Polish Chronicles II: Krakow

The 31st of October I arrived to Krakow around 7:40pm -I was supposed to arrive a bit earlier but due to traffic jams we were late. I must say it's a bit confusing to get to the city from the bus station if you get through the shopping center, but I managed to do so and with a map printed about how to get to my hostel I finally found it.

St Benedict hostel is a really good deal if you're staying in Krakow and you don't ask for a fancy place to stay. It has everything what's necessary for 5E/night and even more -like breakfast included and hairdryers that you can ask in the reception. Plus, it is only 7-minute walk to Rynek, the very center.

I arranged the checking in -only not so nice thing is that they ask you for an extra fee for being a tourist, but it's like 50 cents per day-, left my stuff in the room and just when I left the place to meet with Aida and Timour I found them in the ground floor door.

They also left their stuff, made the check in and we went just to the supermarket downstairs to get something for dinner. There was a small kitchen in the hostel, so we took bought some noodles and some beer to have a rest before having a little stroll in the night.

We found our way to Rynek thanks to a map they gave us in the hostel. It is a very nice square and it looks different from morning to night. We naturally continue to Grodzka and found mighty interesting pubs, but because we were a bit tired from the trip we came early to the hostel for taking advantage of the following day.

We woke up early on Friday and change some euro to zloty before joining the Free Walking Tour in front of St. Mary's Church.  Because we arrived with some minutes in advance we took a quick look to the inside of the church, impressive! It is not allowed to make pictures, so I'll just post two from google images and you can check the beautiful colors and structure.

At 10 am the tour started. As these kind of tours, the guide normally combines historical facts with some more recent stories, always referring to the buildings in the surroundings to begin with. It lasted for 2 hours and a half and Asia -our guide-, showed us Rynek and nearby, like the Barbican, the University, the Archdiocese where the pope John Paul II used to accommodate when staying in Krakow, and then down to the Castle (Wawel) where the visit finished.

The most curious fact I got from this tour -besides being told that John Paul had a great sense of humour-, was that like the human chakras, some scientists recently discover that there are also kind of chakras in the Earth -normally in sacred-related places like Jerusalem or Tibet. Nevertheless, one of them is located in Krakow's Castle, exactly in a corner before entering the Palace's rooms. Of course, like others, I rubbed the wall after being suggested such thing -it really felt like rubbing a wall tough.

Having a great view of the river when we finished our visit, we decided to take a look to the fire-spitting dragon statue and then walk by the riverside to the Jewish Quarter to get some pierogy. Unfortunately, and I think due to Poland being in general quite a religious country, the pierogy place that our walking tour map had provided us -with all sorts of recommendations about what and where to see, eat and drink in Krakow- was closed. We decided to walk a bit further to get some zepianky in Plac. Nowy Warszauera.

After the zepianky we also sat for a while in a coffe place -I ordered some hot chocolate with a lot of whipped cream, nomnom-, we stroll a bit through this quarter. We didn't realize so much at that moment because many places were closed and there were not so many people in the street, but when we pass by the following day we could really tell is quite a modern place -hipster like in some spots, like Jozefa street.

So, as I said, after our break we explore a bit more the quarter -a bit lost even with the map-, and then headed back to the center trough Krakowska, Gertrudy and Dominikanska. Since it was getting dark and we felt a bit tired of walking all day we came back to the hostel to rest a bit before going out by night.

After a rather unhealthy kebab we found a place in Maly Rynek called something like Alternative in Polish, and we went there for a beer. It was very nice to find a place that fit everybody's interests, I totally agreed with Aida that we should take that place back to Bratislava -but not superpowers for that yet. It was an underground and some reggae music -continued for some disco one- was playing loud. At some point it got too disco, so we found another place, Indigo Pub, in Florianska. It was a rock pub but with the right high of volume so you could talk. Posters everywhere and a mini altar to Kurt Cobain, so nice -and cheap beer, even better!

We left for having some rest for the next day. Aida went to a day-trip to Auschwitz and Timour and I stayed to explore the city. We started with the bus station, in order to get our tickets for leaving the following day -Sunday. After that we just kept walking trough a not so touristic area, passing by the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus -by chance more than a planned thing- before reaching a local market -Hala Targowa.

We kept going south until reaching an old Jewish cemetery and back again to the Jewish quarter. Since we bought some fruit to a kind seller in the street, we walked for some time before lunch, when we headed to Wrega pub for -this time yes-, some Polish pierogi.

