Travels Off the Grid

Normally research on the Internet is enough to get an idea of what you're in for. My friend and I believed this, anyway, when we Googled Lódz, Poland (pronounced "woodge"). Its Wikipedia entry said it was Poland's third largest city with a bustling nightlife, and that it was the center of the country's entertainment industry, making it the Hollywood of Poland.
We weren't planning on being in Lódz for very long. We would be taking PolskiBus.com (yes, the name of the bus line is also its site address) from Berlin, across the German-Polish border to Lódz, waiting at the bus stop there for three hours, then taking another bus to Katowice, from there a bus to Oswiecim, and from there a shuttle to Auschwitz. Twelve hours later, we would do it all again in reverse. We were researching Lódz to see what sort of bus station it would have--the bigger the city, the more likely its station would be large, comfortable, and, most importantly, heated. We would, after all, be there from 12 to 3 AM.
PolskiBus.com, advertised as affordable and with free wireless, followed through on one of these promises--the Internet hardly worked. Every bus we boarded was overbooked, making for a stressful situation involving a lot of jostling to get to the front of the line and shoving tickets into the driver's face before someone else could. On our first ride, we ended up in the middle of the farthest back seat, but the views of the German and, later, Polish countryside were rustic and beautiful.
Finally, we fell asleep and woke in Lódz. Turns out the station was a 12' x 6' glass box with a vending machine, a few plastic chairs, and no door. The night was freezing, even in June. It was not well lit, and several men had adopted the box as their home.
My friend and I wondered how we had possibly ended up there as we shivered and pretended to read our books. The men didn't bother us, but we felt like we were bothering them, and hypothermia seemed to be setting in.
Though the three hours went by slowly, PolskiBus.com finally came, with, even that early, a fight for seats. We settled in, tried and failed to find the wireless, and discussed what had just happened. We knew the bus station wasn't necessarily representative of Lódz, but we wondered about the "bustling nightlife." We did have a good story, though, and we knew now never to trust a bus station to be comfortable, even in the Hollywood of Poland.