First Night at Cracovia Guesthouse: A Misadventure

Trip Start Sep 2006

Trip End Oct 2006

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Where I stayed

Cracovia Guesthouse

(Krakow hotels)

Flag of Poland Krakow, Poland
Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The taxi driver arrived in front of my "hostel" and on my street in no time. At first, he and I were confused, because there happened to not be a sign saying that Cracovia Guesthouse was there, but the address was correct and I informed him in Polish that yes it was the address. It was too late to do anything different, so I told the driver that I would get off here and pay him. So I did and he drove off. After he drove off, I walked up to the door of the "apartment building" where krakow guesthouse should have been. Sure enough, it was the address, 56 krowoderska, but there was no official "sign" that said it was there. I walked up closer, and I saw on the call button area that supposedly the guesthouse was located there. So, I pushed the button several times, no one came down. "That's strange, " I thought, "There has to be a front desk." I tried again. No answer still. Now I started to get scared. It was close to 11 PM, it was dark out, and here I was standing on a street with all my things in a strange country, where I barely spoke the language and I was alone. I was definately starting to get concerned about my personal safety right now, but I figured I'd wait a little longer. 20 minutes passed and still no sighn of anyone. At least there were quite a few people on the street, which didn't make me feel too bad. Eventually, I started getting a feeling that I probably should talk to one of these pedestrians.
              Not far away from me I came across this middle aged woman walking alone with her dog. I asked the woman in broken Polish if she could helped me and I explained to her my dilema as best I could. I showed her the address and she and I walked back to the apartment building. Sure enough, she walked to the same apartment building that I had tried earlier, had confirmed the name of the place on the call button like I had done and tried it several times like I had...still no answer. Eventually the woman used her cell phone to call the proprietor and for several mintues she talked with her. After the conversation on the phone had ended she informed me in English that the proprietor would arrive in 10 minutes to let me in. That sounded odd to me, but I thanked the woman for her help and we parted.
                 10 minutes later I see a white "taxi" pull up.  As soon as it pulls up, this tall, thin middle aged woman with black hair comes out. She calls to me in English and introduces herself to be the proprietor. "What the hell's going on?" I thought. She explained to me that I should have called up ahead of time in order to arrange for a time for her to "pick me up" at the train station because coming on my own was impossible due to the fact that there was no front desk nor was it impossible to get in without a key. As you can imagine, I was starting to feel scared, especially since I had interpreted the "pick up" as something optional from the website, and here according to the proprietor when I met her that the pick up had been obligatory. "Odd" I thought.  But anyways, she led me up to the room, showed me around and I checked in. The room itself was actually very nice-clean and simple but none the less was decent. The only thing that bothered me was that the inside of the apartment was very old looking; almost looked abandoned really. You wouldn't have known that this was supposedly the location of a "guesthouse."  She showed me where "breakfast" was provided-supposedly I had breakfast provided at this guesthouse which basically meant that there were breakfast makings in my fridge. So I finished checking in, but there was a catch...she wanted me to pay for my room, and at the time I didn't have any cash on me so I asked her if I could wait until the morning or before I checked out to give her the money. When I said that, she insisted that she take me to an ATM to get out the money and pay her.  I didn't feel comfortable with the idea, especially since it was about midnight when we decided to do this, but I had no choice. So, we went over to her personal "taxi" and drove over to the nearest bank. I went into the ATM, extracted the money I needed to pay her plus some extra cash and handed her the amount as soon as I got out. After that, they drove me home. Before parting she gave me a map of Krakow for me to use the next day and after that she drove off and I was left alone.
         I went back into the apartment to go take a shower and go to sleep. I had had a long day and was tired but I was also a little shook up. From the moment the taxi driver had dropped me off from the train station I had had a bad feeling. I was starting to regret my choice to stay at Cracovia Guesthouse; nothing had gone right nor as I had expected it and the entire setup just bothered me. I didn't like the fact that there was not a front desk, nor was it a standard "guesthouse" or hotel, hostel, etc. I didn't like the fact that earlier that evening I had to wait all alone in front of a strange complex on a strange street in an unfamiliar city in a foreign city all by myself in the dark, and the fact that my proprietor wanted me to pay her for my room at midnight was also a problem. Everything about the place just bothered me and I had a feeling that things were going to get worse but I figured nah...I'm probably over exaggerating. I decided it was time to go to bed; sleep was the main thing on my mind. After watching some TV (which there was really not much on) I went to sleep, and hoped that in the morning I would feel better, and that my nagging doubts about my lodging would go away.....

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