Travelogue -- Poland

Travelogue – Krakow , Poland July 5-7, 2007

Lyrad and I flew on Germanwings (the cheap airline) from Stuttgart to Krakow . We each carried a carry-on bag (no checked baggage) so we could be quicker. As we entered the small Krakow airport lobby at noon, a man held up a sign with Lyrad’s name on it. So we joined our driver and were on our way in his little smoky car. The man (whose wife runs the bed and breakfast I’d signed up for over the internet) spoke virtually no English. We enjoyed the half hour drive past farmhouses and green grass. As we entered the big city, we were fascinated with the beautiful medieval buildings, Polish language on every sign, and were thrilled to find out that our bed and breakfast was a block away from the Wawel Castle complex. We were in the heart of Krakow !
We were led upstairs by the nice driver’s wife (who spoke only a few words of English) and showed to our room. It was a very clean, spacious room, but once again I was misled by advertising and was not pleased with how the room turned out: the internet site claimed to have a refrigerator stocked with breakfast foods, plus fresh bread is delivered every morning, in lieu of eating a breakfast in a dining room. Unfortunately, the only things in the fridge were one container of juice (for both nights, she told us) and little jams and butters for the rolls she delivered in the morning. I was picturing “freshly baked bread” made by her, but all we found in the mornings were 4 hard cheap bakery rolls in a plastic bag hanging from our doorknob. And the bathroom was our own bathroom, but it was across the hall from us (we had the key). And the pillow was a down pillow, which I’m terribly allergic to, so I had to sleep with a pile of clothes for a pillow. (I thought of acting out a duck/goose to try to express to the lady in sign language how I was allergic to the pillow, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.) So the room wasn’t worth all the extra we were paying for it (nearly $80 a night; many Polish places cost half of that) but the location was fabulous.
We first walked to the Wawel complex, decided the line for the castle was too long, and instead we toured the spectacular Gothic cathedral. The cathedral was erected in the 1300’s and was the site of many coronations and burials. Elaborate shrines and tombs filled the royal burial chapels in little rooms off of the main cathedral. The funniest thing about this cathedral was how despite its lush décor, on the outside it looked like a “patchwork” church due to all the mismatched chapels added on to the cathedral over the years. Each was founded by a ruler or bishop and was built in the current style of the times. Though Cracow was the capital of Poland for 500 years, the capital moved to Warsaw in 1596. But kings still chose to be crowned and entombed in Wawel.
One of the highlights was the bell tower, housing the largest bell in Poland (6 ft. in diameter), the Zygmunt Bell. As we walked up old wooden staircases past several other large bells, it was fun to picture the bell ringers who might have climbed these same stairs in 1520 (when the bell was built). We felt like Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
After walking around the castle complex and admiring the cathedral’s exterior, we headed for the other highlight of Krakow : the old town square. Krakow escaped significant damage during WW2 (unlike Warsaw ) so the medieval buildings are beautiful to see. We climbed up the City Hall Tower (the only remaining part of the old Hall) and enjoyed the view. Also in the Main Market Square was the Cloth Hall: a renaissance building which sold cloth hundreds of years ago. Today, market stalls abound underneath the cloth hall, selling more than just cloth (some pottery, jewelry such as amber, touristy mugs and t-shirts, nativity scenes). We went up into the cloth hall hoping to see some of the Polish National Museum , but all that was displayed there now was a crazy modern art display. Luckily, the man at the entrance waved us in without charging admission, or I would’ve been demanding my money back. What weird pieces of art we saw! A toddler (made of wood) banged his head loudly against a wall, a shoe with a hole in its toe was stuck to the wall with a long sheet hanging out of the toe, t.v. screens were on a piece of art and the t.v. was showing bizarre home videos, wooden bird cages with real birds in them were stuck to another colorful panel, and the originality and oddity of it all went on and on. I readily admit that I do not appreciate modern art.
