The adventures of Spaz: Krakow

The tour begins...

So we set off on lovely sunny Thursday afternoon for the airport to begin our Poland, The Baltics and Finland tour. Two trams had had a collision in town so we ended up on bus instead of taking the tram to Central station. While in line for the airport bus we observed our first 'people are STUPID' moment ... there are two airports in Gothenburg and for some people finding out which bus to get in is just too difficult. Some people just shouldn't be allowed to travel! Our next 'people are STUPID' moment was whilst we were in line waiting to board the plane and suddenly 10 people leave the line as they wanted to go to Milan and not to Krakow. I repeat, some people shouldn't be allowed to travel.

We landed in Krakow without a hitch and caught the shuttle bus from the airport to the train station. The train ride into town was a bumpy experience. We then had our first abuse of the local public transport system on the trip. We purchased a couple of tickets for the tram, jumped on and made our way to the hostel (apparently you need to validate your ticket on the tram, who knew?). It was a great hostel! There were only 6 rooms in the place, full of couples or families, so nice and quiet and the free breakfast was awesome too :-) We now have a great contact for when we go to St Petersburg. We spent the rest of the day exploring a little bit of old town and stopped by the large market square for dinner. We observed on the rest of the trip that most tourists don't leave market squares to eat and that they basically just eat a burger and drink beer when they are out exploring the world, a bit sad. However, on the market square in Krakow you get to listen to a trumpet player playing a tune called the Hejnal, played on the hour, every hour, every day, throughout the year. Impressive!

Swallows circling the church steeple where the trumpet player appears every hour

Our first full day was spent exploring the Wawel Royal Castle. We went into the cathedral of Pope John Paul the 2nd and explored the Crown treasury and Royal armory as well. Poland is still a very Catholic country, over 85% practicing and JP2 (I'm down with him as I visited his airport and cathedral and saw heaps of statues of him so I can call him that now) is held in very high regard. Dinner was a treat of local fair, dumpings that reminded me of dim sum and a potato pancake with spicy goulash (Placki ziemniaczane z gulaszem na ostro). It was a delicious!

Venison

Pheasant

Dumplings + potato pancake

Concentrating on the audio guide

We decided to not take a guided tour of Auschwitz but to do it by ourselves instead at our own pace and I think we made the right decision. We got up at 6 so we could get the bus at 7 to be there a little after 8. The bus to Oświęcim we took was a small minibus that had only us and a couple of locals on it. We basically had the place to ourselves for the first 2 hours and it was really noticeable when the tour groups arrived, lots of large groups pushed through each of the displays. We spent about 4 hours at the main camp and then got the shuttle bus out to Birkenau or camp 2 where we spent another 3 hours. I had a bit of a hard time dealing with parts of Auschwitz, particularly the rooms full of the possessions of people who passed through the camp, their glasses, their shoes, their luggage and then the cabinet of kids clothes, so so sad! I am even a bit teary now writing this. Birkenau was also difficult as the shear size of the place is horrific and knowing the number of people who came here and that were never sent to work but went straight to the gas chambers is just horrifying. Also this is where the 'medical' experiments were conducted. I hope that I taught a rude Frenchman a lesson here but really I doubt I did. He told me off for standing right where he wanted to take a photo, seriously if you didn't learn about tolerance whilst visiting here then why did you come, what did you get out of it ?!?!

Auschwitz (camp 1)

Birkenau (camp 2)

The road walked to the gas chambers

As a contrast to the day we had we decided to lighten up our day and stopped on our way home to have a coffee and cake before chillaxing in the hostel before dinner. We then went out to a great restaurant called Chimera. I had half a pheasant and the other Spaz had venison, all with matched wine. Awesome!

Our final day in Krakow was spent in the salts mines, literally. We went 135m underground and walked through about 3km of the 240km of mine tunnels. Some of the art sculptures, cathedrals and chapels that the miners had carved were fantastic. We also saw the enamel factory where Oscar Schindler (yes that one from the book and the movie) used (didn't pay them but fed them at least) but saved (literally their lives) many Jewish people. It has been turned into a very good museum.

The morning of our final day was spent eating bagels (we were in the Jewish part of town, disrespectful not to eat one) and walking through the new Jewish cemetery. There were lots and lots of graves to people lost in the concentration camps. After lunch on the next day we got on the train to Warsaw (4 hours). The train ride was fantastic, each carriage was divided into compartments for 8 people. The train passed through rural farming land and past some lovely old churches. In a couple of years I imagine that the train ride will be half the time as there were new tracks being laid along the entire route for a high speed link.