Ćesky Tesin

November 6, 2004

I decided to take a day trip to Český Těšin from my temporary home in Krakow, Poland. The bus ride was on a slow bus that stops in every town, but we made it the divided city, half Polish, half Czech.

We followed the signs to what appeared to be the center of the town and asked a couple where Český Těšin was and they said to come with them… we think, they spoke Czech and a little Polish. Either way we followed them and got to the “border shack” at which point our problems began since I was traveling with Elizabeth, a Bolivian citizen. They looked rather confused at first then took our passports and I believe looked Bolivia up on the computer to see how to proceed. They then went into the back room and dug through a drawer to find the passport stamp. The border guards then looked at the date and changed the stamp to match the date, I have no idea when the last time they used the stamp for anyone was. Either way they stamped the passport, then took both passports to the front and stamped them again.

We realized afterwards that they stamped my Bolivian friend out of Poland then into the Czech Republic, while they only stamped me into the Czech Republic. I thought that was odd and in addition they had both stamps in the same room which I also found odd.

We continued on to the Czech Republic and grabbed a bite to eat as soon as we crossed the border, 30 crowns for a kebab, much cheaper than in Poland. As we continued to walk there were a lot of bag stores open, and nearly all of them run by Asians, it was rather odd. As we walked we found a map of the city and only then realized how unevenly the city was divided.

There were very few people out in the street at this time, 3:00pm and it felt almost like a ghost town seeing as how everything in the city was closed except the bag shops. We walked around a square and saw a couple drunks, but nothing very eventful. What struck me as odd was at one point there was a man who was extremely intoxicated and drinking in the street as two police officers walked past him without saying a word. Very near that drunk man there was of course a liquor store.

The border crossing back to Poland was much better this time around because they didn’t even take my passport, they simply waved me on and Elizabeth they recognized as the Bolivian and immediately took care of everything and got us through in nearly no time at all. The border guard also spoke some English and we some Polish so we worked together well; all he really wanted to know was what we were doing in Poland though.

We walked through the Polish side for a bit and took some pictures, but soon headed back to the bus/train station.