Not Quite The Trip We Had Planned, Part 2: Kraków, Poland
In my previous post I wrote about how our planned trip to the US didn’t happen when we arrived at the airport and discovered our visas had been revoked so instead we opted for a holiday in Poland, the first three nights spent in Warsaw. Now it was time to move on to Krakow for the next leg.
Thursday, May 2, 2024
We got up, checked out of our hotel and grabbed a coffee before catching an Uber to the train station for our journey from Warsaw to Krakow and the city appeared to be full of really loud football fans so I just guessed there must’ve been a big match on. Our Uber soon arrived, but about two minutes into our ride Anna realised there was a problem; we had left the bag with our passports and her computer at the hotel. Our driver was probably younger than us, but didn’t speak a whole lot of English so Anna tried in the best way that she could to explain that he needed to pull over so she could run back to the hotel and get our stuff while I waited in the car. He obliged, but was furious and after Anna got our he was shouting in Polish, then muttering under his breath, all the while punching the palm of his hand. She was gone for maybe three or four minutes but when he could see her jogging back up the path behind us he kept shouting, honking, and driving the car forward, making it even more difficult for her to get inside, but once in he drove like an absolute psychopath, speeding, running over curbs, and almost side-swiping every car that came near us and when we arrived at the station he just pulled over on the side of the road instead of the taxi rank, took our bags out and threw them on the ground before speeding off with the rear passenger door open, eventually slamming it from the inside while still yelling at us. A one-star Uber review for him.
We bought our tickets, boarded our train and a couple of hours later we were in Krakow:
Kraków is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596, and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, economic, cultural and artistic life. Cited as one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, its Old Town with Wawel Royal Castle was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, one of the world’s first sites granted the status.
The city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland’s second-most-important city. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was reported by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, a 10th-century merchant from Córdoba, as a busy trading centre of Central Europe in 985. With the establishment of new universities and cultural venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and throughout the 20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national academic and artistic centre. As of 2023, the city has a population of 804,237, with approximately eight million additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius of its main square.
Sounds like a cool spot to be! We got out of the train and checked into our enormous hotel room in Krakow’s Old Town district and it looked like there was plenty to see and do in the area, as you can clearly see here:
There’s a lot of interesting history to the region in which we were staying too so there would be a lot for us to absorb while we were in town:
Kraków Old Town is the historic central district of Kraków, Poland. It is one of the most famous old districts in Poland today and was the centre of Poland’s political life from 1038 until King Sigismund III Vasa relocated his court to Warsaw in 1596.
Medieval Kraków was surrounded by a 3 km (1.9 mi) defensive wall complete with 46 towers and seven main entrances leading through them. The fortifications around the Old Town were erected over the course of two centuries. The current architectural plan of Stare Miasto – the 13th-century merchants’ town – was drawn up in 1257 after the destruction of the city during the Tatar invasions of 1241 followed by raids of 1259 and repelled in 1287. The district features the centrally located Rynek Główny, or Main Square, the largest medieval town square of any European city.
We had a short walk around before going back inside to sort out our stuff in the hotel, shower, and then hit the town properly a bit after 7:00pm and one of the first things that became apparent was that there were tons of insanely noisy football fans everywhere here, just like there had been in Warsaw that morning. Perhaps the Polish national team was playing, we didn’t know. We continued into the town square to get some dinner, taking in the fabulous sights all around us and soon found ourselves at a restaurant that looked like our type of place so we took a table just down from a Japanese woman who was dressed in a full kimono for some reason and cautiously ordered. Obviously we were going to get one of those incredible soups like we had been having the previous days, plus some pickles, a beef dish, pierogis, and some lard to butter on some bread, that seemed like a reasonably-sized meal. However, that could not be any further from the truth! The soup, the beef, and the plate of pickles were what most would consider “normal” portions, but then there was the rest. Usually when a menu says “lard”, they generally mean a small ramekin of the stuff, but ours was an enormous bowl full, we could’ve easily made several candles out of it! Had anyone ever even finished one of these before? Then we had trouble stifling our laughter when the pierogis came. If you saw the photos from Warsaw when we ordered them there we got a plate of six or seven dumplings, but not here in Krakow, no, we received a basket that must’ve contained about thirty of the things. Obviously we couldn’t finish an entire bowl of pork lard and a couple of dozen dumplings so once we had eaten what we could we continued walking around the square, past a screen set up in the centre, and went to a couple of different bars, eventually settling into a rather quiet one underground, a pattern that would repeat itself over the course of our time in town.
