Lucky, too: we jumped off at Warsaw Centrum, walked up the platform a little and accosted a stranger: was this station the same as “Warsaw Ws”? No, he told us, that is Warsaw West — which is where our Moscow train leaves from. Panicked, we rushed back to Wagon 4 and jumped back on our train just before it pulled out…

“Ooh look honey,” exclaimed Dee a little later, “There are peasants on the track!”

What? You can’t call go around calling people that — it’s not like we’re royalty or something. “Oh, I mean pheasants,” she continued cheerfully, “There are PHEASANTS on the track.” I laugh and laugh. (I’m still laughing now, just thinking about it.)

Warsaw is an industrial city, as Magda (Magduisha) warned us — not much in the way of sights, not near the train station anyway. We wander out and across the (massive) road for a “stodgy” lunch of chicken, mushroom and Polish dumplings. The girl behind the bar — and it is a bar rather than a restaurant or cafe, we now see, but it’s also the only thing open and backpackers can’t be choosers — doesn’t speak angielski but we get out point across with a whole lot of pointing and hand waving. Two hours ’til our train to Moscow.

It’s a little bit scary now: headed out of Europe and into the complete unknown for the first time.