We saw the Church of St. Mary , where the trumpeter of Krakow blew the hourly “hejnal” (trumpet call). As the story goes, a trumpeter blew his trumpet in warning as the tartars were invading (around 800 years ago), and a tartar shot and killed him with an arrow as the trumpeter was bravely playing his song. Ever since then, the trumpet call has been played (and now broadcast) hourly, stopping in the middle of a phrase, in memory of the medieval trumpeter. We listened to the hejnal as I read Lyrad the story of the trumpeter in the Polish folktales book I’d just bought for Josh and Rachel. Next we went inside the very gaudy St. Mary’s Church and saw the 39-foot-high gothic Altar of the Virgin (built in the 1480’s). The Church was built by the citizens of Krakow to rival the Wawel Royal Cathedral. The most fascinating part to me was watching the worshippers in the roped-off section of the church (the back part) taking their part at the confession booth. No, they didn’t appear to give money to the priest, but I still watched closely to see what would happen! We thought it very interesting that the worshippers (with free entrance through a back door) could sit in the back part of the church, while the tourists (who pay to enter) got to see all the best parts in the front.
For dinner, we found a restaurant with great Polish food. We ate borscht (pureed red beet soup with beans) and loved it. I loved my potato pierogies (like raviolis) and Lyrad enjoyed his fish. We tried fried pineapple pie for dessert. The weather had been cool with some light showers (just like “summer” in Germany ) and after a nice 10-minute walk past the 2nd oldest university in Europe (after Prague ’s), we arrived home to our room with plenty of reading time. I re-read the Trumpeter of Krakow (a medieval juvenile adventure, but this time through I recognized most of the streets and sites mentioned) while Lyrad tried to finish James Michener’s Poland , which he’s been reading for months. I’d also brought along Queen Bees and Wannabes, a book about teenage girls, cliques, gossip, etc, since I have two 12-year-olds entering junior high.
On Friday, we left our room at 7:40 for a long walk to the train station. We wanted to catch the 8:00 bus to Oswiecim ( Auschwitz ), but the bus station was harder to find than we thought. So we caught an 8:30 bus, and for just a few dollars we rode the 1 ½ hours to Aushwitz. (going with a tour guide costs $30 and takes all day). We didn’t want to spend all day there since we’ve been to Dachau Concentration Camp twice and we wanted to see all the medieval sites in Krakow, but since we’ve read so much about Auschwitz I really wanted to go there however briefly. Dachau was a “work camp”, whereas Auschwitz was the largest “extermination camp” the Germans created. We watched the film (live footage), then walked through the camp and stopped inside some of the barracks. Many of the barracks have been made into museums, such as “Austrian Jews”, “ Holland ,” “ France ”. We saw a wall of photos of French children who died in Auschwitz . The most gripping museum by far was the Museum dedicated to showing proof of what happened there. We saw the extensive pile of shoes behind glass: children’s shoes, women’s sandals, baby shoes. We saw piles (several meters long) of suitcases belonging to Auschwitz victims, with names and addresses optimistically written on them. What a touching experience to be there. Lyrad and I had both recently read I was Dr. Mengele’s Assistant, so it was creepy to walk past Block 19 and other barracks where deathbed patients lay and medical experiments took place. And though we didn’t see all of it and we didn’t go a few kilometers away to Birkenau, it was definitely an emotional experience we will never forget.
We rode the mini-bus back to Krakow by 1:00 and had the rest of the day to sightsee. We admired the fabulous art collection in the Czartoryski Museum , a private collection that included handicrafts and carving. The watercolor paintings were just breathtaking, including the museums’s 2 most famous works: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine”, and Rembrandt’s “Landscape with Good Samaritan”.
