MTC1976

Thanks for the photos and the review. Were the sandwiches the part that came included in the First Class ticket? Did you pay separately for your salad?

While you've been in Poland, have you taken any Pol Regio trains? Our summer 2023 itinerary looks like it'll include two day trips from Krakow on PolRegio trains: to Oświęcim/Auschwitz and to Wadowice. I'm interested in knowing more about those trains as well. I know they're not high speed.

CApreppie

The sandwiches were one of the included with ticket items that were available on that menu. I don't know if they change that menu later in the day, but the chicken salad was not on a menu that I had seen in a YouTube video of an first class ride on the train.They give you coffee and tea, and then choice of another bottled drink like juice, Coke, or water.

We rented a Sixt rental car from Krakow airport for two-days over the weekend. Two days was like $60 USD. Rented the cheapest Fiat 500 and got upgraded to the next size Citroen C4. We used it drive to Auschwitz and Kalwaria church and religious landscape and drove through Wadowice on the way to Kalwaria (goes through it and we drove by Pope John Paul II's childhood home and took photo from the rental car. Second day we used the car to go to Wielickza royal salt mine and then three of the wooden churches outside of Krakow (we were able to go in two of them, the closest one in Binawara had pretty interior paintings).

All these four sites are UNESCO listed and the logistics made a car far simpler. I don't know how to get to Wadowice via train/bus, but Auschwitz has both. I think the train service might not be that frequent but there appear to be regular public buses one can take as well. Going to everything as early is possible is preferred. We did Aushwitz 830AM English tour and 9AM Wielickza and both were very much busier after we finished.

Feel free to ask me more questions since we just got back from Krakow and Warsaw.

AlicorporateUK

The “Polregio” trains are merely commuter trains with no service as such. A restaurant/bar carriage may be found on most “IC” (meaning Intercity) trains and of course on the so-called “Pendolino” or “EIP” (Express Intercity Premium), where ad-hoc seat service is indeed provided (snacks and drinks for 1st class, drinks only for 2nd). The above codes (together with “TLK”, no service nor indeed restaurant/bar carriage, except for some long-distance services) may be found on the official timetable’s webpage (search for “PKP Rozkład” on Google). Again, though, Polregio are merely commuter trains (yet modern and relatively comfortable, too).

G

MTC1976

In planning our trip to Poland, I have searched for information about this for 9+ months without luck. Today I stumbled on information that I'd like to share here in case other people also would like to know.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine outside of Kraków, Poland, has chapels inside it. Many websites mention the possibility of your group pre-arranging for the priest you will bring with you to offer Holy Mass in one the salt mine chapels. I've not had any luck finding out how one could join up with another group already planning a Mass.

Today I learned that there is a regularly scheduled Catholic Mass every Sunday morning at 0730 in St. Kinga's Chapel in the salt mine that seems to be open to anybody. Entrance to the mine is available as early as 0700, and you use the same entrance they use for the Tourist Route (one of their two main tours). This is before the mine opens to the general public for the day. Note that when you take the tour you descent stairs to get into the mine, but for access to Mass they let you use the lift / elevator. Coming up, you use the elevator regardless of why you were below.

I still haven't found any note about this on the salt mine's websites https://www.kopalnia.pl/ or https://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/.

I found this information about the Sunday morning salt mine Mass on the website of the Catholic parish nearest the mine, St. Clement. If you are reading this information in the future, my suggestion for the best way to verify current information will be at the church's website. Parafia ?wi?tego Klemensa w Wieliczce http://wieliczkaklemens.pl/

Goldenco

Train tickets can be purchased online in advance through the Polish State Railways website (PKP Intercity), but the website can be difficult to navigate and may not always show up-to-date information. It's also possible to purchase tickets at the train station from ticket machines or ticket counters, but it's recommended to arrive early to allow for any potential lines or delays.

The cost of train tickets can vary depending on the class of travel, the type of train, and how far in advance the tickets are purchased. Generally, 1st class tickets are more expensive than 2nd class tickets, but they offer more amenities such as larger seats and more legroom.

When purchasing train tickets in Poland, it's important to ensure that they are validated before boarding the train. This can be done at validation machines located on the platform or inside the train, and failure to validate the ticket can result in a fine.

gnggng

Do you have any experience using the Koleo website for purchasing tickets? It says they are a ticket service for PKP and do not charge a fee for doing so. It seems to be much easier to navigate.

southlondonphil

I'm not sure you can actually buy a ticket on that site without registering as a user, which you may not wish to do. There may be an advantage if you're making a connection from a regional railways service to an inter-city service as I don't think the PKP site will allow you to buy it as a single ticket?

