A three-day weekend for Veterans Day (U.S.)/Remembrance Day (Europe) gave us a little extra time to go further afield and visit Kraków, Poland. We’ve been excited about going to Poland, a country neither of us has visited before, and it was even more special because of two holidays in one. In addition to the holiday celebrating the veterans after the end of WWI, Poland also celebrates its own National Independence Day on 11 November, commemorating the anniversary of the restoration its sovereignty in 1918, after having been partitioned (yep, divided-up!) for 123 years by the Russian Empire. This holiday made our visit even more special, as the Polish flag was hung in streets and on buildings, and we even got to see a bit of a military parade.
Thursday Night
Kraków Airport & Train
Arrival in the Kraków airport couldn’t have been easier to manage. It’s small (think Burbank), modern and clean, and is directly attached to their (also very clean) regional train. Like all cities we have visited, the automated ticket machines allow you to buy your tickets with a choice of English instructions (super important here, because Polish is nothing like any of the languages we are familiar with). Within a few minutes, we were sitting in a train car with about a dozen rowdy Brits on holiday, and two couriers from Michigan who were delivering some mechanical something to a company in Kraków. It was a hoot to listen, and then chat with these guys in the 30-min trip to Kraków Old Town train station. If we arrive somewhere new at night, we take a taxi from the train station to the hotel when we arrive, to make things easier. From the station to the hotel, it was only a few minutes (an easy, safe walk, we knew we’d skip the taxi on our return).
Hotel in Old Town
Our hotel was right in Old Town (Stare Miasto), and we couldn’t have been happier with the place. Hotel Pod Roza is located in an elegant 16th century building (Kraków hotels have very reasonable prices, compared to Western EU). They’d upgraded us to a suite, which I think is actually bigger than our fairly spacious Paris apartment (though no kitchen). It was comfortable, and had a terrific breakfast as well.
Since we’d arrived in the evening and hadn’t had dinner yet, we walked to the main square, and chose an outdoor table (heaters and blankets provided). One of the things we wanted to do in Poland was to try some authentic local food. We ordered a charcuterie and cheese board to share with a variety of local cold sausages, baked pork terrine, and cheeses (sheep and cow), radishes and a sprinkling of large salt crystals. It also came with a super-yummy condiment of horseradish and cranberries. Mark tried a local beer (which I also liked a lot), Ksiażece. For dessert, we both ordered hot chocolate, which was thick, very chocolate-y, topped with whipped cream, and amazing — almost like hot pudding. The evening was cold (near freezing), but clear, so we walked around the square before heading back to the room for the night.
If you’re interested, here’s a link to Rick Steves’ Travel video about visiting Krakòw: https://youtu.be/blg6CY4iYXI
Friday
Old Town Walking Tour
We love taking a guided walking tour on our first day, to get oriented. This morning, we joined a Free Walking Tour of medieval Old Town, to learn about Kraków’s history. Our guide, nicknamed Golden, has a law degree and is fluent in six languages. Having grown-up under communist rule, he had an interesting perspective and was a great story-teller, incorporating stories from his family and childhood to make the place come alive. We saw the fortified outpost, Kraków Barbican (1498) and what remains of the medieval city wall, the market square and cloth hall, Jagiellonian University (since 1364), and finished with a walk up the hill to the Wawel Castle and Cathedral. Golden pointed-out the part of the castle which used to house prized horses, and eventually became the garage for royal cars, saying in his Polish accent, “Times change-ed, toys change-ed, but boys didn’t change-ed.”
After the tour, we had just enough time for a delicious lunch at a Hungarian restaurant (beef goulash soup for me, and potato pancakes topped with beef goulash and sour cream for Mark. Mark also tried hot, mulled beer, but wasn’t a fan).
Wieliczka Salt Mine
Just a 30-Another UNESCO World Heritage Site close to Kraków is the Wieliczka Salt Mine, mined for table salt from the 13th century until 2007. Mining was stopped due to a freshwater flood, which damaged the mine and made much of it unsafe, as well as the declining profitability of salt mining. The guided tour begins at a mine closest to ground-level, around 400 steps down, in an area mined in the 1500s. Eventually, we descended another 400 steps to the most recently-mined part of the site. As visitors pass through hallways of shiny, smooth grey-and-white salt, as well as hallways fortified with pine logs, they see monuments which were carved by miners, mining equipment, salt-water lakes, and two underground chapels (one which still hosts events, weddings, and regular Sunday services). One thing that really stood-out to me was the working conditions. Certainly, every kind of mine had terrible working conditions, and this was no exception. Sadly, they also used horses to pull heavy loads – and once a horse was brought down into the mine, it lived there, in darkness, for the rest of its life. The tour takes about 3 hours (there is a bathroom break), and the site is interesting – but we had a terrible tour guide. Her monotone explanation of the mine and the fact that she clearly did not care to answer questions (we tried) fell quite flat. We noticed that the other guides didn’t sound any more interesting than she was. Eventually, the tour ends in a gift shop (don’t they all?) – and another gift shop, and another. . . and then you get to take a miner’s elevator, squished together with other visitors, to the surface. Thank goodness for the elevator – we had already walked over 17,000 steps today!