Another stupendously large dinner, the town square, and heading downstairs for a drink:
Friday, May 3, 2024
We were staying in an absolutely gorgeous area of a medieval city and the weather was perfect for just wandering around so since we were in the Main Square the first stop would be the market, but first a little more about that square:
The Main Square of the Old Town of Kraków, Lesser Poland, is the principal urban space located at the center of the city. It dates back to the 13th century, and at 3.79 ha (9.4 acres). The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) lists the square as the best public space in Europe due to its lively street life, and it was a major factor in the inclusion of Kraków as one of the top off-the-beaten-path destinations in the world in 2016.
The Main Square is a square space surrounded by historic townhouses (kamienice) and churches. The center of the square is dominated by the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice), rebuilt in 1555 in the Renaissance style, topped by a attic or Polish parapet decorated with carved masks. On one side of the cloth hall is the Town Hall Tower (Wieża ratuszowa), on the other the 11th century Church of St. Adalbert and 1898 Adam Mickiewicz Monument. Rising above the square are the Gothic towers of St. Mary’s Basilica (Kościół Mariacki). Kraków Main Square does not have a town hall, because it has not survived to the present day.
The market itself wasn’t anything particularly special, so we took a different route around the back of our hotel and when we eventually arrived at the square it was becoming extremely crowded, particularly with tourists from all over the UK and it turned out that it was a public holiday in Poland for Constitution Day. Another thing that became abundantly clear was there was a celebratory mood, shirtless men drinking while others were cheering and setting off flares. Could it be something to do with all of those football jerseys we had seen in both Warsaw and Krakow the previous day? Of course it was, Wisła Kraków had beaten Pogoń Szczecinat in the Polish Cup at Warsaw’s national stadium the previous night, meaning Wisła Kraków will be playing in the Europa League next season. I guess we had come here at the right time if we wanted to party!
The Main Square was beautiful with its sculptures and the day was young so we booked a tour to explore and get some information on some other areas of the city beginning with Jagiellonian University, the 13th oldest university in the world, inside and out, taking in its ancient clock show, as well as some of the other spectacular architecture in the Old Town in the broad daylight, the winning atmosphere of the city was just a bonus extra:
The next stop on our tour was a place we had really wanted to visit when we first saw it and that involved climbing up Wawel Hill to the Wawel Royal Castle:
The Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Hill on which it sits constitute the most historically and culturally significant site in Poland. A fortified residency on the Vistula River in Kraków, it was established on the orders of King Casimir III the Great and enlarged over the centuries into a number of structures around an Italian-styled courtyard. It represents nearly all European architectural styles of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The castle is part of a fortified architectural complex erected atop a limestone outcrop on the left bank of the Vistula River, at an altitude of 228 metres (748 ft) above sea level. The complex consists of numerous buildings of great historical and national importance, including the Wawel Cathedral where Polish monarchs were crowned and buried. Some of Wawel’s oldest stone buildings can be traced back to 970 CE, in addition to the earliest examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture in Poland. The current castle was built in the 14th century, and expanded over the next hundreds of years. In 1978, Wawel was declared the first World Heritage Site as part of the Historic Centre of Kraków.
It was a long, arduous slog getting to the top, but we finally made it in the end, learning a lot along the way. One of the first buildings we passed before we reached the castle was Sigismund III Vasa Tower with its defensive walls, built in 1595, but once at the summit it wasn’t so much the castle itself that was impressive, it was the mix of architectural styles of the Cathedral adjacent to it that was the unexpected highlight and an even better reason for making the climb, it was just simply just magnificent. We had already toured some of the inside of the cathedral from a side entrance, during which photography was not permitted, but it wasn’t until we saw it outside from the front that we truly appreciated it:
The Wawel Cathedral, formally titled the Archcathedral Basilica of Saint Stanislaus and Saint Wenceslaus, is a Catholic cathedral situated on Wawel Hill in Kraków, Poland. Nearly 1000 years old, it is part of the Wawel Castle Complex and is a national sanctuary which served as the coronation site of Polish monarchs.
