Friday 19 September 2008

More Unwonted Adlestroppery

A repeating loop of events like in Groundhog Day; drive to work see crash, take train to Kraków, get delayed. This time by an hour (gets worse each time), this time the Adlestrop incident was
at Łuczyce. Our train stood still as the sun set; passengers hanging out of the windows smoking a crafty fag, watching and waiting. At last a Warsaw-bound express passed us, and minutes later we moved on. Three times we had such a 20 minute delay. PKP should come clean and put these delays into the official timetable while the tracks north of Krakow are being repaired.

Last year I travelled from Madrid to Seville by the Spanish Alta Velocidad Espanola (AVE) train. The train covered the 470 km from the Spanish capital to Seville in 2 hrs 20 mins, averaging 200km/h. The 300 km from Warsaw to Krakow took 4 hours yesterday. 75km/h.

This time last year:

4 comments:

Gabriela said...

I've arrived here through Polandian, a very nice blog.
Just by reading this I started to feel claustrophobic! Here in Peru trains aren't so usual (we have a few though), but I always think they may be necessary and very useful.
All the best for you.

Anonymous said...

Michael - not to worry. Remember the past government has told us that there will be 1200km of new motorways before EURO 2012 - knowing that should make you rest well. I say the other day that they are completing on average 30cm of road per hour - reassuring

Anonymous said...

Michael, I never realised a "crafty fag" was required. I often stand in the corridor at the end by the toilets, or in the toilet itself. Window open of course.

Is it illegal or something?

Michael Dembinski said...

I witnessed a drunk on a suburban train headed from Warsaw towards Radom, who'd lit up in the corridor between the sliding doors. Two toughs came out of one of the passenger compartments, one asked the drunk to stop smoking, pointing to the 'no smoking' sign. The drunk refused. Verbals followed, the drunk was close to getting some serious harm. In the end he through out his cigarette stub at the next station, the situation calmed down.

On the Krakow train, an announcer said this was an entirely non-smoking train, smoking being forbidden throughout the train.

If I were a smoker, I'd be more worried about getting hit by violent non-smokers than by getting told off by the guard.