Friday 11 Nov
We had always really enjoyed our trips to Eastern Europe, and Hamish was craving some pork knuckle so we decided on our next trip being Krakow in southern Poland.
We arrived late Friday night after the usual mad dash from the centre of London to Stansted and a pub meal at the airport. We hopped in a cab to get to our accommodation and realised that the reception desk for our hotel was in a complete different building at the opposite end of the Old Town square, so we went for a wander and came across a lot of people enjoying the national drink – vodka. Everyone seemed to be having a great time and the main square at night was amazing.
Our hotel room left a bit to be desired but it was in a great location being 50m from the main square so we got over it pretty quick. Hamish discovered that the only English language TV channel was made up of one person doing the voice-over for all the characters in a film – male, female, girl or boy it made no difference - very weird.
Saturday 12 Nov
After a rough night's sleep we made our way to the other hotel building for breakfast. Breakfast was quite a good spread with the traditional polish sausage making a welcome appearance.
We wandered round the Old Town square which included the old Cloth hall which now sells souvenirs, and the churches that surrounded it including St. Mary's church with its towers of 2 different heights. The famous bugle call is played from the taller tower while the church bell hangs in the lower tower. The reason for the differing heights, is this legend - under the reign of King Boleslaus a decision was made to add two towers to the body of the church standing by the Main Square. Soon two brothers embarked on the task. When the elder realised that his tower was much shorter, he murdered his brother out of envy, and the construction stopped. The murderer was wracked with remorse: on the day when the church was to be consecrated, he pierced his heart with the same knife he used to kill his brother, and dropped dead from the top of his tower to the ground below.
Everything was pretty peaceful and calm, and then all of a sudden we were confronted with this loud chanting and then the next minute about 15 police vans come screaming into the square and riot police with shotguns, riot shields and German Sheppard’s jump out and rush over to the corner. Being the fearless and intrigued tourists we are, we followed them of course! We quickly realised they were football supporters (Ukraine we think). It was incredible to see the police surround them and escort them through the city. We are still unsure who the police were protecting – us or them…
We decided on doing the obligatory walking tour, but Lou quickly developed a keen dislike of the tour guide and we snuck off after awhile. We ended up in Wawel which is a fortified architectural complex erected over many centuries atop a limestone outcrop on the left bank of the Vistula river in Kraków.
The complex consists of many buildings and fortifications; the largest and best known of these are Royal Castle and Wawel Cathedral which is the Basilica of St Stanisław and St Wacław). We also saw the Royal Sigismund Bell which was cast in 1520. It weighs almost 13 tonnes and requires 12 bell-ringers to toll it. It's rung only on special occasions, mostly religious and national holidays, and is regarded as one of the country's national symbols.
We finished our little tour of the castle with the Dragon on Wawel castle, that had little flames coming out of its mouth, a cute little touch.
Next we had a much needed lunch stop at this cute little café that served up traditional Polish food, we had dumplings and pork steak and of course beer all for like £7!
Although it was now late afternoon, we felt a trip to the Jewish Quarter and Schindlers Museum was in order. Fortified by an amazing piece of cake (the Poles love their deserts), we headed south of the city. This area was much more run down and poorer but it had some really cool and interesting design shops and interesting bars. We walked to Schindler's factory but when we found that we had to pay to get in, we passed. As Lou said "that’s the equivalent to 4 beers!".
We headed home and had a quick nana nap before our big night out.
Lou had booked a restaurant through a Trip Advisor recommendation and we turned up and had a brilliant 3 course meal, Lou had the rabbit and Hamish had the pork knuckle of course. The best thing about this place was the numerous shots of homemade flavoured vodka (we had to try all the flavours! Cherry, raspberry, blueberry, pear, hazelnut) and a couple of pints and the bill was £38…unbelievable.
Highlight: Dinner! and another beautiful town square.
Lowlight: The tour guide was really bad….and it was cold!
Interesting Fact: The Wawel Dragon is a famous dragon in Polish folklore. His lair was in a cave at the foot of Wawel Hill on the bank of the Vistula River. A popular version of the Wawel Dragon tale takes place in Kraków during the reign of King Krakus, the city's legendary founder. Each day the evil dragon would beat a path of destruction across the countryside, killing the civilians, pillaging their homes and devouring their livestock
One day a poor cobbler's apprentice named Skuba accepted the challenge. He stuffed a lamb with sulphur and set it outside the dragon's cave. The dragon ate it and soon became incredibly thirsty. He turned to the Vistula River for relief and drank and drank. But no amount of water could quench his aching stomach, and after swelling up from drinking half the Vistula river, he exploded. Gross.
Sunday 13 Nov
We had a really early start this morning but the vodka didn't seem to affect us too badly. We were picked up by our tour leader along with about 8 others. We were being driven to the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz about an hour out of the city. While we were driving through the countryside the driver put on a video explaining about the camp and the atrocities that went on there throughout the Second World War – it was very graphic.
When we arrived the sun had started shining and the day was really beginning to warm up. We had a new guide for this part and he showed us the original part of the camp which was a Polish army base before it was made into the camp, this is where they did a lot of the scientific experiments and held prisoners. They had turned some of the buildings into exhibits, one that was quite shocking was the hair that they kept from shaving the women's hair, and all the children's shoes. It was shocking how “efficient” the camp was in all aspects. For example, the hair was shaved and then sent back to Germany for textile manufacturing.
We then went over to the Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Birkenau was where the majority of the prisoners were kept in wooden barracks, which are mostly destroyed now except for the brick chimneys. The camp was such an enormous space yet hard to believe how that many people could have been imprisoned there. We saw the ruins of the infamous gas chambers and also came across big school groups from Israel who, we suspected, were on a pilgrimage type thing.
The Poles had built a type of health retreat over the top of this mine as the waters were meant to have age defying powers, kind of what they do in Rotorua. The caves and religious monuments that were really amazing, but they did get a bit samey after a while.
It felt like a really long day by the time we had got back into the car to be taken straight to the airport. We then had all this money left over that we didn't know what to do with (silly Poland not being on the Euro) so we ended up buying vodka and chocolate, result!
Highlight: The big church under the salt mine looked really awesome, people get married there and everything
Lowlight: Seeing what disgusting things people can do to each other like in Auschwitz
Interesting Fact: There is a legend about Princess Kinga, associated with the Wieliczka mine. The Hungarian noblewoman was about to be married to Bolesław V the Chaste, the Prince of Kraków. As part of her dowry, she asked her father for a lump of salt, since salt was prizeworthy in Poland. Her father King Béla took her to a salt mine in Máramaros. She threw her engagement ring from Bolesław in one of the shafts before leaving for Poland. On arriving in Kraków, she asked the miners to dig a deep pit until they come upon a rock. The people found a lump of salt in there and when they split it in two, discovered the princess's ring. Kinga had thus become the patron saint of salt miners in and around the Polish capital.
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