I just last week made the trip from Warsaw to Krakow and booked my ticket online at www.intercity.pl which is the site for PKP ('National' trains) which you can do as a guest and worked perfectly well for me (though do note that even if you switch site language to English you will need to use the Polish spelling, i.e. Warszawa for stations in Warsaw).

Also, that Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) is a bit of a mess at the moment as it is undergoing a massive (and long overdue) rebuild, with the consequence that some services that would normally route through Zachodnia to/from Warszawa Centralna are either suspended or re-directed to Warszawa Gdanska, stopping instead at the isolated Peron (Platform) 9 which I believe still (?) involves a dubious walk across the tracks and through a wasteland to the construction site that is the current, main, Warszawa Zachodnia station!

gnggng

Thanks for this information. I did a test booking on the site and it let me get as far as ready to book. I did register because it just seemed to be so much easier to navigate than the pkp site.

Do you know if traveling from Gdansk to Warsaw will also entail the construction detour? We will be staying at the Hotel Bristol.

LtKernelPanic

Dumb question time before I arrive in Poland next weekend. Since I don't speak a Polish do the ticket machines have an option for English? I assume they would like other places I've traveled in Europe. I know the ones on the train from the airport to the main train station and the salt mines do as I've seen it mentioned on several travel blogs but I haven't seen anything about the ones in the stations. In a worst case scenario I can use the google translate app on my phone and it probably wouldn't be too hard to fumble fart my way through it to get a ticket to Oswiecim and back. Not sure why this is bugging me so much either. Maybe because when I was in France and Portugal those languages are similar enough to Spanish (which I do speak a bit) that I could figure out enough to get by if needed. Ironically one set of my great grandparents emigrated from Poland to the US right before WW I but once they learned English they rarely spoke Polish even at home from my grandma said.

southlondonphil

I can only speak from my limited experience going from Warsaw Airport via Warsaw Centralna to Krakow (on separate tickets), and from Krakow Glowny to the KRK airport but in those cases the machines had an English option.

LtKernelPanic

I forgot report back after visiting Poland. All the ticket machines I used in stations and on the trains had options for Polish, English and Ukrainian among others. IIRC they showed a UK flag for the English option. You may have to figure out what button to hit to get back to the main screen where the language selection was. Thankfully for me and several other US and UK tourists at the airport train station a nice English speaking local showed us how to use the machine. One other thing I noticed that was different at least on the trains is that just about every travel site I read said you must validate your ticket before getting on the train and at least on the trains I took this wasn't the case (but still appears to be the case on trams and buses). The conductor walked through the train and scanned the QR code on your ticket. On the trains I took there were ticket machines in the first and last cars. If you can't find one locate the conductor and they can sell you a ticket. The fine for not having a valid ticket was ~$125USD. Hope this helps anyone else like me who is worried about the language barrier when visiting Poland. I also found that at least around the city center a lot of people spoke English quite well.

CApreppie

I don't remember anything about needing to validate the our train tickets from Krakow to Warsaw. The conductor just went by and scanned the QR code on our tickets. I thought the PKP site was finicky but ultimately useable if you played around with it. There was definitely some fussiness with the English translation and yes you should put in the Polish name of the stations to get it to up accurately.

I am not sure I ever took a tram or bus. I think we just took rideshare because the USD exchange rate was so economical for two of us to not bother with bus/tram.

boxo

Can someone please help me out here?

The PKP website gives me no search results for 27 Nov Wroclaw Glowny to Oswiecim and 29 Nov Oswiecim to Krakow (any station). I input the information, hit the search button, it looks like it's processing for a couple seconds, but relands at the search page.

My search for 3 Dec Krakow to Gdansk produces results, but isn't bookable quite yet.

Am I doing something wrong?

Xyzzy

It appears you can't book most (all?) trains more than a month out, so that explains your December 3rd issue.
I recently had problems booking tickets at the PKP site, including the inability to actually pay for my tickets with a credit card (tried cards from multiple countries). The Koleo site charged the same price and is far, easier to use, and actually let me book my tickets. (Their app also quickly handled changes and refunds). You may wish to try it.

I can pull up the itineraries you were looking at, but many of them do not show a price. Those without a price were all journeys involving "KS" trains. thers do price out. Doing the same search only a week out, all journeys show a price. That leads me to believe that some kinds of trains are not able to be reserved a month in advance. Good luck!

boxo

Thank you for the Koleo rec. Koleo search results say KS trains are only bookable 14 days out.