That day went by quickly, and the next thing I knew, Dani and I were sitting on the Oxford Tube heading to London. An hour and a half later, we arrived in London where we were met by Pastor Tonye Holyde and made our way back to the warmth and love of the Holyde home. The Holyde's are a family who pastored a church back in California in the San Luis Obispo area and moved to London several years ago to start a church plant there. With a small, young, lively, and diverse church of nearly 15 cultures represented, the Holyde's truly embody what it means to be the body in a global context. They welcomed Dani and I into their home with loving arms, made us a delicious homemade dinner, and gave us a place to rest our heads for a few hours. We attempted to go to sleep around 8:00 pm (like that really happened), woke up at 1:15 am, got our things together, headed out the door, took three different busses around the outskirts of North London (the only ones we could get since it was so early in the morning), arrived at a bus stop which would then take us to London Stansted, and finally arrived at the airport where we waiting to board our flight that left at 6:00 am.
After a long night and a short hour or so flight, we landed in Krakow, Poland. We were exhausted but ready to begin our journey... that is until we got off the plane and had no idea what we were actually doing. The airport was small and hardly anyone spoke our language. We finally managed to get a 50 zlade note out (which roughly $ ) and make our way to the bus stop. The busses weren't like any we had seen in the UK; you didn't have to pay the bus driver or show some sort of ticket to board. You just got on, which left us curious as to how to get our tickets. We tried to purchase tickets from the machine on the bus, but it appeared to be broken. We quickly hopped off and tried to purchase tickets from the machine outside. After standing there confused because the machine wouldn't take such a large note (50 sladze), the younger man behind us offered to buy our ticket and mustered some English saying, "You get on now." So we did. We sat down with our large backpacks trying to ease our nerves. Meanwhile, two Scottish men and a woman hop on. They appeared perplexed as well, as they tried to use the broken machine with no avail. The man looked up and asked if we knew, but we simply told him we had no clue either. He went back to sit with his group. After a few minutes, I notice a large, Polish man dressed in normal clothes speaking with the Scots. The man says, "Oh... Not how we do in Polish country." I turned to Dani concerned whilst another Polish man (also not in a uniform) walks by. She stopped him and asked, "Excuse me sir. We bought these tickets... what were we supposed to do with them?" The Polish man turns to the other talking to the Scots, smirks, looks back at us, and says, "Problem... BIG problem." In his limited English, he asked us for our IDs, and so we handed him our Oxford University library cards. He looked confused by them, but the bus soon came to a stop. Both Polish men drag us and the Scots out of the bus and attempt to explain (harshly I might add) that we were supposed to validate our tickets and that because we didn't, we owe them a large fine. So they began to ask for our passports and negotiate various large sums of money for not putting our tickets into a machine, though we had bought it and clearly didn't know what we were doing. We tried talking our way out of it, but the Polish men only grew angrier. I told them we didn't have the money, and he proceed to demand my credit card information. Scared, shaking, and crying, the two of us walked around the center looking for someone to help. The men kept threatening to call the police, and we responded by saying, "Please do!" We found a young security guard, who seemed excited to help us at first but later said there was nothing he could do. Another young man who spoke English very well came over to translate but could also do nothing to help and tried to explain to us that these men were the "bus controllers" and that this was their job. After what seemed like at least half an hour of being scared out of our minds, the police showed up. They took account of the situation and tried to talk the bus controllers into letting us off since we did just arrive, did actually buy our tickets, and had a bad first experience in the country, but the men were not having it. The Scots finally decided to pay whatever fine they had negotiated but wouldn't leave until they let us go. After receiving pressure from the Scots and the policemen, the bus controllers begrudgingly let us go.
Whewwfff! What a relief. Still shaken up, we made our way to a coffee shop where we could gather ourselves and come up with a plan for the day. It was a rough start to our trip, but a good lesson that people, even those in authority in another country, will take advantage of you if you don't know what you're doing. We learned quickly. For the rest of the day, we walked around Krakow with our large backpacks, got lost a couple of times, but got to see some cool sites.
That night, we stayed at our first hostel, which was actually pretty nice. We ended up chatting with Polish girl that worked the front desk and her boyfriend for quick some time. They asked questions about America and we asked questions about Poland. They also explained to us that the bus controllers are legitimate but that since Poland's economy isn't doing very well they prey on tourists. This became a trend in our Euro trip. We would spend the day exploring a city, its culture, and its history, then head back to the hostel and have conversations with people from there. These moments were my favorite part of the trip... getting to meet different people in different cultures and being able to learn from them firsthand.
