My Experiences with Public Transportation Abroad

Over the summer, I studied in Warsaw, Poland. Oh the memories… of getting lost… in Warsaw… I am not experienced with public transportation and this became a fatal flaw during my travels this summer. Who would have thought that public transportation stops at night? Not me. I realized it while trapped at City Center trying desperately to catch the last bus (since the trams stopped running) to Grojecka 29. I can now say that I am very experienced at getting on the wrong tram but somehow still making it to my destination… mostly by walking annoyingly far distances through extremely sketchy areas. By far, my absolute worst experience with transportation was not in Russia, but Israel. Did you know that form Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown (Shabbat) virtually everything stops working? I found this out when I flew into Tel Aviv at 5 pm on a Saturday and had to wait in a very scary bus station for the midnight bus (Shout out to my knew 'friend' Israeli Elvis). With my plans to study abroad in Russia this coming year, I plan to look up their public transportation system extensively before my trip.