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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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I was so pleased to get here. The bus dropped me off at the Communist monument on the edge of town and even without signs I managed to work my way to the town hall square and find the hostel that I was looking for. The hostel is fairly basic but clean and only 26 zl per night (just over $10). The whole of the main square is dug up at the moment but I still think that the place has a nicer feel than Zamosc. It's a bit more real. And it's even still raining here so it's not just that that is making me like it.
After using the internet for a while I headed back to the hostel and negotiated the dimly lit corridors. I don't think that many people were staying there so they had turned off the hall lights. They had stupidly put the switches so that they weren't in the light from the previous one. In the morning I got up early to go and see Rzeszow before catching the bus to Sanok.
The main square doesn't look great at the moment because it is all dug up while they repave and with the recent rain as well, it looks a bit of a mess. The town hall aslo has two sides covered with scaffolding with large multicoloured elephants on it which adds an element of the ridiculous to the scene.
I headed down one of the main streets away from the square and came to one of the old palaces which is now part of the academy of music. It wasn't very big but was pretty fancy. I'm not sure what you have to do to be called a palace. I always thought that they had to be big but maybe they just had to have a royal live there and could actually be a brick box in the suburbs and still be called a palace.
I headed down to the old castle after that. It's now the law courts and still has a moat (grass not water) and a full wall around it. Pretty cool place to work. If only it had been a gothic castle.
I stopped briefly at a couple of churches on the way back up into town but most had services running so I couldn't go in and have a look. They are a seriously religious lot here in Poland. They get more people to a 7am on a Friday service than we do on a weekend. And lots of them pop in to say a quick prayer at lunchtime as well.
I had a very fast look at the Communist Monument which is one of the few left in Poland. Instead of tearing it down, the council turned it into a skatepark! It's quite an ugly monument. Spectacularly so in fact. I tried to get into the church next to the park to see the statue of the Madonna that performs miracles but they too were having a service so I had to give her a miss as well.
I headed back to the hostel and got all my stuff and found reception locked and empty when I went to check out. I would have just left the key but they still had my passport. It wasnt' that early and even with my polish I knew that the reception was open between 5pm and 10am. They gave a number to call so I did and got a woman that spoke no english and didn't recognise the word hostel either. Something must have worked though because within five minutes the receptionist turned up and gave me my passport back. Luckily, I'd left some extra time to make it to the bus.
I found the bus station and the right bus relatively easily here and jumped on an all stops express for Sanok and got to see some more little towns in the middle of nowhere. It only takes a couple of hours to get there anyway so I didn't bother looking for a more direct bus.
previous travel blog entry
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