The current Gothic cathedral is the third edifice on this site; the first was constructed and destroyed in the 11th century and the second one, constructed in the 12th century, was destroyed by a fire in 1305. The construction of the existing church began in the 14th century on the orders of Bishop Nanker. Over time, the building was expanded by successive rulers resulting in its versatile and eclectic architectural composition. There are examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Neogothic elements in the cathedral’s façade and interior. The exterior is adorned by side chapels and representative mausoleums, most notable being the golden-domed Sigismund’s Chapel.
We had never seen anything like this in our lives, the many styles all standing out in their own way, it just made the castle itself a mere afterthought. Once we had seen the cathedral the next stop was at The Tiered Arcades of Sigismund I the Old in the Italian Renaissance courtyard and then it was back down to the old town again.
Some of the sights on Wawel Hill:
Once back down we needed to get off our feet so we found a small bar with outside seating and sipped our drinks as we marvelled at the sheer amount of young people wearing clothes from 25 years ago, dressed like Korn fans at the turn of the century. Later while we were having dinner we decided to look up something decent to do on a Friday night, because although we had been to several bars underground the previous night after the restaurants had closed, they were eerily quiet with no music playing at all and that’s when Anna found Harris Piano Jazz Bar, so that meant we’d be catching some live music. When we arrived the place was packed and there was an extremely drunk woman sitting at the bar who kept trying to start problems, yelling at me that “those seats are taken!” when I was ordering a drink several metres away from her, then telling me she had saved the seat I was about to take in the band room before the band had started, but by that point I didn’t care. What I was worried about, however, was blocking the view of a couple behind me, but they were really nice and after the band was finished we spent the rest of the night chatting to them in the bar before moving on with them to another place
The band were really talented and it turned into a fun, relaxing way to cap off the night with our new friends, even with that crazy lady still yelling at me after the show:
As for the band, here’s a taste:
Saturday, May 4, 2024
The bulk of the day would be spent looking at the shops while walking in the general direction of, and then navigating, the Jewish Heritage Route through a former Jewish ghetto, seeing a lot of cute dogs and strange men in parachute tracksuits along the way, but our main goal was to have a look at another museum, on this occasion Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory:
Schindler’s Factory is one of the most visited attractions in Krakow. Schindler’s Factory and its owner have etched their names in history as over 1,000 Jewish people were employed here during the Nazi occupation of Krakow, which ultimately ended up saving their lives. Originally a factory for producing metal items and enamelware, this factory became the site that indirectly saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews.
Most of us are familiar with the film Schindler’s List, but if you’re like me it might have been decades since you last watched it so here’s a quick refresher on the background of the factory, once more from the museum website:
- The factory that became known as Oskar Schindler’s factory originally belonged to three Jewish-Polish businessmen. Schindler gained ownership of the plant as part of Nazi policy that seized Jewish property and transferred its ownership to non-Jews.
- Originally an enamelware factory, Schindler started producing ammunition shells during World War II to ensure it remained essential to war efforts, allowing him to continue employing and rescuing Jews.
- In 1945, Schindler successfully established a sub-camp of Plaszow concentration camp within the factory’s premises, based on the argument that it would save the workers’ time spent walking the 10 kilometres from the camp to the factory and increase the factory’s output.
The Warsaw Uprising Museum we had visited a few days prior was good, but besides the bomber, the displays simply paled in comparison to some of those featured in Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, which included a cigarette packet made from human skin. Here are some photos from earlier in the day, as well as some of what we saw in the museum and the view over the city when we were at a rooftop bar later that night:
Sunday, May 5, 2024
This was the day that we had originally planned to visit Auschwitz, however, we weren’t aware that tickets had to be booked days in advance. That was one of the main reasons we had traveled all of this way, Auschwitz was a place we had both wanted to visit and we had managed to get tickets for Tuesday, which meant that we would be extending out time in Krakow by a few days.
