the coriolis effect

With some modifications- ixnay on the 5 minute layover- we made it. During the trip, occasionally the three of us would try to enumerate the utterly bizarre things that kept on happening, but often when we sat and thought for too long, someone would fall asleep. The summary always was- that's Poland for you.

We were supertroopers til the end, until the second to last leg of the return train trip- and we all fell asleep, all at once. And we were sharing a compartment with a guy and his daughter, and lulled by the familial aspect, let the guard down. Wolf in sheep's clothing, I taught my class today- because now I'm out one wallet, a lot of money I had stupidly taken out right before leaving Torun and not divvied up, and all my ids except for passport....I'm almost saddest about the fact I'm no longer, totally and officially, a student. But.
Three people, 3 days, those events of seemingly vital significance that slowly will become distilled into cocktail party anecdotes. Apologies in advance, in retrospect. One plastic juice bottle that flew out of nowhere and landed at the feet of a startled german tourist, many many strange promo schemes (guy rollerblading with a rolling billboard through the forest, anyone? woman decked out like cleopatra strolling around with a boa constrictor- the obession with egyptian themed restaurants in general, the exuberance of capitalism in a post-communist economy), sand in our hair for days, gingerbread and german tourists by the bushel, the taxi driver who informed us we should walk to the train station despite the pouring rain (we don't have an umbrella, we said- buy one, he snapped.)
The reoccurance of the plastic bottle, in the guise of a dude who strolled to the sea edge, produced an empty bottle he proceeded to swirl around in the waves, shake over his head a couple times (empty, sideways) and then toss into the water. We were watching this ritual from the sandpit we had declared our crepuscular bed, surreptitiously watching him and the lovebirds and the sand zamboni that very nearly ran us over (but we didn't even think to move). War of the Worlds, feeling oh so american as the movie ended and we were filing out, until we walked through the door and discovered cinema city ejects its patrons straight outside. The astronomical clock in Gdansk's St. Mary's church, that has a mechanical display (Adam, Eve, a singing choir of the angels) which has operated faithfully on the hour since 1464- and took the opportunity to malfunction. Staring at a statue of Copernicus, listening to a sports bar singer meander through "Wish you were Here", a down-tempo "Help", "Nothing Else Matters".

The world's largest gyro, parading down the street with it and wondering if the stares were for me and a stuffed pita bigger than my head, or Dahm's bedhead porcupine hair. or the fact we were the motliest crew to take the tri-city area by sluggish storm. The night we crashed in a university dorm (the only 6 hours we slept in a bed), the receptionist asked us where we were born. Dahm handed him his California id, and the guy goes, but you were born in...China? Vietnam? Odeviz: I was born in Havana Cuba. Guy: Ah, yes, Havana, Cuba. Cuba, Fidel Castro, but who is the president of Havana? Me: Washington. Guy, mishearing: Tunisia?
So a Laotian scholar, a Cuban, and a Tunisian stumbled by a pirate ship built for German tourists...