Foreign travel agencies often lack current data about Poland
Lots of tourists are arriving as first-time visitors to Poland, drawn by news of its fast-moving economy and reentry into the Western community of nations.
At the Opera House's splendid performance of "La Traviatta" a week ago Sunday, the neighboring seats were taken up by 19 U.S. opera buffs. A New York City company that has sent opera lovers across the world for short-term trips was experimenting with Poland, bundling Warsaw and Krakow with Berlin.
"We're the guinea pigs," said one well-heeled woman. "So far, so good." The Traviatta stage set and singers made the grade with her, as did the Bristol Hotel.
Many foreigners, however, don't want to be "bundled" but want to witness Poland's progress for themselves. And foreign travel agencies don't know how to help them do that or give bad advice.
A party of six relatives and friends came to sightsee in Warsaw and Krakow a year ago, en route to Slovakia to look up "roots." The Europejski Hotel was fine, but Krakow tour guide Zofia Taber blanched when she saw where they were slated to stay. While it may have looked like a cheap-but-decent place to stay to the Pittsburgh travel agent, in reality it was a workers hostel for Ukrainian construction workers. And cab fare downtown would have made the cost as high as a lesser-light downtown Krakow hotel.
Earlier this month, retired University of Texas economist Kim Carney came to Poland for her third trip, with her theologian husband Fred Carney on his first. She planned the logistics with difficulty, using the travel agency recommended by the "Eyewitness" guidebook on Warsaw, a New York-based company called Americans Traveling Abroad.
She dealt with Polish-Americans at the New York and Chicago offices. "In both cases, I sensed a real reluctance to give out information," she said. "Usually, travel agents are wanting to please. This one acted like a government travel agent."
She found the Orbis web site and e-mailed with a request that they call her in Dallas to help plan her trip. No reply. So she called them and received some bare bones brochures and a map.
She was in search of the former German town in western Poland, now called Sepolno Krajenskie, which is 70 kilometers from Bydgoszcz. She found out more information about it from the Mormons in Salt Lake City than she did from Orbis or the ATA agency, however. She thought the Bydgoszcz web site looked interesting but since it was in Polish, she couldn't read anything. But the city did answer her e-mail with the name of two hotels.
In retrospect, she was most irritated at the New York agency. They didn't alert her to the fact that her trip was occurring at the start of Poland's All Saints Day holiday when virtually all Poles return to their home towns.
The agency also scoffed at the warnings of Warsaw-based Americans about driving that weekend. "The travel agent there said we definitely should rent cars, not take trains, that Americans in Poland exaggerate those problems," Kim said.
And it's just a myth that Poland has the highest road-kill record in Europe, right? The Air Club Travel office's Elzbieta Wierzynska was the first to tell them, not the New York agency, that they'd need to get train reservations here to go with their U.S.-purchased rail passes. She also had advised taking an early train to Bydgoszcz that pre-holiday Friday, where they could reserve a seat. Instead, the New York agency assured them there was a midmorning train "but they didn't tell us that it didn't have reservations and they didn't mention that you had to change trains, twice," in Kutno and again in Torun, with only 10 minutes to spare.
They had missed the 7 a.m. train when they decided to pass on the mid-morning change-of-trains option. Wierzynska got them tickets for the direct-to-Bydgoszcz afternoon train, but that one didn't take reservations either.
When they left Warsaw's Central Station for the nearly five-hour trip, they were standing in the aisles with their luggage, with 100 people crowded on either side of them.
A happy ending, of sorts. No robberies. No rowdiness. And a young man took his girlfriend on his lap so the Carneys could squeeze into a seat. A National Car Rental man in Bydgoszcz was spectacular in helping them set out for Sepolno Krajenskie, she said, and both the Brda and Art Hotels in Bydgoszcz and Wroclaw were good. They were less euphoric about the Pollera Hotel in Krakow possibly because of the sticker shock. The hotel rates, displayed on the desk, were $55 for a double room but the New York travel agency had charged them $90.
