27. Kraków

When I arrived at Bratislava train station for my 7.55 departure, I saw that my train was going to be delayed. My connection time to a different train near the Polish border was already tight, so I knew I would never make the connection. 

However the brilliant thing with an Interrail ticket is when this type of thing happens, you can simply delete that trip, go online and find another. So I found a train at 11.30 with a 30 minute connection time and added it to my list. I then noticed it had compulsory seat reservations, which could not be made on the Interrail app for such a last-minute trip. I had to go to the ticket office to do this. No one spoke English so Google Translate proved very useful. 

It was only then that I discovered that all trains to Poland were cancelled indefinitely, due to flooding on the tracks. Surprisingly no notifications had come through on the Interrail app. So I turned to the tried and trusty Rome to Rio app to see what my alternatives were.

I was very lucky to get the last available seat on  a FlixBus coach, departing at 12.10 - that left just four hours to hang around rail and bus stations in Bratislava. 

This seat, called a “panoramic” one, was an aisle seat in the front row behind the driver, which had a supplement of €6.50. The full cost of the ticket for the 6.5 hour journey was only €28.

I was fortunate to be seated beside a very interesting travel companion who was also, at the last minute, forced to find an alternative to the train. He worked for the international charity Caritas, lived in Vienna and was on his way to Kyiv for an international conference. We had great conversations and the time passed really quickly. 

The road trip offered the chance to see the amazing modern Slokak motorway system, presumably built with extensive EU funding.  The countryside views of rolling hills, forests and mountain peaks was idyllic, however I was too busy chatting to take any photos. The quality of the road surface took a major dip once we crossed the border into Poland.

Arrival at Kraków was at 6.30pm, a 4.5 hour delay which wasn't too bad given the circumstances. Connected to the station was a huge shopping centre over four floors. I had a wander around to see was there anywhere to have a quick bite of Polish food, but couldn't see anything that took my fancy. However, as my HomeExchange host Elżbieta has texted to say she had left some food in the fridge for me, I decided to forgo eating here and instead to go directly to her apartment.

I activated the Jackdojade app (which means how to get there in Polish) and purchased another 72-hour city travel ticket, this time for about €11. Each of these transport apps has its own quirks and this one had a strange logic, which I couldn't really get. So I enlisted the help of a group of teenage girls who were only too willing to explain it to me in their proud, best attempts at English!

There were some issues getting into Elzbieta's apartment, but these were simply caused by language and translation difficulties, and after a few texts with the host I was in. 

Elzbieta's studio apartment is normally a short-term rental, but I got it for GuestPoints on HomeExchange.  It was tastefully decorated and perfect for one person for a few days. 

After a lazy morning lying around the apartment and having my breakfast out on the sunny balcony, I decided to head in to the Old Town and have a look around. Having lost all of the previous day to travel, my time in Kraków would now be limited to just one day, because on the following day I was going on a day tour to the Auchwitz-Birkenau sites.

I got off at a random tram stop and just started wandering around. The Old Town was huge, so well preserved and stunningly beautiful. I was later to learn from my tour guide (another Jakob) that Kraków was spared from any Nazi bombing as Hitler felt it was a very Germanic town. 

Down every street and side street were gorgeous authentic and perfectly restored buildings. There wasn't a single vacant or ruined building to be seen. It was breathtaking, it was just so hard to take it all in. 

I can safely say it is the most beautifully preserved city I have ever been in.

Before long, it was time to eat. My late lunch at Pod Wawelem was a great experience. The recommendation came from a Facebook page called Interrailing for Seniors, which contains lots of travel tips. 

For a starter, I had six pierogi (Polish dumplings) with a potato and cheese filling … and yes they were very filling. They were  served with gherkins and sauerkraut! If I had known it was going to be so big, I would have skipped the starter completely. 

For the main course I had a chicken breast cooked in a spinach, tarragon and cream sauce with farmer (fried) potatoes. I was enjoying this dish so much that I forgot to take a picture of it. To top it all, an enormous green salad then appeared which apparently goes with it usually. 

All of this food and drink was accompanied by live gypsy music.  The place was jammed with local families and not a single other tourist in sight. Nearly everyone seemed to be dressed in their Sunday best attire and Sunday lunch is obviously a very strong Polish tradition.

As I finished my large beer, a complimentary glass of plum brandy arrived on my table. All in all, what a brilliant start to the Polish leg of my adventure!

I was so full, that the guided walk I had booked for 4pm was coming at the right time.

I still had an hour and a half to kill before the tour, so I wandered up the full length of Ulica Grodzka, Kraków's 1km long main pedestrianised street as far as Rynek, the Market Square in the middle of the Old Town. 

On one side is the huge market hall, where under the arches there was a huge array of souvenir and craft stalls which was thronged with people.

I had originally booked a 20th century Kraków Tour for Saturday afternoon with a visit to the Jewish quarter included. Unfortunately this tour wasn't running on Sunday, so I had to make do with a tour dealing with the 600 years of history from the 14th century to the present day, that went into shaping and rebuilding the city. 

The tour guide was excellent but he had a lot of history to cover, and after a while I started to zone out as the countless facts, names and dates went in one ear and out the other. On the plus side, the tour did cover many of the city’s significant structures. 

Above are the original city walls and one of the fortifications. 

A few of the other interesting buildings and sights seen on the tour are below. 

Here is the barbican fort built to protect the city from the Mongolian invaders in the 14th century.

