Zakopane
Friday, May 30, 2008
It was a choice between going to the Salt Mines (where we can see sculptures and buildings carved our of salt) or going to Zakopane (where we can take this cable car up the Tatra Mountains and have one foot stepped on Poland while the other in Slovakia). Weighing the costs.. we finally chose to scale the Tatra Mountains.
Dillydallying.. we set off at 11am.. took a 2 hour bus ride to Zakopane.. then transferred a 15 minute bus ride to this place where the cable car was..
AND THERE WAS A FREAKISHINGLY LONG QUEUE.
WHAT'S WORSE.. HORDES OF KIDS WERE LIKE CUTTING OUR QUEUE LIKE CRAZY.
So we spent the rest of the time in the queue deciding whether we should continue waiting or not.. as there seemed to be only 4 cable cars per hour.. (ridiculously for a tourist attraction) and we met a trio of Taiwanese/HKers staying in the same hostel as us that left coz they queued for 3 hours and decided to give up.
Periodically there were announcements in Polish but we simply bohiew. Until the person behind us told us that it was announced that there were only 95 tickets left.
KNN. WTH. How can like that? Cable car operator need to go home and make babies with his wife also dun need to limit the number of tickets wad!
Still.. we stayed in the queue.. calculated our odds of being able to hengheng get onto the cable car.. counted the number of people in front of us.. talked to the teacher in charge of the Polish kids in front of us to have a sensing of whether they would have any possibility of leaving in the event of not enough tickets... while the people queuing behind us trickled away.
Soon we were last in the queue.
People in front of us started streaming away too. Some of the teachers brought their kids away too.. in search for better entertainment options. Soon there were only 45 tickets left.. with about 60 people in front of us.
I met an Australian guy who I talked cocked with over breakfast that morning.. (he was staying in the same hostel as well). He had been queuing for FOUR HOURS and he was almost in the front of the queue. Hoped that he could buy tickets for us.. but well.. slim chance la. Inethical and I also not say very shou with him haha.
And guess what? That Australian guy was the swayest of all. When it was his turn the tickets were SOLD OUT!
SUPER SIAN!!
Which means we couldn't go up also. TMD. So much for scaling a mountain bordering Poland and Slovakia.
Grrr..
We spent the rest of the time wondering around Zakopane. Looking at houses of this certain 'Zakopane Style'. Nothing seriously impressive I guess. And then we headed back to Krakow.
2 hours on the bus was terrible w/o my music on my iPod.
Still super pissed with my luck.
Signed off at
11:59 pm
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th reader