After a tasty lunch with kind of strudla for desert, we enter this modern side of the Jewish quarter, finding a kind of a small Notting Hill like street -at least it reminded me of that. We made few more pictures because it started drizzling, but still we continued to Jewish ghetto quarter by a pedestrian bridge, Eastern style -full of lover's padlocks.

We arrived to Rynek Podorgski and have a look to the very nice St. Joseph's Church -Timour pointed out that it looked like Disney's castle, find the resemblance? But besides that this district wasn't as nice as the other ones, and because of the drizzling started to be annoying we got back by taking the tram in the Square of Ghettos Heroes -google maps says that's its name-, and got a free ride until close to Dominikanska -we really really wanted to pay the ticket, but there was only one machine in the tram and a mighty long line of tourists before us, ale nevadi.

Across Rynek, back to the hostel for some afternoon break before meeting my Polish friend Michal -who I met last June for the trip Olga organized to Montenegro and Croatia. He is from a town close to Auschwitz but he knew the city, and therefore took us to really nice places like a tea house with a huuuge fat cat (Cafe Bar Magia) and afterwards to dinner in a vegetarian buffet place, Chimera -both of them quite close to Rynek.

In the evening we passed by the jazz club U Munianka -and left right over the concert because we are volunteers and didn't want to spend 5E for the entrance-, and then arrived to a random hostel place where they were having a Halloween party -1E beer leaflets brought us there. It was nice to see Michal again, but we didn't stay longer either that night. In any case, he doesn't have a problem to find party on his own -as he already did in Montenegro, haha.

Woke up on Sunday 3rd of November, packed everything, bought some food for the way and went to take our bus from Krakow to Katowice. Such a rude driver, he didn't want to open the luggage handler in the bus stop close to the bus station when we arrived to Katowice, so we had to get down in the last stop, took our things and spend some time in the train station having some snack before getting our bus back to Bratislava. The impression of Katowice wasn't so nice in a grey rainy day, with all city under construction -but still some buildings in the center were pretty.

The trip to Bratislava didn't feel so long that when I did at the beginning of my trip, probably because of the company. The rain and the heating of the bus helped me to sleep most of the time, and I enjoyed chatting with Timour when being awake and exchanging some music.

Yeah, I had quite a good time in Poland. It's a beautiful country and I was surrounded with good people, so nothing could have gone wrong. I hope some other time I can visit also Gdansk, by the see -I haven't heard so much about other cities besides Warsaw, which apparently is quite industrial, something I'm not very fond of when I'm traveling.

Anyway, it was a great trip :) Hope you enjoyed the pictures, this time I made them! But also took few of them by Timour, the ones I'm in, mostly.

See you in next posts, attentive readers,

Warm hugs,
Ali

Polish Chronicles I: Wroclaw

After VEM I took some days off to make what might be one of the last trips of the year, in Poland. My sister just arrived to Wroclaw to study as Erasmus on September and since I didn't come back to Spain during my whole EVS stay I was really happy to finally have somebody from my family to meet again. In any case, as a proper Erasmus student, she had also some plans for the long weekend of All Saints, so I decided to come a bit earlier to see her and then afterwards continue to enjoy Poland with my friends in Krakow.

My trip started Monday 28th in the night, so in the night that my bus was actually starting at 00:00 of Tuesday. I traveled from Bratislava to Katowice with Polskibus company, really comfortable -and they have toilet and wi-fi. I arrived in Katowice at 6 am and quite sleepy and with a still dark sky I found the train station to get to Wroclaw, what I finally managed by 10 am -yap, I was pretty much broken after that, but a hug from my sister in the station made it all worthy.

She came to pick me up in the station, we walked until Dominikanska square to buy a public transport ticket -quite cheap with the student fare and short-term length-, and first place she took me was the university. See? So if you're Erasmus you're probably having a great time, but before that happen you also have to solve a mountain of bureaucratic paperwork. She needed to finish an online enrolment in her university and also hand some papers to her coordinator in Wroclaw, and because the deadline was only within 2 days I got to know also this student side of the city.

We left my luggage in her residence -she was complaining so much I was really scared of what to expect but it really wasn't so bad, her room is pretty nice and it's a single one, so that's all you need-, and we went to Pirogania, a famous place for pierogi -Polish typical dish- in the heart of the city, the Rinek -which means square in Polish. Geez, they were tasty!

Afterwards we strolled by the center, then headed to the cathedral passing by the national museum and we got there just on time to get a panoramic view of the city from the top of one of their towers, with the sunset light.

