Krakow...back to the motherland!

Old town square in Krakow

It’s great to be back in Poland! We arrived in Krakow after a short night stop over in Bergamo Italy and flew into the motherland at noon. We settled into our hostel and explored the city a little bit. Our hostel was right off the old town, a perfect location. Right away we saw the sukkienica which is in the middle of the old town square and a 14th century cloth house which was built by one of the former kings of Poland who loved Italian fashion, quality of cloth and of course who was also married to an Italian princess. In the evening Chad finally got to experience a Milk Bar that Ewa had been telling him about. Milk Bars are not the typical bar, they don’t serve any alcohol, you can only get tea, coffee, kompot (a Polish fruit punch) and warm milk. Back in the Communist days, these restaurants were subsidized by the government to help keep the prices low. What they specialize in is cheap traditional Polish food, yummy yummy Polish food. After Italy we were ready for some home cooking! The first night we ordered Bigos (Hunters stew with cabbage and sausage), Pierogi, Zurek ( a soup made of yeast), Krokietki (chicken rolls), and potato pancakes. Stuffed? Just a bit! However after walking around the town a little, the empty hole in Chad’s leg opened up and made room for some ice cream. Earlier in the day he had seen someone with a chocolate dipped cone and we searched the streets for over an hour and a half to find a Lody shop that sold the right kind. In the end, we had to make due with a ‘ice’ cream ice cream cone. It’s hard to explain the texture, but it is certainly not overly creamy, but it is what you could imagine frozen sugary milk that is ground up into tiny ice crystals might taste like. Still quite good!

Yummy Polish food from the Milk bar!!

The next day we were off to the Wieliczka Salt Mine which is about an hour outside of Krakow. The Wieliczka salt mine reaches a depth of 327 meters and is over 300 km long. It features a 3.5-km touring route for visitors (less than 1% of the length of the mine's passages) that includes historic statues and mythical figures. The oldest sculptures were carved out of rock salt by miners; more recent figures have been fashioned by contemporary artists. Even the crystals of the chandeliers are made from rock salt that has been dissolved and reconstituted to achieve a clear, glass-like appearance. This mine is now closed as there is no major salt deposits left, but they had been mining salt here since the 14th century! What the miners left behind is pretty amazing, they carved many statues out of the salt and surrounding earth. They also created one of the most beautiful spiritual places underground, a big church or place of worship. We didn’t get to see all of the rooms but the ones we saw were pretty amazing. It was quite interesting to think of what life would have been like to work long hours underground with only torch light to guide your way. They even had livestock underground to help with the work. Essentially an entire town was underground and now you can have a wedding underground, with all the trimmings as there is a ballroom, a restaurant and all the facilities you would need.

For Dinner, again we went to eat at one of the other Milk bars, where we had more amazing Polish food, more potato pancakes, golombki (cabbage rolls) and pierogies!! At night we wandered around the town and stopped in on our own little pub crawl of some of the local bars. They were all practically empty and we only stopped in for a drink at each bar. However, they are all totally different from each other, and with a flair that is not present in Canada or many of the other European towns that we have visited. It was nice to see that the vodka was always kept in the freezer so that it is ice cold for serving. At the first bar, it actually had small ice particles in the vodka, so you can imagine how cold it was! However, at the last bar right beside the hostel, Ewa and I got turned away by the bouncer. He told Ewa that we couldn’t come in, and that “It’s not going to happen”. Face patrol didn’t like our tourist flip-flops and wrinkly shirts!

The next day was a bit sombre as we went to Auschwitz, which is called Oswiecim in Polish. There are two different camps on this site that were then given German names, Auschwitz and Birkenau covered around 425 acres. The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified at the Nuremberg Trials that up to 3 million people had died at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has revised this figure to 1.1 million about 90% of whom were Jews from almost every country in Europe. Most victims were killed in Auschwitz II's gas chambers using Zyklon B; other deaths were caused by systematic starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and purported "medical experiments"

outside of the gates to Auschwitz..."Work will set you free"

We only visited the first camp and the guided tour was about 3 hours. There is then a bus will take you to do another few hours to visit Birkenau. However after the first 3 hours we didn’t feel up for the second half. You are only allowed to take photos from outside the buildings and we didn’t take many pictures. It’s very hard to describe the impressions of such a place, it is horrible what happened. The way that so many innocent people were treated based upon their race or religion is difficult to process. At the same time we think it is something that should be seen in order to remember what happened and pay homage to those that lost their lives. As a note to anyone going to visit, the site is free, however in the hours from 9:30-3:30 a guided tour is mandatory as it is so busy. You have to pay for the tour. The site is really not equipped to handle the hoards of people trying to visit the site, so it creates a busy, cramped stressful atmosphere when you go to buy your tickets. As the tours are a great way to get some of the background information, we would suggest to get up very early in the morning and try to get on one of the early tours.

That night we again hit up another milk-bar style restaurant, and had a filling of wild mushroom soup, nalesniki (crepes with various fillings), pierogies and for dessert, we had more pierogi with blueberries! We walked around the town again at night found that the town square was filled with a stage and a concert of Polish singers, rather than the usual night performers (fire dancers and drum players). They were all dressed in old fashioned uniforms from WWI and previous wars. They sang old Polish folk songs and ‘soldier ballads’. It was an amazing experience to stand in the crowd, as everyone was singing along with the artists; they even had lyric sheets handed out to everyone. Chad felt that it was his first real emersion into Polish culture while in Poland. The artists were very talented!

When we got back to our hostel they were having a Polish shot night, the specialty of the night was Wsciekly Pies, which translates to mad dog, after some hesitation Chad tried one of these typical Polish treats J They are made of raspberry syrup, Tabasco and Wodka…sweet, spicy and strong.

For those who have been following the blog, you will notice that the story is much longer than normal... this is the product of having our computer to type away on while we are on trains. SO, hopefully this will be a good addition to the blog, and if it's getting too long, let us know we can go back to the old quick and sweet format! :)

written by  ECRadventure on August 5, 2009 from Krakow, Poland
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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