It is a personal goal to visit as many distinct countries as I can in my lifetime. Recently I was in Prague in the Czech Republic. I had visited there before so when I had a free day I decided to use it to visit Poland.

[NOTE: I was named after Taras Bulba, a fictional character in a movie who goes to war against Poland]

Now many people would consider it crazy to spend eight hours in a train just for lunch, but I like trains and I really wanted to eat pierogis in Poland.

I’m lucky in that my employer has people in fifty countries, so I just looked on our internal Google Map and searched for people in Wrocław, the nearest large city to Prague.

We have two.

When I reached out to them, both were unable to visit with me on that Saturday, but as luck would have it we had a third person who had just been hired, and he was happy to show me around.

The first challenge was to get a ticket. I tried a number of online sites but when I got to the part where I was supposed to pay, the apps would complain that there were no seats available. This seemed strange, and when I told my friend in Poland he suggested a Polish train site. That worked a treat, and a first class round trip was US$82.

It was funny to book a trip on a train that actually has a Wikipedia page. The Baltic Express is an inter-city train that runs from Prague to the Baltic Sea. The entire trip takes nine hours but I was going to stop at Wrocław, which was four hours each way.

I had to get up early to make it to the Prague main station.

I was worried I would oversleep so I got there 30 minutes early. Unlike air travel, you can just walk up to the train, so I tried the door and it let me in.

The “cabin” I was in had four large seats and a center table. Despite the other websites saying the train was full, I would have a cabin to myself for both the outbound and return journey. It was nice.

There were other cabins without a table but with three smaller seats on each side - like a small couch. Some travelers used those as beds in order to snooze during the trip, but I was eager to see what I could see so planned to remain awake.

As an inter-city “express” train there weren’t many stops, just about one every 20-30 minutes. The whole journey was right at 400km so we averaged 100km/hour (62mph). In order to do that the train had to go faster at times, but I didn’t feel we went as fast as a TGV, which can hit 300km/hour (180mph) - maybe a top speed of 85mph or so.

As we pulled out of the station it was starting to get light, and for the first 90 minutes or so the land was fairly flat and mainly farmland.

I’m not sure what actually defines the border of the Czech Republic and Poland, but we eventually came to some hills. It was a drizzly day but the leaves were starting to turn which gave it a little color.

We passed a number of cute, small towns along the way.

I did get to see a castle (well, technically a fortress) in ⁨Kłodzko. As I learned writing up this post, it has been around since 1300 or so.

I arrived, right on time, in Wrocław just before 11:00. My new friend showed me around the Wrocław Główny railway station, which is the busiest railway station in the country (serving nearly 30 million passengers a year) and it is also over 150 years old.

We went into an art gallery ostensibly to look at the ceiling, when the docent suggested that the best ceiling was actually in the KFC on the ground floor.

She wasn’t wrong. I assume this ceiling was from when the station was originally built.

I also got a kick out of seeing a 404 error on one of the ordering monitors. Many fast food restaurants worldwide have adopted these screens for ordering. You place your order on the screen and then they just call out your number. It is a bit impersonal but when I’m in a country where I don’t speak the language it is convenient.

I did understand “Ups!”

We left the station and started wandering around the city. There are numerous waterways in Wrocław, including a moat, but it is no longer continuous having been filled in for crossings in various places.

I did like this building, which I thought was an actual Planetarium, but found out it was a restaurant.

We walked down by the river. We would end up at that large church you see in the distance (the St. John the Baptist Archcathedral).

On the way we ended up at the National Museum. This is a large, square brick building nearly covered in ivy. A lot of the art was religious in nature, mainly because the Church was the only institution who could afford such things in the past. We had tried to visit the Racławice Panorama but it was surprisingly crowded and we couldn’t get tickets.

I did like this particular glass bowl. The museum was cool but I wished they would provide better descriptions for the pieces. There was one painting where the eyes were set back behind the rest of it, almost as if you could remove them. I asked the docent and she showed me how they would move via a little lever in the bottom of the frame. I wish I had taken a picture of it as I can’t find it online (and it was not the painting that looks like Robert De Niro).

From the museum we continued on our journey to the Cathedral, passing the Grunwald Bridge in the process.

The Cathedral itself was cool, but there was a wedding going on so we just hopped in for a quick look.

We went over a bridge that, like the Pont des Arts in Paris, people had started attaching locks. Since the weight of the locks can cause structural issues, they had been removed from the bridge proper but there were still some on the railings near the bridge.

As we were walking it started to rain a bit harder so we decided to visit the Wrocław Market Hall. While there were some obvious tourists here (me being one) it was nice to visit a place where the locals would shop. I was told it is known for the meat you can buy here.

We now entered the “old town” section of Wrocław, which reminded me of a lot of main squares in European cities, such as the Grand-Place in Brussels, but this one was much larger.

I really liked this building, which featured a dangerous animal motif including lions, griffins, eagles and, of course, geese.

We were on our way to a specific restaurant, Konspira, which features a display from the communist times where the cutlery was actually chained to the table to keep people from taking it. It was chosen due to its variety of pierogis but the line was too long, so we ended up at Piwnica Świdnicka. It was also a good choice.

We started off with a few appetizers. There were these little rounds of mashed potatoes topped with a soft cheese (which kind of reminded me of a thick sour cream) and mushrooms. There was fresh bread you could top with lard (it tastes better than it sounds) and pickles. And one other thing I wanted: kielbasa.

While kielbasa in the United States is a very specific type of pork sausage, the term itself is more generic, like “wurst” in German. This particular sausage was made from wild boar, and it was delicious.

Then came the main event: pierogi.

They would not let me make a sampler platter so we got an order of “traditional” pierogi, which is filled with potato and topped with caramelized onions, and one filled with goose meat (they are mean animals) and topped with a mushroom sauce.

Both were amazing.

After lunch it was time to head back to the train.

On the way we passed this cool astronomical clock. I liked how the hands were bent so they could pass over the 3D moon phase complication.

I also stopped to take a picture of a Wrocław Dwarf. Starting around 2005, small bronze statues of dwarves started appearing in the city. There are now over one thousand of them. This one is working on a laptop.

It was now time to get back on the train. Once again I ended up in a cabin by myself, and unlike some trains I’ve ridden you could turn off most of the lights so I could see outside at night (not that there was much to see).

We ended up being about 15 minutes delayed at one point as they needed to attach a couple of cars to the train and then stop and detach them a few stations later. Despite that we pulled into Prague right on time, and I managed to get a few hours sleep before getting up at 04:00 to start my trip back home.

While the weather wasn’t perfect, I really enjoyed my visit. Many thanks to Marcin for taking precious time from his weekend to entertain me. I hope one day I can return the favor.