Krakow - the Good, the Bad, and the Polish

** I just finished writing this tome and realized the unintended insinuation in the title. In no way do I mean that Polish people are ugly. Just wanted to clear that up **

Scroll down and check out how long this thing is... haven't had time to proof-read, so it might be a little rough.

My weekend in Krakow was (with a few exceptions) amazing and a lot of fun. We decided to go to Krakow because the weekend was being arranged by IAESTE Krakow and was therefore really inexpensive. I think the easiest way to recap the weekend is chronologically:

Vienna -> Krakow
Thursday night Henrik and I took the night train, leaving at 10:30pm. We reserved couchettes, and they were decent for €13. We were crammed 6 to a compartment , but Henrik and I lucked out with the convenient middle bunks. Our cabin mates were really cool, and I actually stayed up pretty late discussing everything from US Politics to Vienna to Oktoberfest. Our sleep was interrupted by Passport Police throughout the night as we crossed from Austria to Slovakia to the Czech Republic to Poland. I got some cool stamps and some odd looks, as my passport photo shows the Einstein-esque haircut I had last year, when it was at its full pony-tail length. Quite the contrast to my hair now. We arrived in Krakow at 6am in desperate need of a bathroom, a toothbrush, and a nap.
Friday: First Impressions
We were shocked to find a guy named Tomak waiting for us from the local IAESTE committee, we thought we'd have to find out own way to the hostel. Tomak convinced us to walk the 40min to the hostel so he could show off Krakow. The medieval streets were empty and slightly misty, an amazing sight. Below is one of the many pedestrianized shopping streets where people and slow moving cars co-exist peacefully.
The city of Krakow, like most European cities used to be surrounded by a city wall. When occupied by the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, the walls were removed (at the same time as Vienna) and the city moat was filled in an turned into a park which rings the city. The 700+ year old Florian Gate and a small section of wall were retained as a relic of things past.
At the end of the street we came to the 40,000 m² Main Market Square, which in 2005 was voted the Word's Best Square. It was huge, but deserted at 6am on a Friday. The highlight of the square is St.Mary's Basilica.
In the photograph of the basilica you can just make out the flocks of small birds (swallows?) which jovially flew around the tower, such a nice change from the pigeons of Vienna and the seagulls of Canada. On Sunday we toured inside. I got one fuzzy picture but it still shows the scale and ADD inducing complexity of the decoration.

A random statue outside the basilica.

We finally arrived at the hostel, which was a communism-era student residence where 10,000 students lived in 30+ grey rectangular buildings. We were given sheets so heavily starched that you literally had to peel them apart, it reminded me of peeling the back off shelf-paper. After a quick nap we were ready for the organized tour of Kazimierz.

Kazimierz
Kazimierz is a historical district of Krakow that is famous for its numerous churches and synagogues, as well as a large Jewish ghetto devastated in WWII, the location of Oscar Schindler's famous factory, and the filming location for the majority of Schindler's List.

We took golf-cart trains through the city with pre-recorded tours.
The guy taking the picture in the photo above is Cayle from Kansas. He, along with guys from the UK and Ireland live in Budapest and were really cool. We ended up hanging out with them most of the weekend.

The first thing we saw was a quick glimpse of the massive Wawel Castle which we toured on Sunday.

We passed many synagogues, the second one contains the oldest preserved Jewish cemetery in Europe. Apparently some of the tomb stones are hundreds of years old.
One interesting thing about Krakow, especially Kazimierz, is the mix of buildings. In comparison, Vienna is, and has always been, a very rich city. Therefore, buildings are constantly being remodeled and preserved. In Krakow you find scenes like the one below. Abandoned or neglected buildings sandwiched between preserved, or even modern, buildings.
You also find beautiful old buildings which, in Vienna, would have been torn down and replaced with grander buildings.
The tour ended abruptly when our train of carts died in the middle of the street. We were close to the central square so we decided to go for lunch and meet back in an hour or so.

Here you can see Sukiennice, the centerpiece of the square. It contained a large tourist-market with carved wooden booths, very cool, but too touristy. They were all selling the same low-price low-quality crap you find at most tourist sites, but ti was still cool to walk through.

