Krakow, Poland - Getting there and being there

Poland is simply one of those countries that does not get to the top of the list when visiting Europe. I called my sister from Warsaw and told her I was in Poland because my brother-in-law is half polish. My sister was unimpressed. I told her I was on the way to Krakow and she said that was better than Warsaw...

Well, I must admit that the state of the buildings in the countryside of Poland is depressing. Things are run down. I was coming from Switzerland with its picture postcard houses and passing through Germany with its solid state of the art buildings. Getting into Warsaw, I was too late to catch my connecting train to Krakow. Fortunately, it was simple to change my ticket to a later train and this gave me a couple of hours to kill in Warsaw. I was able to book all my train tickets for Poland as well as a train to Berlin and another connection from Berlin to Vilnius in Lithunia. The missed connection was a blessing in disguise. But the look of the train station, with underground tunnels linking looked like dungeons.

Arriving in Krakow, I was greeted by drab looking communist housing. Or if the housing was older, it was also run down. My hotel, was at the edge of the old town. It was in the walk into the Rynek Glowny, the largest town square in Europe, that things started to look different. The buildings started looking spruced up and had more interesting detailing like other charming European cities. The town square was bustling with activity. Lots of cafes, restaurants and shops. The centre of the town hall was something called the Cloth Hall, now a large tourist souvenir mall. It is a bit like Convent Garden, but not so hip. Ok, this was not an Italian piazza, but it had a charm of its own. It was a bit spoiled by the obvious tourist nature of the whole thing.

I spent the next two days going to Wawel Hill, where there is an old castle. I visit the church there. I walk around the cobbled streets of old town Krakow. I check off the tourist to-do list and feel a little bit like I am in a less cheesy version of Disneyland. The most engaging event was a retrospective of American photographer Andreas Feininger at the International Cultural Centre. I must say though that the St. Mary's Church interior was impressive. The artwork was not refined like Italian churches, but the colours and styling was bold! Krakow was not bad, but not great.

Then on the third day, I decide to visit the Jewish quarter, also known as Kazimierz, and this seemed a little more 'real'. It was still touristy, but the people there were locals too. I visited on a Saturday, which is not good for visiting the synagogues, but I did visit one that had been converted into a museum. There was an interesting exhibition of old pictures of Jewish people, in their traditional clothing. I enjoyed that.

Then I went to the Krakus mound which is south of Kazimierz. This is the oldest structure in Krakow, a mound that is man made but who's history is lost in time. It was a nice walk to the mound and a little climb up the hill. The view of Krakow was pretty nice. And then I spotted the Libany quarry. This is an abandoned quarry which started off as being owned by a couple of Jewish men. But during the second world war the Nazi's forced Jewish people to work in the quarry. So it was a place where there was painful memories as well. And apparently, when Steven Speilberg filmed Shindler's list, he built sets in Libany quarry instead of using the actual sites of concentration camps. So there is some traces of film sets mixed with the actually quarry remains. I really could not tell which is which. But I found a way into the quarry which is now overrun with wild life. Fish and ducks in the ponds. Butterflies amongst the grass growing around the old quarry equipment. I had a fun afternoon exploring this space. I felt only slightly uncomfortable but did not get any of those hair standing on the back on my neck moments. But I did get caught in the rain.

The food in Krakow up to now had been somewhat decent if a bit overpriced. And then I tried Pod Aniolami. The prices were not cheap, but I thought why not? And it turned out to be one of the top three meals on my overland journey, the other two being Peking duck in Beijing and Duck at the Pushkin restaurant in Moscow. I had meat dumplings to start with and trout as a main course. The flavours were just amazing in my mouth. They were confident flavours, but not overpowering. I am not so much a fish man, but this trout, with horseradish sauce, rocks. I paid like fifty Singaporean dollars for the meal and it was worth every cent.



The meal took longer than I took and I was slightly upset to have missed my last chance of attending a performance of the Krakow Jazz festival. But as I walked about in the town square, an open air concert and dance was going on. It was like a Spanish folk group playing simple dance music and the crowd was loving it. Large groups of people were joining in. I took lots of pictures. And even though it felt kind of silly dancing by myself, I danced a couple of dances too. This was really a great end to a great day in Krakow. And I know that because of the third day, I will not forget Krakow.