Saturday
Podziemia Rynku Museum: Following the Traces of European Identity of Kraków
This museum lies directly under the cloth hall in the old town square, and contains interesting displays of the articles found in the excavation of the site under the building. Some large sections of dirt have been left intact, with exhibits explaining when in the city’s history each layer was created (different layers of earth and wooden sidewalk curbs, etc. that were exposed). The articles found in the excavated areas included things of daily life from 1,000 years of history: shoes, rope, clothing, combs and jewelry, game pieces and toys, iron, silver and goldsmithing implements, cookwear.
Kraków Free Walking Tour: Communism
This was so interesting! We met the same tour guide, Golden, who had taken us on Friday’s Old Town tour, for a closer look at the communist era in Poland after WWII. Tram tickets in hand, we took a short ride with Golden and five others (from the U.S., Belgium, Portugal, The Philippines, and Germany) to a nearby suburb of Kraków, Nowa Huta, which was built by the Soviets (1950s-80s) as a factory town for the new steel mill.
Post-WWII times were difficult on the Polish people. About six million people (about 1/5th of their pre-war total) had been killed, they had high unemployment, a shortage of housing, and an entire generation that had basically missed years of education during the war. Communism promised electricity in every village and education for all. The steel mill improved the local economy by employing thousands, and the housing created for workers, their families, and the community around it brought stability to the area. The first blocks of apartments, built in the 50s, were mostly like dorm rooms. They were single rooms, with shared bathrooms and kitchens. This was fine for the young men who were assigned to build the town and the steel mill – they needed a roof over their heads and education. In the 60s, more blocks of housing were built, but these were a little bigger, including a separate bedroom and a kitchen. As they moved into the 70s and 80s, people hoped for a little more each decade: meat two or three days a week, a second bedroom, maybe even a car. If I remember correctly, he explained that it was something like: every block had its own kindergarten and restaurant, every few blocks had its own doctor, grocery, and middle school, and a larger area of blocks had a high school, cultural center, hospital, etc. The convenience of having everything one needed near their homes is actually what makes this area still a popular place to live today. These were the benefits of communism. It was not extravagant, but compared with wartime, people had security, jobs, education, and food.
Communism had its cons, too, because (as Golden pointed-out) “People are greed”(y). The system says everyone is equal, but corruption flourished. There was a market for Western goods that had to be purchased with U.S. dollars or Deutche marks, and one had to save for years for these prized items. Golden remembered clearly that for his fifth birthday, his daddy told him they would take him to the Western store to buy a Lego. His parents and grandparents had saved from the time he was born, and they had $6 to spend. It would be a small box, and he was told to choose wisely. He chose the Lego farm, and that toy is still a treasure to him today: a reminder of hard times under communism. He told us proudly how he had recently bought his own daughter a Brio farm (her choice) that was in a huge box – and how he still marveled that he could just pay the money and get something so easily for his little girl.
As we walked past the blocks of look-alike buildings, he pointed out the defendability of the housing in case of attack: doors easy to blockade, basement windows and rooftops built for sniper cover, wide roads accessible to tanks, if needed. He also mentioned that every neighborhood had people whose job it was to spy on each other. We talked about how both sides (West and East) feared the other would launch missiles during the Cold War. Mark and I both recalled the bomb drills “duck and cover” when we were in elementary school, and that we weren’t sure if the world would survive long enough for us to grow-up. Golden said it was the same for him and his friends, growing-up under communist Soviet rule. Part of the 4.5-hour tour included a stop at a neighborhood House of Culture. During communist times and still today, these are places where you could take music lessons, play sports, watch films and visit the library. We all ordered coffee or cocoa, while we watched a communist-era propaganda film touting the bright future of Poland and the young people who were building the community and steel mill of Nowa Huta for the good of their country.
Another hold-out after the end of communism are the still-thriving, much-loved cafeterias called “Milk Bars” (so named, because they did not serve alcohol). These have always been subsidized by the State, providing low-cost but tasty, filling, nutritious food. As you might imagine, they are still popular, especially with pensioners and college students. Golden told us that this is a place where community is at its best – that often the elderly and the young will mix. An older lady might ask to sit with the college kids, and they’d get to know each other. The young ones might offer to help her with difficult chores, and she may spend her ration of flour and sugar to bake them a cake in return. His own wife befriended a widow whose children live abroad, and she now comes to their home for the holidays.
Sunday
Oscar Schindler’s Factory: Museum of Nazi Occupation of Kraków in WWII
On our last day in Krakow, we took the tram out to Oscar Schindler’s factory, which has become a museum on the Nazi Occupation of Krakow during WWII. The amount of information and artifacts, which included many Nazi flags, uniforms, items with swastikas, and information on the erosion of human rights was sobering.
One hopes that humankind has learned from these lessons of history. The documentation of the depression and elimination of the free press, the enforced internment of Jews into a walled ghetto, and their eventual deportation to concentration camps (Auschwitz is nearby) is chilling.
Some of the first steps to controlling the population: eliminate free press, and disallow higher education.
“(…) the entire Polish information system must be liquidated. The people should not possess radio sets; they must be left with newspapers only; opinion press must not be allowed.” – Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels, October 31, 1939
“(…)Your attempts to carry out examinations and to resume the University’s normal operation are an act of malice and hostility towards the Third Reich. Beside that, the Jagiellonian University has always been a centre of anti-German propaganda. Consider yourselves arrested. You shall be taken to a POW camp where you shall be properly informed of your real situation. No questions should be asked. . .” – SS Strumbannführer Bruno Müller
This is the trailer for the Oscar-winning movie, Schindler’s List, if you haven’t seen the movie, you should.