The square contains a church which predates it by over a century. The Church of St.Wojciech is almost 1000 years old. The church is so old that you have to step down when you enter, as the plaza which was originally leveled to the same height as the foundations of the church has since been raised 2-2.6m with nine centuries of re-paving and re-leveling.
An old Polish couple playing folk music. On display is a picture of them with Pope John Paul II. PJPII is a national and local hero as he was the first Polish Pope and he spent a large portion of his life in Krakow.
The last major landmark in the central square is the Town Hall Tower, the remains of the old city hall torn down in the 1820s to open up the square. Apparently the tower used to house a Medieval torture chamber, and, along with St.Mary's Basilica, was featured in Amazing Race All Stars.

Auschwitz Concentration and Death Camp
We took a 80min bus ride from the city to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was one of the eeriest places I've ever been. You know the history, you know the horror, but the throngs of Japanese tourists and gift shop allow you to build an emotional wall, which allows you to take everything in without experiencing it. Its a horrible experience to be at the sight of so much carnage, and leaving with nothing but the creeps, I really feel like it should have hit me harder.

We were given guided tours of the camp, the barracks, the prison, the execution yard, a gas chamber in which 60,000 men, women, and children were murdered and the connecting crematorium.

The whole camp had a odd smell that got to me more than anything else. We learned at the end of the tour that the Nazis used the ashes from the crematoriums as a component of the gravel roads and concrete in the camp. I'm glad they told us at the end.


The storage rooms where all the prisoner's stuff was stored were called "Canada" because Canada was seen as the best place on earth, and the storage rooms were the best place in the camps to work. Most of the storage sheds were destroyed by the Nazis when evacuating the camp, but some were spared. One of the barracks houses the mountains of sorted belongings. The worst of the displays were the children's shoes and the hair. I'm not sure what the exact weight was, but the hair room contained a few metric tonnes of human hair. Even worse were the bolts of fabric which had been woven out of the hair and sold by the Nazis.

From Auschwitz I we visited Auschwitz II - Birkenau, a cruder camp thrown together during the war to hold the thousands and thousands of people being brought in.
The men's barracks were converted stables. Each bunk held 6-8 men.
Only a few of the original wooden structures have been maintained. In the field you can see the sea of chimneys marking the locations of all the other barracks.
The most iconic building in the complex is the death gate, where trains full of prisoners from all over Europe were brought to their death. The trains where being brought directly from countries as far as Greece, without food or water. Many of the people arriving through these gates were already dead from starvation, dehydration, or the elements.
The trip to Auschwitz is something that I'm glad I experienced. I encourage everyone to read as much as possible and inform yourselves of the atrocities that took place. Some facts we learned make me feel horrible. For instance, did you know that the Greek Jews had to purchase tickets to Auschwitz, as they were told it was a relocation to a new Jewish state? That's enough for now, as I have more to write about, and am getting depressed writing this.

Friday Night
We returned around 8:30pm and headed to the 'Polish Night' where we drank lots of inexpensive Polish beer, and ate lots of local food. The tables were filled with cold sausage slices, bread, pickles, cheese, tomato slices, and pretzels. There we met up with M.A. who took the day train to Krakow from Vienna after a morning of work. After dinner we headed out to a club for some fun. One of the clubs was an old building right off the market, and the inside looked like it was once a church, with large vaulted stone ceilings. On our way home we stopped in the market for some really good Kielbasa sausages from a vendor.

Saturday: The Wieliczka Salt Mine
Saturday morning we toured the Wielicza Salt Mine. The mine is located about 35 minutes outside of Krakow. We took a guided tour, and somehow lucked out, getting a tour with only about 20 people in it. Our guide was good, although I'm not sure if she really spoke English, or just knew her speech really well. The tour started with a walk down 65m of stairs "to warm us up". The mine has been officially closed since 1997, but up to then it had been operating regularly for over 700 years. Now it is just a tourist attraction.

All cavities within the mine we carved out by miners. As the miners spent a long time down in the mine, they carved chapels and rooms into the walls. All carving in the mine has been completed by untrained miners, not professional artists. The cave was lightly lit, and cool, with all surfaces made of rock salt, from the ceilings to the floors. The most impressive room was the large church.
The walls were covered with images carved into the walls, such as the last supper.
The chandeliers in the hall were made of of pure salt crystals.

