Krakow

Krakow is a big city full of young people. The roads are crowded and the parking seems crazy because people park the front of their cars up on the sidewalks. Some areas people parallel park on the sidewalks and that was where our host expected me to park. The van was tricky to maneuver into a tight spot up on the sidewalk. Our flat was a little nicer than the one in Prague with at least some not quite comfortable couches to sit on. They were better than a futon though. We are not impressed with the beds that have just a mattress with no sheets and a comforter. That seems to be the Polish way though.

The first night we went to the grocery store around the corner for some bread, cheese and cold cereal. In some ways I prefer staying at real apartments in a part of the city where real Poles live to the sterile, artificial environment of a hotel in the tourist places. It provides a totally different experience.

The next day we went to the salt mine at Wielicka. It dates back to pre-historic times when cavemen used to evaporate the water from briny springs to make salt. When that was insufficient they started digging in the middle ages to mine the rock salt. At that time salt was called "white gold" and was rare and valuable. The mine closed in the 1990s and now is just a tourist attraction.

The tour starts with a descent down about 50 flights of stairs into the darkness. There is a guide who told us about things through a little radio with earphones. The miners carved some amazing statues from the salt including a couple of ballrooms and a spectacular underground cathedral. At one point we went in a bell shaped room that had great acoustics and listened to something by Chopin. Then we had the obligatory shopping where the women folk spent way too much money on specialty salt before we started the interminable march to the lifts to get out. We used the same lifts as the miners, crowding into tiny elevator cars that I couldn't even fully stand up inside. At least it was a short ride, as we were only down about 65 meters.

We were all tired from all the walking in the mine but we had a tour scheduled to see the main sights of the city at 2:30. We postponed it until 3:30 so we could eat and rest but most of us still wanted to do it. I'm not sure Brita and Leah wanted to tour anymore that day but they trooped along anyway.

Aleksandra was our guide and she first showed us a building where John Paul had stayed when he was Pope. He opened his window and greeted some people, and now it's a famous place in Poland. There is a park all around the old city where the defensive walls used to be. They tore them down around 1800 and replaced them with a green belt but you can still see the ruins in some places. Anyway, there was a display of photos of John Paul in the park too. I get the feeling that he's kind of like a rock star in Poland. They give him some credit for the fall of communism that coincided with his reign.

Next we walked up Wawel hill where we saw the palace and cathedral. We like climbing towers so we jumped at the chance to go up the bell tower. This was different than other towers because we had to crawl around and through the heavy timbers that support the structure. There were several enormous bells along the way, but the biggest one at the top had a legend that if you touched the heart with your left hand a made a wish it would come true.

Entrance to Wawel Hill

One interesting thing about the cathedral was that women couldn't enter with bare shoulders, so Jackie and Aleksandra had to put on shawls or sweaters before entering. This was the place where Polish kings were crowned. There was an elaborate silver coffin just inside that had the body of St. Stanislaus, who had a dispute with the king and was martyred and chopped into pieces, but the pieces miraculously re-formed, symbolic of Poland itself. Several other kings had their own chapels with statues of them as well as sarcophagi containing their remains in the crypts. A few more modern people including the poet Mickewicz and heroes like Pilsudskie are also buried there. Overall this cathedral wasn't quite as grand as St. Vitus in Prague but it seemed to contain more history.

We saw the palace, that was modeled after Italian palazzos and heard stories about how the Austrian soldiers lived there for a while after the partition and trashed the place. My favorite thing was the ruins of another church on the top of the hill that they had made into a pretty flower garden after the Austrians had torn it down.

We went down the hill to the river bank where a statue of a dragon stands. Every 5 minutes fire comes out of his mouth. There is also a legend about how a clever shoemaker tricked the dragon into swallowing a sheep stuffed with something flammable and that's what killed him. From there we saw a couple more smaller churches and the Jagiellonian University, the oldest in Central Europe. There was a nice old hidden courtyard and museum there. We ended in the main square that used to be a major regional marketplace. We went in the big church on the square, St. Mary's and admired the blue ceiling and stars, although there was a service going on. The nice thing about Krakow is all the buildings are original because both the Polish army and German army declined to defend the place so it avoided major damage. It is definitely all about tourism in the old town now although unlike Prague most of the tourists are not foreigners. They seemed to be mostly Poles.

Palace on Wawel Hill

University courtyard

St. Mary's church

I once again pumped our guide for stories about the change from communism to a market economy and enjoyed hearing her tales about shortages and long lines to get things. She wouldn't tell me much about how she felt about Putin.

It seems like we spent a lot of time in Krakow eating. We mostly had Polish food at nice restaurants. We tried Italian one night and it was disappointing. I had herring one night and it was not very good. We liked eating right on the square outdoors and enjoying the sights and sounds. One problem with eating in Europe though is I can never get enough to drink. Water and soda cost more than beer and wine and they bring a tiny bottle and expect that will be enough for dehydrated tourists that have been walking all day. I feel like I'm walking around thirsty all day.

Street musician playing for Leah

On our last day in Krakow we took a tour with Aleksandra of the Jewish Quarter and Schindler's factory. We went into a synagogue and learned about some Jewish traditions. I didn't know that the Germans forced the Jews to move across the river to a ghetto where they were crammed into a confined space and walled in. There is a nice pedestrian bridge to that area now. The whole neighborhood is a trendy place now with new buildings springing up and lots of culture and vitality. The Schindler factory was mostly a museum with a chronology of everything that happened in Krakow during the war. It left deep scars on the Polish psyche. The museum ends with a giant picture of Stalin, so the war didn't have a happy ending for Poland. Rachelle and Brita sat out that last tour and I wish Leah had too because she looked totally bored and couldn't tell me one thing she learned.

I had to put this on to go into the synagogue

The synagogue had bare walls with painted on decorations

Monument where the last of the Jews were liquidated in the ghetto