I sit with one hand tied to the expensive camera bag and a foot in the strap of the tripod bag. Should the loud little French punks to my left discover the loot I am guarding and grab it to run off with it, it would be about 2 seconds before I was quartered!

Two men in front of me kiss good-bye with great fanfare and sap and I am thankful that I do not understand French.

A woman maneuvers her minivan (seen only to transport bicyclists around here) as one would maneuver a large army tank -- between cars, over medians, around pedestrians -- all with little thought. It is clear that she has done this before. Her rear hubcap carries the scar of a long lost half that must have been sacrificed to some previous such adventure.

Young excited North Americans wander aimlessly -- just happy to have a tale to tell of their time in Europe.

Children scream, mothers yell, fathers sigh.

Cec and Shannon return and we head inside. When we arrive at the train, the conductor informs us that we must have reservations (which we are lacking). We are also lacking a good deal of time, so Cec runs inside and we wait by the curb of the platform and watch the good-byes of people getting onto our train.

Two minutes before the train is to leave, Cec runs in and we grab our abundance of "stuff" and jump on the first car ... which happens, of course, to be first class (which we are not). So we, heavy laden with equipment and luggage, bumble our way down the skinny aisles, bumping into every other person on the right side, and every other person on the left side (as we overcorrect for our enormous backpacks).

By the time we reached Car 7, we were literally dripping in sweat! But we found our seats, taken by 2 girls and informed them that those were our seats. At which point, they informed us that this was not our CAR! So, we backtracked (turning around alone knocked out 4 people!) and found our seats.

Later, when the attendant came through to check our tickets, we learned that we had actually paid for first class! But we begged to be allowed to stay here after our great adventure. And we were quite sure the first class passengers would not be very eager to see us again. Plus, why would we want to deny this poor little boy across the aisle a lesson on foreigners by his mother who made no effort to hide her dismay of us!

The train/metro system had us beat for several days. It took us 5 hours to get from north Paris to south Paris -- a trip that takes normal people a little over an hour! At one point, we'd spent 20 of the last 30 hours on public transportation! We got told a different route by every person and ended up doing circles around ourselves. We jumped more gates than I care to admit (I've done it twice in a skirt now!)

The funniest was when Cec was trying to get through one gate with her HUGE backpack of 70 pounds and it stuck out so much behind her that she didn't have time to get through before the gate shut on her backpack. She couldn't go forward or backward! All I could do was stand there and laugh.

About an hour later, (probably in the same station, knowing us!), she couldn't get through the gate because the time had expired on her ticket. So, with the same Big Bertha backpack, she had to jump over the fate. Except, it was more like straddling in midair. With a huge load on her back, pulling her back to fall on her head, while her feet were in the air, her legs on the turnstile, as she teetered back and forth, laughing hysterically. Again, I was no help -- I just laughed.

Well, absolutely nothing was waiting for us when we got off the train in Warsaw. Now, of course, that may have more to do with the fact that we jumped off at the wrong station than anything else!

Our job was simple enough: get on in Berlin where the train starts and ride it to Warsaw Central where it ends. It wasn't going any further, so if nothing else, wait until the cleaning lady comes and kicks us off.

Well, we started seeing so many signs for Warsaw stations that we just got all excited, packed up our stuff and went to the door. Shannon went into the bathroom and we were so worried she wouldn't come back in time, that when she did, we just got off the train right there! It was Warsaw Zach-something and it was in the middle of the fields! There was no "main building" and not much of decent town nearby so we weren't in that great of a situation.

We went over to the train on the other side of the platform where a man stood blocking the doorway. He seemed approachable so Cec asked him, "Do you speak English?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how we can get to Warsaw Central?"

"Yes." He looked at our tickets and said to get on a train and it would be the next stop.

"The next stop?" Cec asked.

"Yes, just one more stop."

Then his train started to move and Cec asked, "Does your train go there?"

And as he cruised farther away, he nodded with a sheepish smile, "Yes."

Welcome to Poland!