As an alternative plan it was Sunday so we decided to do one of our other favourite activities when we’re abroad, check out some flea markets. It didn’t take long to find an enormous one that had the usual random stuff, but we’ve also found in the past that people sell some weird items at markets in this part of the world and this one would be no different. We stumbled upon old family photos, German WWII medals, and the obligatory hardcore pornography that seemed to be randomly included with all of the regular piles of DVDs, comics, and magazines (which I’ve done my best to censor in the images). In fact at one point we even saw a couple of young kids openly flicking through some porno magazines on top of a stack of comics without a care in the world. For me, however, the highlight was finding an old Ghostbusters costume and the stall owner could see how much I loved it and got it down for me, but unfortunately it was far too small for me, just as I had expected. That wouldn’t be the last time I’d find an incredible outfit, though.
Once we were done with the market we went to an area where there were a ton of vintage stores and that’s where I found the pièce de résistance, an original Wonder Woman onesie from the 1970s for Anna, complete with skin tone arms and legs. Anna knows that I thought Linda Carter was hot when I was a kid, but her concern was that the suit was flannel, thus she’d never wear it so we moved on and looked at a few more stores before stumbling upon an area of food trucks and settling in for a maczanka krakowska, a gigantic local pulled pork bun, while a traditional band played on.
Secondhand stuff in the market and shops, plus a little too much food once again:
It was still relatively early on that Sunday afternoon and we had seen some great artwork in various buildings in Krakow so we figured we might as well take in a little more and although we had already seen our fair share of museums thus far, this time we would be visiting a little less sombre one, the Czartoryski Museum:
The most valuable collection in Poland, and one of the most valuable ones in Europe. The Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci or the Landscape with the Good Samaritan by Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as many other masterpieces of not only painting, but also sculpture, crafts, military, applied arts, can be viewed in 26 exhibition halls, on two floors of the renovated Palace of the Princes Czartoryski Museum.In 1801, Princess Izabela Czartoryska née Flemming created a collection of national treasures. The resources she collected were presented in Puławy, in two park pavilions: The Temple of the Sybil, and since 1809 also in the Gothic House. It was in the Gothic House that the Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine and Rembrandt van Rijn’s Landscape with the Good Samaritan were exhibited. During that time, the pearls in the Czartoryski collection also included the Portrait of a Young Man by Rafael Santi (lost during World War II).
However, the museum did not survive the November Uprising, and in 1831 – following Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski’s emigration – the collection was transported to Paris. It only made its way back to Poland in 1876, in connection with the scheduled opening of the museum in Krakow. World War II brought about significant losses to the collection. After the war, the museum was taken over by the National Museum in Krakow, and in 1991 fell under the management of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation.
We had no particular plans for Monday, however, we did have some big ones for the following day so we decided to conserve some energy and spend time walking around the shops again, particularly the ones we had wanted to look in that hadn’t been open the previous day and one thing kept bugging me the entire time — That Wonder Woman suit. Why hadn’t I bought it for Anna, despite her not really wanting or needing it? We go to a lot of places with very cold climates and maybe she might need a warm pair of pyjamas so it was decided, I was going to buy the costume.
We embarked on our new mission, stopping off at all of the same vintage and thrift stores in the neighbourhood as the previous day, as well as some others that were now open, combing through more interesting items including a secondhand full-length leather gimp suit with a zipper crotch that would almost certainly result in an infection, but that wasn’t the suit I was after. Eventually, however, I inadvertently returned to the store with the correct one! I would now be the fictional husband of Wonder Woman occasionally when the weather got a little brisk!
How we spent our Monday:
So that sums up the first part of our stay in Krakow, but the following day was the reason why we had always wanted to visit Poland in the first place and deserves a post of its own — Stay tuned for our tour of Auschwitz.
Some suggestion for any Uber drivers out there dealing with similar road rage issues:
1. Every Time a passenger does something annoying, play a game where you smile as widely as possible and imagine them as a character from a silly cartoon. Bonus points for coming up with a funny backstory for each one!
2. Keep a playlist of upbeat, silly songs. When frustration starts to bubble, break into song, singing as dramatically as possible. Your passengers will be entertained, and you’ll find it hard to stay mad while belting out “Mares Eat Oats”.
3. Turn the negative into a positive by finding something to compliment about every passenger. “Oh look, they piss me off, but wow, their teeth are really clean!”
4. Imaginary Passenger Commentary: Pretend your passenger is giving you a play-by-play commentary of road antics. Imagine them saying things like, “And in the left lane, we have Mr. I-Don’t-Use-Turn-Signals, giving a stellar performance of unpredictability!