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| Krakow,
Poland |
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Pros: amazing experience, lots to
see and learn, dynamic nightlife
Cons:
none
Krakow, Poland
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2001 08:58
The Polish Onslaught.
Streching out our contorted muscles after stepping off of our couchette
train ride, we arrived in Poland. We had heard stories of Krakow
being dangerous and our early 5am arrival didn't help to calm our
nerves.
Amongst the shady looking characters in the dimly lit train station,
we spotted 3 other fellow travellers looking as confused as we were.
Scott, Todd and Brett, backpackers from Australia and New Zealand
were more then happy to team up and pool our ressources to find
a hostel. The sun hadn't come up yet so after some brief introductions,
we headed to the hostel where we met up with travel mates. It was
nice to get a big group of backpackers to head up our onslaught
into Poland. The salt mines were our first stop on our visit to
Krakow.
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The salty side of Poland.
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"How
is salt mined anyhow?" was our first question to Edita, our
tour guide to the mines.
To find out the answer, we toured through the salt mines for several
hours. The salt mines were incredible. Salt, in the middle ages
was as good as gold because it was used to preserve food and due
to the hazardous conditions, 10% of the miners died mining the white
salt.
The truely remarkable thing about the mine is that the miners actually
carved statues, monuments, and a fabulous, gigantic church which
you can rent for 1000$ Canadian, all made from... you guessed it,
salt! (Check the pictures out, it's something else)
After the tour, we convinced our tour guide, Edita to meet us for
drinks later that night and headed back to town for some local grub.
Perogies, cabbage dishes, unidentifiable meats and local beers...
and all for next to nothing. For western travellers, Krakow was
an untapped, cheap and authentic destination and we were more then
happy to indulge.
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Polish Debautchery ...
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After our Polish feast, we headed for the meeting place, a trendy
bar near the town centre. We got there and met with Edita, who,
to our surprise brought her friend to meet the 'Canadians' she had
met earlier. We enjoyed the company, good music and great Polish
Vodka. We also made a good friend out of the waiter Pat, who, after
some good'ol peer pressure, hesitantly snuck a vodka shot after
taking a look over his left and right shoulders, to make sure the
boss wasn't around. The shooter bribe paid off... He sent us to
a night club called Music Number 9 which turned out to be one of
the hidden secrets of Krakow.
This place was amazing, to say the least. With an upstairs lounging
area and a staircase that leads into darkness, we entered into what
would be one of the best nights so far on this trip.
A beer costs roughly 2 slotez, which is less then 1$ Canadian so
you can just imagine the chaos that ensued. The bar consisted of
different rooms, all of which looked like little caverness cellars
made from stone, with a main dancing area in the middle. After many
hours of socializing and dancing we left the bar around 4am but
some of us found ourselves in an even more remote and tiny area
deep beneath the murky surface of Krakow.
In this den of debautchery, the walls were made of rock with only
three dimly lit rooms. One was a bar of course and the next was
a small but very busy dance floor that resembled the bigger raves
that we all know from back home. The third was a somewhat hidden
room that seemingly housed a nice resting area but, with a bit of
investigating, we found a wooden ladder that led to a mazzanine
containing no less then three beds, which in our part of the world,
is not ... ummm... typical for a dance club.
Hours later, we found ourselves picking up our slightly pickled
new friend, Scott off the floor and stumbled out only to find that
it was 7:30am... Exactly the time we had agreed to get up to take
the bus to Auswitzch. Doh! This day was going to be a rough one
and it was only just beginning...
The good news is that we had stayed up so late that it was already
far passed the hostel curfew by the time we got there.
It was a mad, blurred, rush to the train station to meet the rest
of the crew for our bus to Auschwitz...
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Auschwitz, the not so happy side of Poland
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Ok, a quick stop at McDonalds, a quick change of clothes and we
were ready to visit the famous death camp. A short 60 minute bus
ride away gave us time to sleep and recover a little for what we
were about to bare witness to. There is no way to explain with words
the disturbing pictures that are now and forever burnt into our
minds.
In the first part of the tour there were dozens of barracks containing
piles of belongings from the to the millions of victims of the death
camps. Everything from shoes, combs, suitcase and human even hair
was piled high displaying the brutality and inhumanity that was
shown towards the jews and other minorities like the gypsies. It's
only when you actually see the site and hear the narration from
the tour guide that this really hits home. Some of us preferred
to skip some parts and go visit the second section of the camp which
housed most of the victims. We did take some pictures but at the
time of this writing we are unsure as to which we will unload due
to their horrific nature.
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Night two in Krakow...
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After taking a quick shower, we were back into the night scene of
Krakow. Not having rested "properly" the night before,
we took a quick group vote and decided to go meet a few ladies we
met the night before at the music number 9 bar but hunger got the
best of us and we quickly got side tracked hunting down some authentic
Polish food.
We had searched loooooonnnnnngggggg and hard for a nice restaurant.
The fact that they all closed around 20:00 didn't help. With a bit
of luck and alot of perseverence, we found this really amazing Polish
restaurant that was strait out of mideveal times. Complete with
a round table, complementary bread and lard spread and gothic music
playing in the backround, we ordered everything from perogie ruskie
to Polish borzch soup. The menu even contained whole lambs and pigs
spit roasted and served to you the way they did hundreds of years
ago (with price to be negotiated and 24 hrs notice of course), we
skipped the whole pig and stuck to the main dishes...
After such a full and amazing meal, we headed for another quick
beer before calling it a night which would be our last night in
Poland.
What we now have planned ahead of us is a very long 25 hour train
ride from Poland to Romania.
We will keep you posted...
3C |
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