Belgrade to Budapest to Krakow

03:30 -- We just left Serbia and are moving towards Hungary. [too sleepy] Had an expensive, filling breakfast on DB to Brno, Czech Republic while three people who seemed to have been partying all night talked loudly and ordered beer at around 7 AM. 11:03 -- The train to Bohumin goes to Krakow eventually, but there's a 45 minute wait. 11:54 -- I caught the train to Bohumin, and at some stop in Poland about 7 miles away from Drycise, I had to change to a bus. I hope it works.

The strange bus ride was about 15-20 min to Zakaz Koureni [sp?] via Arealu Stanice [sp?], and now we're back on the train. We'll see what happens. Since we crossed the border into Poland I've noticed huge meadows of yellow flowers 2-3 feet high with a bulb with clusters of small flowers at the top. One field looked like a bright, yellow river about to flood a small town, coming down from a high hill. It's sunny and warm with a breeze here now.

12:40 -- We're still in Czech Republic at Prerov station. Prerov is halfway between Brno and Ostrava at the Polish border.

11:03-12:42 -- It took about 40 minutes to get from Brno to Prevov, so that's about 1.5 hours to the border and 1.5 hours from the border to Krakow, which puts our arrival at 15:45 or thereabouts.

13:00 -- Drahotuvse; 13:05 -- Hranice, Czech Republic; 13:16 -- Schudol; Ostrava is my stopping point; 13:25 -- Studenka.

I got off at Ostrava as planned and caught the EC 107 coming from Praha. Its next stop was Bohumin which is where the previous train was going anyway. I should get to Katowice at 15:50. The information counter at Ostrava was great--the lady there was helpful and gave me train changes and a print out of my itinerary. I need to get on the train to Katowice at 16:20 to make it to Krakow-Glovny at 17:48.

Brno was a decent choice--the conductor on the platform helped me as did a mom and son who were also traveling on the city train for my Brno-Ostrava. Left them after we briefly switched to the bus because I was OK.

16:04--Katowice. It appears to be a slum, but it could be just the area around the train station. Also, I saw a larger building a couple of blocks away from the train tracks, and after that, more density and some traffic. Things looked OK there. Near the tracks, there were a lot of demolished buildings or remains of buildings, and I noticed several spots with a dozen or more empty beer bottles in lying in one place. Maybe the train tracks are the place to go for a small party or some solitary binge drinking. Again, it could just be the wrong side of the tracks.

It reminded me of government corruption I've heard about. Maybe people here have lost their hope, and I'm trying to read too much into only a peek at the city, but it's the worst I've seen. Even worse than Sofia, Bulgaria or Belgrade, Serbia although again, I only saw the train station for those places also.

I guess I jumped to conclusions. It's nicer on the other side of the station. There are still some pretty ugly tenements and lots of graffiti, but not the bombed out look from before. The train station is not the best way to judge anyway. I even saw a nice old historic building just now. Still though, the train tracks at the next station (MiKclowich) were really rough and had grass growing over most of the tracks--they looked poorly maintained, though I know the Krakow-Warsaw route has better trains and tracks because my Eurail map says high speed trains connect those two cities.

I'm seeing some of the intimidating monolithic Soviet architecture already as we creep along--presumably to avoid derailing on the old tracks. We're picking up speed outside the station.