An International Foray: Krakow

2nd - 5th March

I've been meaning to write about my short trip to Poland for a while, and now being hungover has presented me with the perfect excuse to sit back and spend time on the way-too-wide web. 

I think I was a bit too eager to get to the airport on Friday - five hours (including an hour of delay) in one of those depressingly boring departure lounges (no free samples anywhere!), with a headache and lemonade that I had mistaken for water, left me with an almost desperate desire to get on the plane. In my defence the airport was in another city, so I spent two hours getting there from Utrecht. 

Anyway, arriving at 8pm I was totally starving, and after finding my incredibly hard-to-find hostel (quickly realising that way less people speak English in Poland than they do in the Netherlands) I set out to try a recommended Polish restaurant. The place was cute, too cute for someone sitting on their own at the most awkwardly-located table possible (in front of the cashier?!) could feel totally comfortable in, and I ordered 'pierogi' (little dumpling kind of things, the only items with English descriptions on the menu). I pointed to 'meat.' However once it came out I realised that they are probably more of a sharing dish ... one is nice, but 12 on a plate with nothing else but a slab of melting butter was a bit much. Add that to the fact that I couldn't tell what kind of meat I was eating, it was unlike anything I had eaten before (including cow's tongue). I also got nauseous once I looked at the menu again and noticed that the only other English meat option was pigeon. Funny how the thought of eating a pigeon - a bird who is not friendly, exciting or even funny (ok they're a bit funny) - nauseated me more than the thought of eating chicken ... and I LOVE chickens. 

The giant, cherry-flavoured hot chocolate that I was pushed into buying (at the price of two nights in my hostel) by a deceptively friendly waitress also contributed to my general feeling of nausea, and the reluctance to stay out on the streets much later than 10pm. 

It was beautiful at night though.

In the morning I walked around the Jewish Quarter/Old Town (the whole city centre felt like an Old Town) and thought about what it means to be identified with a country. At the risk of getting completely off-track I will save those musings for another soon-to-be created entry. 

It was a realllly nice day weather-wise, the sun was out! It actually took my eyes about an hour to adjust to so much light. Getting used to the concept of 'sunlight' in Europe has been a bit of a struggle - sun here does not equate to short-shorts and the beach, like it does at home...It equates to people skipping responsibilities and taking a bottle of wine down to the park to soak up as many rays as you possibly can. 

It was a bit weird seeing Jewish cemeteries surrounded by cafes, carparks and shops. But I guess it would be even worse if they got rid of them to make way for said cafes etc. I can't remember how long the cemeteries had been there. The area was filled mostly with synagogues, markets and picturesque buildings (everything was picturesque!). I knew I was seeing the 'right things' when I was joined by little packs of tourists or groups of Israeli schoolchildren seeing them with me. 

After consuming a delicious gingerbread latte I sat in the sun in the main square and chilled out. Because it was Saturday (or maybe just because it was Krakow) there were market stalls out in the square, with buskers either playing music or standing still. There were a lot of pigeons also, that I avoided eye contact with. It's quite strange, I know that most of the people in that square were probably tourists, but it didn't have a touristy vibe at all (especially compared to Brussels, Belgium ... but I'll get to that later.) 

Once Anna arrived with her friends Kapil, Jenica (Janiqua), Mark and Chris we went and enjoyed some giant, cheap beers and food. I realised that the reason I had been unable to identify what meat was in those pierogi was that it wasn't meat at all, because Jenica's potato and something-else ones were identical taste-wise. Or we were both eating pigeon. Later in the afternoon, after walking around and seeing  we sought out the 'House of Beer' and sampled some delicious chocolate-flavoured beer! Quite delicious.

That night we enjoyed an all-you-can-eat-and-drink-for-ten-euro at their hostel, filled with Aussies and a really creepy photographer, before heading out to a little club. Very drunken times ensued. However we made a tactical decision to leave at 2am so that we could get up in time to catch our bus to Auschwitz. 

Auschwitz was depressing, as expected, however it was difficult to imagine the things that happened there actually happening there. Especially seeing as the sky was clear blue and it was sunny and deserted but for tourists. 

Google tells me that the reason the 'B' in 'Arbeit' (which, btw, means something like 'Work Makes You Free') is upside down is unknown, however there's a theory that it was put as a warning to the people arriving there that things were going wrong inside. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei#cite_ref-Liwacz_3-0) I thought it was interesting that the first commander of Auschwitz, after he was sentenced to death, was hanged at the same place that they had tortured a lot of the prisoners who were suspected of being part of the Resistance movement. 

Auschwitz-Birkenau

The bigger camp of Auschwitz, Birkenau, is really where you get the sense of how big and terrible the concentration camp operations really were. They could house up to 100, 000 people there! The little houses were awful inside, its hard to imagine seeing five or six men sharing a little platform about the same size as my double bed at home. I also didn't realise that the Nazis blew up the crematorium and gas chambers at Birkenau once the end of the war was imminent. So now what lies there is huge slabs of wall and ceiling. 

That night we spent a good 45 minutes to an hour searching for the most elusive and hidden Polish restaurant (Babci Maliny) in the whole of Krakow - totally worth it! I had "pork chops Krakowice style", which looks identical to a small sweet potato. This resulted on me going up to the counter several times and asking for meat on my plate, before she pointed to the deceptive potato and I discovered there was meat inside.

There was a huge train crash between two trains coming from opposite directions that had been mistakenly placed on the same line, the Krakow-Warsaw line. Anna and her friends had been on that very train route not eight hours earlier...I think about 16 people died and there were over 100 injured, some in induced comas. Scary stuff.

That night Anna and I sampled a few little bars - one very small one with an upstairs and hot beer (interesting...) and the other an underground, pirate/nautical themed bar. It was so good to see a face from back home. I very rarely get homesick but the value of a pre-existing, close friend is never better realised than when you haven't seen any of them for a while. I literally felt like smiling every minute I was around her. 

Mmmm pretzel

The next morning the others were due to head off to Warsaw, on the train line of death. We sampled some delicious bread pretzel things (I'm sure they have a proper Polish name) that were being sold on every street corner. The cafe was sold out of gingerbread lattes, which was very sad. We managed to squeeze in a quick tour of Wawel Castle, but we only went inside the Cathedral and not inside the actual castle. No point in paying when we would have had to rush through it. Beautiful castle though! I went back there after the others left and found the dragon statue that 'breathed' actual fire. 

Krakow feels like a very accessible place - as in, it doesn't feel like we did that many 'organised' activities, but we did manage to see many of the recommended sites around the centre. Lots of the castles are within walking distance. Unfortunately Schindler's Factory is closed the first Monday of every month, so I couldn't go that afternoon. Very sad. 

Cathedral in Wawel Castle

Therefore, Krakow is likely to break the long trend of not returning to places I have already visited. As well as Schindler's Factory I would like to see the Salt Mines too... apparently if you take some tequila down there you can break the salt off the wall to have with your shot. Deliciously convenient, if not unhygienic. I also wonder if Krakow is one of those places where the areas you see as a tourist bear almost no resemblance to the Krakow people actually live in. I think another visit, this time perhaps featuring couchsurfing, will be the best way to find out.