At the lowest point in the tour, we were 130m (~430ft) underground, but the mine continues down over 300m.
Thankfully there was an elevator back to the top, however cramped and claustrophobic.
Some intersting facts about the mine:
- Horses were used down in the mine to haul salt and work the winches that brought the salt to the surface and supplies down. As it was understandably stressful to the horses to be winched down 300+ meters into the depths of the mine, they were never brought back to the surface. The horses lived in stables carved out of the salt. However, due to the salty air and cool climate, the horses were healthier than those on the surface.
- Due to the healing qualities of the mine's air and water, there is a health spa down in the mine.
- Parts of the mine are flooded with salt-saturated brine. In the past tourists were allowed to take row boats and tour the flooded portions. However, during one of the world wars a group of drunken Austrian (or German?) soldiers flipped their boat. As the brine was saturated, the soldiers could not escape. They were too buoyant to swim out, and ended up asphyxiating under the overturned boat. Since then, tourists haven't been allowed near the water.

When we returned from the mine, most people went for a nap, but I took the opportunity to tour the city by myself and buy a new memory card from Saturn (a European version of Futureshop). I ended up getting a 2GB SD card for 80 złoty, which translates to ~$30, an amazing price. On the way back I used my new memory card to take photos of everything I could.

A far end of the remaining city wall.

The Opera House across the street.A small but impressive fortification found by the wall. It now houses the outdoor summer opera.

Artists using the wall to displace their work to tourists.

The third of the three remaining city wall tours.

A random statue.

A cool building which beckoned me to see what was though the arch.

An ancient restaurant and some cool shopping streets which I explored before returning back to the hostel.
Saturday Night
Around 8:30 we went to a bar called 'Loch Ness' for a retro party. I ended up talking with people from all over the world all night. At last count I met people from over 10 different countries that night: England, Wales, Ireland, US, Australia, France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Norway. At one point we got talking about accents. Do you know that Norwegians and Swedish people can talk to one another in Norwegian and Swedish and understand one another? Also, they spent about 20 minutes making fun of people from Denmark, saying it sounds like they speak with potatoes in their mouth. Another highlight was when Lisa, a really cool girl from Ireland, tried to convince me, in what I consider a full Irish accent, that she barely had any accent at all and people often confused her for an American. I of course was asked the normal questions about my proficiency in Québecois (The "French" spoken in Québec), and I gave them a true Canadian sentence which I believe involved a caribou named Mike from Canmore wearing a toque on a toboggan, then deciding to go eat Timbits, beavertails, and poutine on his chesterfield.

Sunday: Wawel Castle
Sunday was a slow morning, as most of us didn't get home until around 4am, with MA being the exception as he decided to walk home, got lost, took an overpriced un-metered taxi, and got to bed around 5:30am.

Wawel castle was the home of the Polish monarchy until Poland was divided between Austrian-Hungary, Prussia, and Russia in the late 1700's and therefore ceased to exist as an independent country until 1918.
As the hill has been inhabited on and off for over 50,000 years, the castle has evolved from one generation to the next, one style to another. This gives it a very cool eclectic feel.
This eclectic patch-work look is best exemplified by Wawel Cathedral. One interesting fact is that Pope John Paul II considered being buried here as opposed to Rome, as he was the first non-Italian Pope in hundreds of years.
The main part of the castle that we toured was designed, furnished, and decorated by Italian architects. Who would have expected to find an Italian Renaissance Palace on a hill in Krakow? As the years of occupation and communism weren't good to the castle, or its furnishings, it is still being restored. Very few original furnishings exist in the castle, with the exception of 100+ tappestries woven from silk, gold, silver, and wool. At the onset of WWII these were transported to Toronto for safe keeping, only to be returned after the death of Stalin, when Poland became a bit more liberal.
We toured the State rooms, but cameras weren't allowed. One of the oddest parts of the castle was a room with carved wooden heads set into the ceiling representing prominent citizens of Krakow from the sixteenth? century when it was installed. They're really creepy, and hopefully I can get some copies of the photos Cayle (Kansas) managed to take without anyone noticing.

After the State Rooms we toured the treasury, the armory, and the 'dragon' caves beneath the castle. The caves were cool because you had to enter by an long old stone spiral staircase, and when down there you could see stone stairs leading to hidden doors, likely the secret passageways I'd assume a castle like this is riddled with.

Kazimierz: Take II
As the first tour of Kazimierz was rushed and we were already really close, Henrik, MA, and I decided to tour Kazimierz on foot. Here are some pictures of the churches and synagogues which seemed to be around every corner.

