Home to Hotel

The cat, clearly sensitive to the fact that he'll be neglected for the next couple of weeks or so, decided to chatter noisily to me at 4am this morning, I'd only just got to bed at 1.30. So I repacked my bag, deciding to discard all the stuff more suited to a beach holiday than Central Europe. Luggage honed to the minimum except I'm still carrying a large proportion of the prizes available in a weekly Gadget Show competition.

Unremarkable train journey from Paisley to Prestwick except for the ticket lady (used loosely here, perhaps operative?) calling the rest of the passengers 'ignorant' for not having change for their tickets. True Scottish Customer Care.

I'd forgotten to pack more than one book - I'm not going to survive without books for more than 2 weeks. Airport selection limited but 'The Tent, The Bucket and Me' is first on the list. At 9 this morning, I was crying with real tears at it, trying not to be too noisy on the flight. The book's subtitle is 'My Family's Disastrous Attempts to go Camping in the 70s'. Perhaps ours weren't such disasters although started to feel nostalgic for my parents' blue frame tent. I'd recently recycled it from their loft to the Paisley Paranormal Group. I hope it is now enjoying a second life with those looking for second lives.

Avoided all the pushy airport taxi drivers by heading for the public bus. Shit. Its over 30 degrees here and I'm inappropriately dressed with 2 bags. Eventually, I could stand the emergency stops and horn blasting no more, it's impossible to hang on to a shiny pole with hot sweaty palms so I'm off the bus vaguely in the middle of the city.

Vainly looking for an information point, a map or a shop that might sell one, I end up at a WiFi enabled Pizza Hut to check my whereabouts and bearings to hotel. And lunch - well you can't go wrong in Pizza Hut. But I probably can - there's a rainbow of slaws in the salad bar not just dried up cucumber and sweetcorn as per UK usual. I ate a plate of slaws. My sister will be able to predict the result of this with acute accuracy.

So hot, knackered and with internal and external baggage I find a taxi rank and head to my hotel. The ipod says it 4.6km away - so much for 'Centrum'! Taxi says 3 Zloty per 1Km. 10 mins tops I reckon, but he's going kinda slow and I'm thinking he's thinking there's a mug in the back of my cab. At the hotel, he points to the meter, it clearly has a reading of 4.6 (that's km according to Mr Apple) but he decides its 46 Zloty. So I end up arguing with a Polish taxi driver (with mild panic - what if he drives off with my luggage and leaves me?). He's talks about the hour it took him to get here (it really was 10 mins) and pointing to tariff cards which frankly are all Polish to me!

Eventually I throw some money at him angrily. Assured by the hotel that it should have been half the amount I'll not be taking taxis from ranks unless I absolutely have to.