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Hi, everyone!
I'm back from Krakow, Poland, and Kosice, Slovakia. What a trip!
Forrest, Melody, Ben, Mike R., and I took an overnight train from
Budapest and arrived in Krakow early Thursday morning. (It was still
dark out when we arrived.) None of us got much sleep on the train; we
had wanted to reserve a sleeper car, but they were all already booked,
so we had to stretch out on the narrow bench-style seats in the regular
compartments. In addition, Hungarian trains are not in the best
repair--the compartment that I ended up sleeping in had a broken light
switch, so I had to sleep with the lights on. Between these
conditions
and being woken up every hour to have our passports or tickets checked,
we were all pretty groggy when we stepped off the train.
Our first task was to find a place to stay at night, so we exchanged
some money, bought a phone card, and started calling hostels. We had
expected to find a hostel with empty beds easily--how popular can Poland
be as a tourist destination in October?! Apparently, very popular.
I
guess a lot of hostels were taken up by Hungarian students who had the
same days off of class that we did; with some other hostels, we had
trouble making ourselves understood in English; in any case, we couldn't
find a place to stay for two nights from the listings in Ben's Lonely
Planet guide to Eastern Europe. Some Polish students staffing a booth
in the train station, advertising "Nathan's Villa" hostel, were
very
friendly and helpful. Initially we didn't like the idea of going to a
hostel that advertised in the train station, since it was likely to be
more expensive than others, but eventually we gave in and called the
phone number listed on the brochure that the students gave us. But
Nathan's Villa was full too! (Why would the hostel pay 3 students to
advertise it on a day when the advertising can't bring in any additional
customers?)
We were just about to leave the train station and go to the tourist
information office when a middle-aged man came up to us and said he knew
of a private booking where we could stay. We listened, trying to
figure
out how to refuse politely, as it slowly dawned on us just how
suspicious this offer was: The man's teeth looked like they hadn't
been
brushed in years; instead of showing us a tidy-looking brouchure, he
pulled some random scraps of paper out of his pocket and started rifling
through them; even the Nathan's Villa people were looking at him
nervously. When an old lady left the pretzel stand she was working at
to tap me on the shoulder, point to the man, and wag her finger
side-to-side in a warning gesture, we decided it was time to forget
about listening politely, and get out of there.
At the tourist information office, they gave us some information about
inexpensive hotels that still had rooms available. We had to find a
public telephone to call the Hotel "Start" and reserve a room.
Melody
called while the rest of us stood around shivering--by this time it was
light, but quite chilly, and snow was falling. It took 3 calls to the
hotel and another visit to the tourist office to figure out how to get
to the hotel. We tried searching for a tram stop, but after wandering
around in the cold for an hour, we gave up and took a taxi.
At the hotel, we were able to store our backpacks and get directions
about where the tram stops were, and then we headed back to the center
of the city. My initial impression of Krakow, based on the area
around
the railroad station, was that it wasn't an attractive city, but this
impression changed once I got a chance to walk around Rynek Glowny, the
huge town square surrounded by old churches and modern sculptures. We
spent all of Thursday afternoon visiting churches and museums. For
lunch, we tried to go to a restaurant recommendend in Melody's Lonely
Planet guide, but her guide was a few years old, and the restaurant
wasn't there anymore! Instead, we found a place called Chlopsky
Jadlo,
"Peasant's Kitchen," which had a warm, old-fashioned atmosphere.
I had
pierogi, Polish dumplings, stuffed with cabbage and mushrooms. They
were quite good, but the pierogi with "seasonal fruit" that
Forrest
ordered were even better. For dinner, we went to Cafe Camelot, a
restaurant in the Lonely Planet guide that actually did exist. I
wasn't
very hungry, so I ordered a hot peach with cranberries off the dessert
menu. (Fewer people speak English in Krakow than in Budapest--when we
asked some students on the street for directions, they couldn't help
us--but all of the restaurants we went to had at least one server who
spoke English.) The peach with cranberries turned out also to come
with
banana, kiwi, grapes, ice cream, and whipped cream--quite the impressive
dessert, especially for a fruit-lover such as I am.
On Friday, we went to Auchwitz (Osweicim, in Polish). I was surprised
at how nice it looked on the outside--the barbed wire and watchtowers
show that it was a prison, but on the outside, the brick buildings used
as dormitories could just as easily belong to a university. Inside
each
of these buildings, there was a museum display. The 5 of us went to
the
general displays: "Extermination," which was an overview of what
went on
at Auchwitz; "Material Evidence of Crimes," which displayed huge
quantities of goods plundered from prisoners: a pile of eyeglasses, a
swimming-pool sized volume of pots and dishes, a room full of hair;
"Sanitary Conditions," which discussed the threats to health at
the
camp; "The Daily Life of the Prisoner," which talked about the
meals,
work schedule, and roll calls that prisoners had to undergo, and which
contained one of the most moving displays, in my opinion--a wall of
pictures of some of the children who were prisoners there, including
each child's name, nationality, and eventual fate; and the "Death
Block," which contained the prison cells used to punish prisoners who
were suspected of attempting revolts. I was stunned by the
"standing
cells," 1-meter-square cells which had to be entered by crawling on
the
knees, and into which 4 prisoners would be crammed and forced to remain
standing overnight.
We didn't visit the buildings containing displays about the people of
particular nationalities who were prisoners at Auchwitz; instead, we
took a shuttle bus to Birkenau, the smaller camp about 3 km from
Auchwitz. Most of Birkenau is in ruins because the Nazis tried to
destroy the evidence of their crimes at the very end of the war. We
walked among the ruins and examined the rubble of the crematoria.
Birkenau is set in a very pretty, forested area, and the contrast
between the purity of the natural setting and the destructiveness of the
human constructions is striking. I liked seeing moss growing between
the bricks of the fallen crematoria; it seemed like the land was being
renewed.
On Friday, we visited Wawel castle in Krakow. I didn't find it
particularly interesting, because the furniture on display was from all
different time periods, not set up to really look the way it did when
rulers lived there. Also, I didn't know anything about the history of
the castle, so it was hard to relate to what I was seeing. We also
walked through the "Dragon's Lair," a cave under the castle
where,
supposedly, a dragon once lived, and when a knight slayed it, people
were safe and able to start building the city of Krakow.
On Friday, we also walked through Krakow's main park, where we
discovered an unexpected delight: There was a display of pictures by
an
artist who does aerial photographs of places all over the world. There
were over a hundred pictures on display, all large, detailed, and
colorful, and it was very neat to walk through the park with colorful
leaves surrounding you to the right and colorful pictures surrounding
you to the left. Each picture had some social significance--for
example, a picture of a boy playing basketball on a school playground in
the US was accompanied by a paragraph (in Polish, French, and English)
about literacy worldwide, which mentioned that in the US, sports are a
means of obtaining scholarships.
On Friday night, we left Krakow by overnight train. Melody and Mike
went back to Budapest, while Forrest, Ben, and I got off the train
early, at Kosice. However, now I need to get home and do some work,
so
I'll tell you all about Kosice later this week!
Sziasztok,
Abra
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