Next we walked through the town to get to the Jewish Quarter. We walked through a Jewish museum in a synagogue, walked past a few other synagogues, and read about a Polish (non-Jewish) pharmacist who is a definite hero: When he was ordered to move his pharmacy to another part of town so he wouldn’t be in the Jewish Ghetto (during WW2), he insisted that he would stay where he was. So the Germans allowed him to stay, and he was a true man of mercy to the suffering Jews. He filled many prescriptions, sneaked food to people, gave mothers sedatives to give to their babies if they were taking their babies into hiding, and saved people in many other ways. Oskar Schindler also lived in this area; his factory where he employed (and saved) many Polish Jews was around there. I’ve read Schindler’s List and was impressed by his saving hundreds of people who would have otherwise been killed, but I was so disappointed in his unfaithfulness to his wife. We passed a Pierogie Café and tried 2 new pierogies: rhubarb pierogies, and tomato and basil pierogies. Yum. We stopped in a Polish pottery store and I picked out some salt and pepper shakers for me, and we debated over what to get for Stacy Miller, who was babysitting for us. (We finally called her, and she assured us that she would NOT use it, so we shouldn’t buy it for her.) That evening, we walked back to the Main Market Square in hopes of attending a concert that night. We found tickets to a Chopin piano concert in an old building (not a church, but we tried!) and just loved it. After an hour of fabulous playing, we clapped so hard for him that he gave us an encore, which I think was the highlight of the Poland trip for me: he played March Militaire! It was awesome. We then looked for a restaurant open late so we could eat dinner at 9 p.m. We finally found a good one and enjoyed some more borscht (this time with hard boiled eggs in it) and potato pierogies. I love Polish food.
On our last morning in Poland , we packed up and walked to the Wawel Complex to buy tickets to go inside the castle. We bought tickets to see the Royal private rooms. I loved the huge Biblical tapestries on the walls of the kings’ rooms. Next, we walked through the Dragon’s Den and came out by the Wasel River . According to legend, a dragon was terrorizing Krakow until a boy came up with a plan: he made a pile of explosives and covered it with a goatskin and left it outside the entrance to the dragon’s cave. When the dragon tried to eat it, the dragon was killed and the city was free.
Our last few stops in Krakow included: buying a Polish pottery soup tureen for us (picked out by Lyrad, but I love it, too), buying potato pierogies in a store to take home and cook for the kiddos, and buying blueberry pierogies and cheese pierogies to eat on the way to the airport. At the airport, our 2 carry-ons surpassed the weight limit, so we had to check a bag this time, then we enjoyed peaceful reading time on our flight back to Stuttgart .
As we picked up our luggage in Stuttgart , I looked toward the glass barrier and saw all of my sweet little ones waving excitedly as they stood waiting with Stacy. It was so fun to see them as they mauled us with hugs. Joshua jumped into my arms and the first thing he said was, “Mom, I KNEW you’d be wearing that!” (The movers took most of our clothes, so I guess I wear the same few outfits over and over now!) We drove home while the children enthusiastically told us how much fun they had with Stacy: they went to the carnival on base and rode a lot of rides, watched movies on Dad’s laptop, went to see “Ratatouille” in the Patch Theater, played lots of UNO games, and went to Stacy’s house. They didn’t miss us at all, and I KNOW they had more fun at home with Stacy than they would’ve had walking and walking through cold and rain and crowds in Poland . As Stacy assured me that the children were very good, Rachel and Josh piped in something about “spitting and biting.” Stacy smiled and said, “Okay, other than the spitting and biting, they were wonderful.” Stacy told Paula that our house was like “Little House on the Prairie” as everyone happily did their chores. Nothing like a good threat; I’d warned the children beforehand that I’d be asking if anyone ever saw Stacy wash dishes or sweep a floor, and I BETTER NOT hear that she had to clean up. Rachel made most of the meals (top ramen, refried beans on tortillas, chicken patties on buns) and she loved having all the kid-food she loves.
So Krakow was beautiful, it’s always great to “getaway” with Lyrad, and I am now so saturated with travel that I don’t think I will miss traveling-in-Europe for a very long time. I will miss the wonderful people I knew in Germany , but I no longer have regrets about all the places we didn’t visit in Europe . After all, the cities start to look very similar after a while, and the churches, castles, and cathedrals aren’t as impressive after I’ve seen so many that they begin to run together in my memory. But I’m grateful that Lyrad and I had a chance to see medieval Krakow , Poland , together, for our last trip as German residents.