Public Transportaion Issues...

After our Warsaw detour we arrived in Krakow ready to embrace Poland. We first tried to hale a taxi but apparently taxi drivers here aren't hungry for buisness and left us on the side of the road. Frustrated, we decided to find our way using public transportation. Nicole approached the ticket office to find out exactly how to get to our hostel and purchased our tickets. We waited forever for our tram and had to cross two lanes of traffic in order to get on.

At our second stop we noticed a man checking tickets... even though he looked like a civilian. We were so relieved that we had bought the tickets, had them validated and had them ready to hand to the man. After handing him the tickets, the man still wanted more. Apparently our bags also needed tickets to ride the tram. We tried explaining that we had no idea and we had just arrived. They would not hear it and handed Nicole the fine slip, 72 zitis a bag. Nicole tried to pay him the 10 zitis that it would have cost to bring the bags with us, but he insisted that he wasn't a ticket booth and threatened to call the police.

At our stop, the ticket checker and his sidekick (who kept asking Nicole for our passports... to which she continued to ignore) escorted us off the tram. They took us to an ATM so we could withdraw money because naturally we told them we had no money to pay the fine. Franki and Nicole went into the bank. Franki distracted the ticketcheckers by pretending to use the ATM while Nicole attempted to ask a banker if we were being scammed but he didn't speak English. Denise and Amanda remained outside with Amanda desperatley attempting to cry. The girls walked out of the bank and while Nicole asked to see their identity badges, Amanda instructed Franki to cry... and she did.

We lied and said we had no money to take out so they threatened to take us to the US embassy. They said that the embassy would pay for us and we would have to pay five times the original amount when we returned to the states. Nicole told them to hold on while she called the hostel to find out if we could pay them later leaving us money to pay them. As she walked away with phone in hand... she dialed the US embassy only to find out they were closed. Remembering our cousin Gabe's blog and his run in with the police in India we decided to let them go ahead and call the police... figuring if they were going to take our money we wouldn't go down with out a fight.

Denise, Amanda, and Franki sat down on the side of the road trying to look especially pitiful, which wasn't hard considering we had been traveling all day. All the while Nicole continued to call any number possible to find out if they were legitament. A half hour later they approached us with a "proposition," if we would promise to always buy tickets for our bags they would let us go. The stale mate was over and we had come out victorious. We hurriedly collected our ticketless bags and ran in the opposite direction of the ticketcheckers towards our hostel. At the time it was the worst experience abroad... ever... but now its another story for our blog... aren't you proud Aunt Etelka!