This sculpture is of Jan Matejko, known as the father of Polish painting, famous for depicting important events from Polish history, and whose paintings were designed to help the Poles feel better about themselves. Unfortunately a ray of sunshine has ruined the photo. 

Here is St. Mark's Basilica, one of over a hundred Catholic churches still open for worship in the city. Still on the subject of religion, the building below, in the university area, is where Karol Wojtyla (later to become Pope John Paul II)  studied. Kraków is very proud of him for having put the city on the world stage. 

Auchwitz-Birkenau 

Auchwitz-Birkenau was the main reason for making Kraków one of my destinations on this trip. 

These two sites were the largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camps during World War II. They are located approximately 70 km from Krakow and it is not possible to visit the sites independently, you must join an official tour. This is done to preserve the dignity of the sites as a memorial and museum. 

Our tour guide Margaret was committed and genuine, this was not a tour for the faint-hearted as she kept repeating, Margaret ensured that the group was respectful at all times. Even though Margaret may have done this tour hundreds of times before, there were occasions where she became quite emotional. 

There were certain parts of the sites where photography was forbidden, to preserve the dignity of the victims. For example the room showing the two tonnes of human hair that had been shaven off the prisoners on arrival; with some hair bands, ribbons and strands of hair still in plaits clearly visible. Beside this huge pile were some of the floor rugs made from the hair, thus creating further insult to the victims, as the Nazis were then literally walking over human body parts. 

Other exhibits that we were allowed to photograph included  a pile of empty cans of the poison used in the gas chambers

A room full of cooking pots, discarded by the victims ...

A room full of their glasses (spectacles) ….

A room full of 50,000 of their shoes …

A room full of crutches, walking sticks and prosthetics …

The gas chambers and the punishment rooms in a basement were out of bounds to photos, as what happened in these rooms is too horrific to capture in a picture. 

In reality, nothing I had read or seen in advance prepared me for the reality of the scenes of horror committed in Auchwitz that are explained and shown on the tour. 

The second section of the tour focused on Birkenau and we were brought the 7km there by bus. 

Birkenau was a much bigger concentration camp than Auchwitz. The first buildings were built with bricks from the village  houses razed to the ground to make way for the camp. 

When they started to run out of bricks, they kept any bricks they had for chimneys and built the walls from wood. None of these wooden structures has survived, but the chimneys do remain standing, and are now considered protected structures, like gravestones marking mass graves in a vast cemetery.  They can just about be seen in the picture below. 

Our guide told us that the chimneys never had fires lit, they were just built to give that impression. 

There is an ongoing programme of restoration in the camp. The photo above shows one of the original wagons used to transport the prisoners, now fully restored, while the photo below shows one of the dormitory buildings, that each housed an average of 700 prisoners. 

Another of these buildings is shown below, and beside it is a giant marquee protecting a similar building that is in the process of being restored. 

The photo below shows a building that has been fully restored. No expense is spared, and the current cost of restoring just one of these buildings is about four million Euros. 

Inside the dormitory buildings, nothing has changed in the 80 years since they were liberated. It is quite shocking to be able to walk among the wooden structures, and touch the bare wooden boards where seven people slept in one section of each level, sharing one blanket between two if they were lucky and having no mattress of any description. 

It is an understatement to say that Auchwitz affects you, but I suppose in a strange way  that is a good thing. It would be a lot worse if it had no effect! It is so unthinkable what some people can do to other human beings. 

As we returned to Kraków by coach, everyone was more subdued, and those who were talking were speaking in hushed whispers. According to the guides, this is something that happens with every group. 

On arrival back in Kraków I decided to go for a walk in the Jewish Quarter called Kazimierz, where so many of Auchwitz's victims had lived and worked. 

Kazimierz has a totally different atmosphere to the Old Town, more bohemian and arty. It is now full of small shops, craft boutiques and restaurants. 

I decided to stay in Kazimierz for dinner. All my research pointed to a restaurant called Starka, described as serving cutting edge new Polish cuisine, which had rave reviews.

It had a piece of art depicting pierogi, and as I was getting quite a taste for these Eastern European staples on my trip, I felt that a visit would be worthwhile. I wandered in around 5pm without a reservation and was given a table, provided I would be finished by 6.30. I felt I could manage that!

My starter was homemade pierogi with spinach, “bundz” cheese and wild garlic ...

... and how’s this for a description of the main course from the menu itself:

Grilled chicken breast with crumbled  pistachio in a black garlic and herb sauce, stuffed with pistachios. Served with a celery leaf sauce, hasselback potatoes with crème fraîche and spring onion, a side salad of baby spinach  leaves, strawberry, watermelon radish, carmelised nuts, and a young carrot mousse with chilli.  Needless to say everything was delicious. 

 

Overall Impression 

Kraków is a much bigger city than I expected it to be, with 800,000 residents, it is double the size of Bratislava. It looks like a very wealthy city in general and I saw no evidence whatsoever of homelessness, drunkenness, drug-taking, or petty crime. There is hardly a vacant premises to be seen on any street and litter is non-existent.  

Finally, as I found out that there are more pubs in Kraków than all of Scandinavia, it is appropriate to finish with the now regulatory photo of an Irish pub. 

I would highly recommend visiting  Kraków to everyone. It might attract hoards of tourists, especially at the weekends but it is a city that is not trying to exploit them and there are value-for-money places aplenty.