I’ve never traveled much around Poland. Apart from Trójmiasto (Tri-city: Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia), I have only been to Warsaw. So, I thought it was high time that I got off my exponentially growing four letters (three in American and four in British English) and saw a bit more of this beautiful country of ours.
And that’s how I ended up in Poznań, a lovely town with a lovely shopping mall (Stary Browar rules!) and lovely people. The food was good too. Actually, everything was good about Poznań except the weather – it was pouring yesterday.
But in order to end up in Poznań I had to get there first. And that meant either driving or traveling by train.
“Ah, why not?” I thought, “pojadę pociągiem.” (I’ll go by train.)

In Poland, just like in almost all other countries, there are several options when it comes to trains: slow, less slow and kinda fast. Forget about TGV or Acela. There’s no such thing here. Instead there’s InterCity, which technically is an express train with speed up to 160 km/h, but in reality, well… chances are it will go much slower and be late.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any kinda fast InterCity express available to Poznań and my only choice was either a slow or less slow train. I chose the less slow. Technically it’s a quasi-express “rapid” train (pośpieszny), which stops only every so often. But when it takes this “rapid” train about five hours to travel the distance of 313 kilometers, you really begin to wonder just how slow the normal slow train (osobowy) is.

Then, there’s the question of tickets. Let’s say you wanted the slow boat, I mean train, and bought a ticket for pociąg osobowy (slow train). But the sheer amount time required for such a journey made you reconsider and you decided to upgrade to a faster “rapid” train. It should be easy, right? Ha! Not in Poland. Until last year you could simply pay the difference and get a new ticket. But that would be just too easy and convenient to stick with such a simple system. So now, first you have to return the ticket for pociąg osobowy and get a refund. You won’t get a full refund, because… well, I’m not sure why anymore. Then, you have to buy a new ticket for pociąg pośpieszny (faster “rapid” train).

Why is that? The trains are run by two different companies. Both have deceptively similar names starting with PKP (Polskie Koleje Państwowe – Polish State Railways). But one is PKP SA and the other – PKP Intercity. And yes, even though the second one is called PKP Intercity, it operates not only the fast Intercity express trains (all reserved), but also the slower “rapid” trains (pośpieszny, no reservations required).

OK, before I confuse you any further, let’s recap:

• pociąg (masculine, plural: pociągi) – train
• pociąg osobowy – local train (slow), literally: passenger train
• pociąg pośpieszny – “rapid” train, sort of slow express without reserved seating.
• pociąg ekspresowy – express train, usually implies reserved seating

To be continued…