 

From the top we could also manage to see a man who lights manually the streetlamps of the cathedral's quarter. My sister have told me about him and she was really excited to finally confirm that he existed. Anyway, we didn't hurry to go down because we knew we wouldn't have the time to reach him, but we eventually did -because it was cold on the top- and kept walking around a bit. We passed by this typical Eastern-style bridge covered in padlocks symbolizing love (?) and just dropped in a former train station which is a current market now to buy some fruit before coming back to the student's dorms.

That afternoon we didn't do much. We had some siesta because I was mighty tired from my trip and we had some dinner with toasts with Spanish ham and oil -hmmm, so good! Also because the two of us being together was kind of a small milestone for my family, we had a Skype call with our father.

The following day my sister had some mandatory lessons she couldn't skip in the morning, so I just walk around the city with a map. I started in the cathedral quarter because I had liked it a lot the previous day, then visit the botanical garden and then walked to another park with a church and a very nice university building -perhaps a library. This path had some road under construction and some street art in the walls. It was not so touristic but I enjoyed it.

Feeling a bit lost and checking on the map, I decided to take the tram to a place closer to the center since the day before I haven't had visited so much. I got from Prusa to Ruska tram stops and walked a bit by the river or channels (I have no idea what that water is, not much in that part anyway). I ended up in Renoma shopping center and headed to the center again, checking the beautiful buildings of a theater, a nearby park and the Opera. At that moment I had a call that my sister had finished lessons a bit earlier than expected, so I just came back to the dorms to meet her -not without stopping by a second-hand shop before and buying two thick sweaters for 6E, score!

'Why coming back to the dorm?', you'll ask yourselves. Well, I told you that my sister and I being together after 9 months was kind of a thing for my family, so I was coming back for the second Skype call of the trip, this time with my mother -anybody that knows my mother in person would realize is not her best picture but, well, is the only image capture we made.

Continuing with the student life immersion, we had lunch together with my sister's friends in the residence. Due to the fact that they share an average kitchen with all the students of the floor, they normally cook for many people together. It's nice, they organize a cooking team -with cooking skills- and a cleaning one -you know, not cooking skills-, and so everybody eats together and cleans afterwards. Smart and tasty -geez, that chicken was so good!

When we finish lunch at a rather Spanish time (3pm), Clara (exactly, my sister has a name) and I went to a park she likes to just have some time together. She told be -as I explained her my morning- that I almost have seen all worth seeing in the city and that I would enjoy this park -she was right. We took advantage of the few remaining light of the afternoon and came back to the residence for resting a bit before going out.

To have a rest before going out, or that's what I thought. But then she told me we could join some of her friends that were preparing costumes for Halloween night -just the following day-, just in the residence in front of hers. And so we joined them and it was actually true that some of them were doing this, but after sometime somebody switched off the lights and from the kitchen of the room somebody appeared with a pile of nutella crepes with whipped cream. It was so nice! I really didn't expect nothing for my birthday, but apparently my sister had a different opinion and she got her friends to collaborate in this warm gesture -I felt so welcome, thanks again^^.

After sharing the pancakes we decided to finally go out to a bar where they have live concerts on Wednesdays -Nietota was the name, I think. Music was great tough because we were a bit late we had the furthest table from the stage -ale nevadi, we luckily found a place to sit. Afterwards we got to another bar, Niebo, and there I enjoyed more the conversation -it was too loud in the first location for talking. I especially remember talking with a Basque girl, who reminded me to one of my best friends of my own Erasmus, nice girl. Anyway, after 2 Polish beers I felt rather more dizzy than with Slovak beer, and since I wanted to also visit something the next morning -and my sister was waking up at 8 am for her trip to Berlin- we came back to the residence not so late.

Next day, Halloween, I woke up around 10 -my sister had already left. I packed my things, had breakfast with her room's neighbor and headed to the bus station to buy my ticket for the afternoon and leave my luggage in the meantime. That day I didn't pull my camera out because I wanted to save some memory space and battery for Krakow, but I wandered close to the train station, then direction to the river, then back to the center to the university area and finally spent sometime in the small islands side having a tea and a walk through the parks -nice relaxed time.

Around 3 pm I started to come back to the bus station, took my bus at 4 pm and arrive at 7:30 pm directly to Krakow, where I met with other friends. But that's another chapter of the Polish Chronicles -named like this after the surprising inspiration I have today to write mountains of words out of few days. Well, they were quite intense after all.

In any case, see you in the next post -if you still can read it! :D

Hugs,
Ali