We're spending the night at the Cristal Hotel in Bialystok. George has stayed here before, but he says that the rooms are twice as large as what he remembers – they must have combined adjoining rooms during a recent renovation. And indeed, although I can't say that the rooms are "modern," they certainly are large, and they're quite clean.

Unfortunately, my room features a strange smell that I don't like, so they switch me to a different one. The new room smells fine, but it doesn't have a phone jack (the phone is hard-wired into the wall), so I won't be able to access the Net. The staff is very accommodating, they lead me to yet another room, and they wait around while I inspect it to make sure that the phone jack is OK (it is).