The second weekend that Hil was here we decided to go to Krakow, buying our tickets the night before in true adventuror style. We wanted to take the 9 o'clock train, since the ride is only 3 hours we figured that would put us in Krakow with a fairly solid day for sightseeing. However, buying tickets the night before a trip doesn't always work out so well, and we ended up on the 7 am train. Early, yes, but we felt so accomplished and slept so well at the end of the day.
After arriving in Krakow we walked around the train station, through the adjacent mall, and eventually found our way down the road to our hostel. It should be noted that during all of this wandering, Hil was gallantly carrying a bowl full of curry, which we had cooked the night before and couldn't bear to leave behind. It smelled a lot less than you might think, thankfully.
I've always had really good experiences at hostels, and while the 7th Heaven Hostel wasn't awful it was one of the more awkward places that I have found myself in since middle school. Luckily, there were plenty of things to do in the city, and promptly after checking in we headed down to Stary Miasto.
As we approached the Rynek, we heard a lot of music and saw masses of people also approaching the Rynek, and that's when it dawned on us that that reason I had the day off of school was because it was a religious holiday, which in this country means big time celebrations. So, we watched the Corpus Christi procession in the Rynek, and at one point decided we might as well join in, it looked like the thing to do.
Throughout the city it was obvious that Corpus Christi is a big deal here, as a lot of buildings had religious icons (the pope, the black madonna, jesus, or images of the eucharist) hanging outside of their windows. The churches were also set up for Eucharistic Adoration.
We did all of the main sightseeing, I think which was impressive for the rather short time that we had. Here I am in the traditionally obligatory Wawel Castel photo.
Being the smart girls that we are, we figured it was senseless to spend the whole day battling crowds in the Old Town when we could head to Kazimerz, the Jewish Quarter, for a more low key day. I really like Kazimerz, it looks more lived in and less prisitne than Stary Miastow does and thus, more authentic. We had a rather unfortunate episode in Kazimerz, though. There was a group of young hooligans playing with toy guns who thought it was really clever to shoot at us. At first, I thought it was stupid but harmless. I even thought it might just make a good photo so I asked them if they would pose for us. Big mistake. They shouted "NIE!" with more vehemence than I could have imagined, and then started chasing us. At one point, the nasty little thing in the striped shirt put his gun up to Hilary's head. I kept trying to tell them off in Polish but I'm pretty sure they just made fun of me in response.
From Kazimerz we decided to cross the river over to where the Ghetto Wall and Schindler's factory are. We walked and walked and walked, eventually finding our desitations. But, we spent a good 20 minutes next door to Schindler's factory trying to figure out where it was. We get fairly incensed that there was no sign or marker of the spot, and took a lot of pictures of a lot of buildings figuring that we would google image the factory and then match our photos up. Here is one of those photos.
As we were leaving I decided to be ballsy and ask a young Polish guy who was sitting nearby and reading whether this was Schindler's factory. It was a good move on my part because it turns out we were 1 building away from the factory, which does in fact have a large sign in front of it as well as a museum (which was closed by the time we got there). I was pretty impressed with myself for a. asking directions in Polish and b. understanding them.
One our last day in Krakow we went to the National Gallery which is one of my favorite art museums. I had been there over the summer, but only had an hour to run through the exhibits, which is not nearly enough time. It worked out really well because I had a Polish Art History exam the following Tuesday so I felt productive.
We also went back to the Old Town for a photo shoot.
As we were buying souviners in Cukernica we saw these lovely Polish girls dressed up for the holiday, I think. I'm not sure whether they were hot and uncomfortable, annoying at my blatant objectification of them, or just angsty but, along with our Kazimerz boys they make me think that Polish youth aren't exactly the happiest folks ever.
and that, is Krakow. More on Gdansk later.
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