The High Synagogue

In Krakow all old buildings have identical house-number lamps, which is a really good idea when you consider how hard it normally is to find a house number at night.
Across from the High Synagogue and the house with the Stars of David we found a restaurant that served some traditional Polish food, even though I think it was Portuguese. MA and I got pirogies, they were really really good. Look at me eating like a European, everyone commented on how stupid North Americans look holding their forks in their right hands, shifting back and forth to cut. Now I try to always keep my fork in my left hand, but it's a hard habit to break.
On the way back to the market we found a sign post pointing to all of Krakow's sister cities. Check out the one directly above my head, the giant city of Rochester, NY. I wonder how they managed that one? I think Brockville should be the sister city of Rome, or maybe Paris.

A random church passed on the walk home.

We had to be out of the hostel at 5pm but our train, as well as the train to Linz and Budapest, didn't leave until 10:30. So we met up, took our bags to a locker in the train station, and toured around the giant mall by the train station to spend the rest of our złoty on cheap Polish electronics and clothes. Everyone from Austria also got to revel in the fact that not only was an entire mall's worth of stores open at 5pm, but it was even Sunday! When the mall finally closed at 9, we wandered back to the station and hung waiting for the train, assuming our adventure was over.
How wrong we were...

Train trip from Hell
In Vienna Henrik and I had purchased couchettes for the trip back. We even gave the teller our Krakow-Vienna tickets to ensure everything was right. So, when she gave us couchette tickets from Warsaw to Vienna we assumed the Warsaw train was simply stopping in Krakow, and our couchettes had to be books for the entire trip so that they'd be empty when we got on.

When the train rolled in Henrik and I got on the car our tickets stated and were shocked to find seats, not couchettes. We were double shocked to find out it was the section of the train going to Prague! When we ran back out to the front of the train where the Vienna coaches were we were very rudely told that we had the wrong reservations and had to find the conductor, but that we weren't going to be let on the Vienna cars, even tough we had Krakow-Vienna tickets.

To avoid being left on the platform we got back into the Prague coach, deciding to clear everything up on the train, hopefully before it split apart in the Czech Republic. The conductor on the Prague train checked our tickets and said he'd be back in a minute to clear everything up. 45 minutes later we decided to find him, when we found him sitting with the other train employees smoking in a car at the back of the train, he told us our problems were none of his concern, and that we could wait until the trains split at 1:30am in the Czech Republic to ask someone else. So much for sleep!

At 1:30, the train stopped and we jumped off. After being actively ignored by many many official people on the platform, we found a car that was being added to the train to Vienna. I got on, but Henrik went in search of our couchettes from Warsaw which we were told should be meeting up with us there, confident that we had a 40min wait until the train would be leaving. About 30s later the train built up speed and left the station, leaving me in the coach by myself holding both our tickets. I frantically tried to phone his cell, but apparently rural Czech Republic has no reception.

It turned out that they were simply shuffling the cars, so we eventually slowed and reversed back onto another track. Back on the platform I saw Henrik waving me off the train. He had found our couchettes! I grabbed my stuff and we ran to the new car before the train left again. After giving our tickets to a very confused attendant, we woke up everyone in our cabin climbing to the top bunks and said screw making the beds, we're going to sleep. Just before falling asleep I decided to take off my glasses and put them into my backpack, only to discover the front flap wide open and my camera no where to be seen!

Freaked out about losing not only my really nice camera, and my brand new SD card, but also all of my Krakow photos, I decided to use the remaining 10 minutes of our "stop" in the Czech Republic to search the compartment where I'd pulled out my cell phone and forgotten to zip my bag shut. To make things interesting, the car I had been in no more than 3min before was now no longer attached to the train, and no one, in true Czech fashion would acknowledge my presence, let alone help me. Finally I saw the car coming back, hopped on and found my camera lying on the seat! THANK GOD!

Filled with exhilaration, caffeine, and fear combined with exhaustion I climbed back into my couchette at 2:15am and fell asleep. When we finally arrived in Vienna at 6am I wanted to kiss the ground. It was the first time Vienna felt like home, more comforting than a hug from my Grandma. Finally, we staggered back home and took short naps before going into work.

And so ends my first European adventure.

This weekend: Liechtenstein, Eastern Switzerland, Innsbruck, and Harry Potter 7. More info to follow tomorrow...