're running through your head of what are you going to do if now you don't have your baggage? I mean, so many things that I would have to buy. So much time spent shopping. There are things that are, you know, literally irreplaceable. Like the keys to my storage space back in Oregon. So if I lose my big backpack I don't have that key. Now I have a situation when I get back to Oregon in which I'm going to have to, you know, get into where my storage space is and have the lock cut and stuff like that. You know, like, there's just so many things that are going to be a massive hassle. Okay, we're at the castle. So what to do, what to do. Well, the first thing you do is you go over to the lost luggage desk. And so I go over there and there's a line. Like seven, eight people or something. But I can tell it's moving really slowly. So I am just so, like, feeling dejected at that point. To the point that I had this feeling like, man, I just don't even want to be traveling right now. I just don't have the mental energy to tackle everything that is going to be involved in getting my bag back and how long it's going to take. And, you know, it's not like I just wait an hour and then it comes on the next flight. There probably isn't another flight that day from Catania. And that's assuming that they actually have it somewhere. And then meanwhile thinking about what I'm going to do if it just disappeared altogether. But the first thing is I now have a long wait in a line after an already very long day of delays, waiting in lines, etc. And so I am just so absolutely not in the mood to deal with this situation. Recognizing that there are much bigger problems in the world. Riots in LA and Israel just bombed Iran and war in Ukraine and yada yada. But for me this is still just really, really a big setback in my travel plans. But something good happened. Look at that. So I'm standing there in the line. It's not moving at all. And then it occurs to me what if I was actually at the wrong baggage belt and it's sitting on some other belt. It's worth checking. There aren't a lot of them there. And so I look back and I see this bag on a belt with a little black thing sticking up. And I have a glimmer of hope because my backpack has all these straps and so I tie them up in a certain way so that they won't get, you know, caught and stuff while they're en route. And so I tie together the two main belt straps that go here. Buckle those in and then these straps hang down. And so I tie those up a bunch and then it sticks up like this much up above the backpack as a result. And so I decide to get out of the line and walk over there. Now it is in a different belt. It's actually the same belt. There's the one bag that had been there when I left. And then I can see the the thing sticking up because there's something in the way and so it's sticking up from behind this little barrier or something. And so I walk over there and I'm getting, like, more and more hopeful as I get closer. And then finally I realize, boom, that is it. Last bag ejected many minutes after all of the other bags had been out for some reason. But there it is. So such a freaking huge relief. I can get on with my day as normal. I'm delayed but that is not a big deal at all. And so I head out, go out of the airport to figure out how to get heading in this direction. And there is a bus going to the Krakow city center. Leaves in, like, 30 minutes. And so I get the bus here and on the way I decide it's been a long enough day. I don't want to deal with the transportation, you know, two, two and a half hours, whatever, to get on the Zakopane. And so I book a night here for last night and get here and then go to the train station and book my train for tomorrow. That is at, uh, 12. Not tomorrow. When I booked it yesterday it was for tomorrow. Now tomorrow is today, of course, and, uh, it is currently 10, 11 in the morning. My train is at 12, 12. I need to check out at 11. So time for me to head back, pack up my backpack that I still own, fortunately, and all this stuff in it, and, uh, head out, find my usual late breakfast, and then get to the train. Two and a half hour train journey to Zakopane. So there you go. It was a rough day, but it all worked out in the end. So, uh, more coming from Poland. Looking forward to the Tatras Mountains. See ya!