October 05, 2011

Trip 6: Kraków, Poland

Trip date: September 29 – October 2

Krakow was once the royal capital of Poland and it is currently Poland’s second largest city. During WWII, it became the capital of Nazi Germany’s General Government. On another light hearted note, it has the highest concentration of good-looking people per capita that I have ever seen. Make sure you learn your Prosze and Dziekuje because many people don’t speak English.

All in attendance: Pat, Kathryn and Kristen

We left Baden on Thursday night and gleis7 most of the way to Milan. We stayed at Hotel Arno for 22 euros per person. The room was passable. The highlight, I suppose, was the fact that the washroom has been taken out of the room and so the floor suddenly turned into tile and there was a sink and a bidet but no toilet/shower.


Leaving at the crack of dawn, we took the bus from Milano Centrale station to Milan Bergamo (Orio al Serio) airport (9.90 euros per person / 20 euros for 3 people). Flying with Aer Lingus is great because they play soothing opera music while you board and play a trumpet fanfare when you touch down. (Perhaps they play Nearer, My God, to Thee if you're crashing). We landed shortly after noon and then took a bus (number 304) to the Wieliczka Salt Mines. On a tour you learned a lot about mining and see a lot of statues carved from the rock salt. If you’re a nerd like me and find mining a sliver more interesting than statues then I would definitely recommend this tour. If you’re just looking for beautiful statues, I would guess a museum would probably be better suited.

Krakow is a place where you can get the most delicious foods for a 5 swiss-franc equivalent price. For dinner we went to a cute restaurant recommended by our hostel (Hostel Atlantis, 5.82 euros/night but worth ten folds more) and I ate pierogies and bright pink borscht. Curiously, pierogies is a Polish word that has seamlessly integrated into Canadian English vocabulary but that’s not a universal case – all English menus referred to pierogies as “dumplings” which I find really fun since people who speak UK English are in much closer proximity to Poland than Canadians.

Now for the heavy stuff, on Saturday we went to take a tour at Auschwitz/Auschwitz Birkenau Concentration camp. Even with all the resources, textbooks and movies made about the actions of Nazi Germany, nothing really properly prepares you to how horrifying it actually is to be there. I think it’s extremely important for people to visit this place to shoulder some of the burden of how cruel people can be to each other. The juxtaposition of visiting the camp on a bright sunny day actually makes the tour more heart wrenching since it puts you so far away from their suffering. I believe that empathizing is something people do in an effort to comfort and support people who are suffering because it lets the other person feel less alone. It feels very hopeless to be in the same location as all the victim but separated by impassable time. The struggle here is also that the conditions are so awful from anything I’ve ever known that I can't even begin to understand how terrible it actually was.



It was hard to see all their confiscated possessions. It was hard to see their photographs on the wall because it put faces and characteristics to these people. It’s hard to see the standing-cells and the shooting wall. It’s hard to learn about what happened to so many people.

I can’t even describe what I saw and learned with the proper words to instil the emotions I felt. I lost it a bit when we went into the gas chambers but I expect most people would. I think it’s extremely important that people visit places like this.

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Needless to say, you don’t just bounce back from a tour like that. We took the public transit to the camps and bought tours upon arrival and saved 50 PLN this way instead of taking an organized tour. We took it relatively easy the rest of Saturday, wandered around Krakow’s old town and city centre. The building were very beautiful and as were the people.

Krakow (and I am assuming, the rest of Poland) has a high concentration of really good-looking people. We’re easily taking 80% of people in the vicinity at any given time. So if you visit Poland, make sure you step it up because otherwise you just feel a tad scummier than usual.

It is also a city full of love and smooshy romance. There’s a surplus of cutesy-woosty couples everywhere in Krakow. I am a big fan of this type of things so I was swooning during the whole walk.




On Sunday we found a lover’s bridge (yay!) and took a quick visit to Oscar Schindler’s factory before leaving. After we took the train to the Krakow airport for 10 PLN and then flew from Krakow back to Milan. We then took the train from Milan all the way home

Things I learned
  • A Polish dollar is called a zloty
  • Krakow has a liquor store on every block
  • Poland is the birth place of the bagel - this is clear by the number of bagel stands everywhere
  • Krakow is 80% out-of-your-league good looking 
  • Organized tours can be 4x as expensive as taking public transportation
  • If Polish borrows an English word into their vocabulary, all the typically do is add a "y" at the end
    eg. komputery

Things to do when I come back
  • Go to a cute bar/club in Old Town
  • Eat more pierogies and borscht
    OM NOM NOM NOM