We got to sorting out the other details - I got the Friday off from work, Sasha looked up accommodation, and I started looking at getting back to Berlin. There weren't any €4.99 flights back on the Sunday of course - or flight, because there was only one direct flight to Berlin, it was with Ryanair and it was €35. €35's not bad, but ending up spending Sunday in Berlin was less than ideal. Other airports in nearby Polish cities didn't have any useful flights, and checking with Polish Railways (PKP) it was possible to catch trains back to Berlin via Poznan but it would take all day - and the timings of trains would not allow a useful stopover in Poznan, or Warsaw when I looked that up. Lamenting the slowness of Polish trains it occurred to me a German train might still run into Poland - the Kulturzug between Wroclaw and Berlin, which we'd done before. Yes it was still running and it still left Wroclaw late-afternoon, and checking the PKP website we could catch a train from Krakow to Wroclaw in the morning and arrive in time for lunch. Total cost for the trains would be €29 each - so cheaper than the Ryanair flight and we'd get some hours in another Polish city, even if it was one we'd done before. So we locked it in, booked our accommodation, sorted out the rest of our plan and we were all set!
Day 1 - Krakow
Day 2 - Auschwitz and the Salt Mines
Day 3 - Wroclaw and Home
The last time we took this train, it had been nearly completely full both ways - this time it only had a smattering of people. It had originally been put on as a special weekends-only train to-and-from Wroclaw so people could visit the city in 2016 while it was a European Capital of Culture, and then they decided to keep it running for 2017. It was due to finish up in March 2018, but I have since seen it is now extended again until the end of 2018. One of the great things about catching this particular train is that it called at Berlin Ostkreuz station - the railway station closest to our house, so we only had a short walk back home after hopping off!
Summing Up
This was also the last foray into Poland before we leave Germany for good. While it might have been tempting to do a day trip back to Szczecin or maybe go find the triangle where Germany, Poland and Czechia meet near Zittau we have other places to go see with the finite amount of time we have left. What are they? well, the next couple of blog entries will tell you that....