Krakow, Poland

Friday, April 27 – Monday, April 30 2012

While we’ve seen some amazing places over here in Europe, perhaps one of our most anticipated trips was Kraków, Poland.  Why, you ask?  Perhaps for a number of reasons.  It’s a little more “off the beaten path” from the major tourist sites, is extremely affordable, still has the charm of a beautiful medieval city, and is a home base for visiting Auschwitz, one of the most interesting historical sites we’ve seen over here in Europe.

We decided to give Kraków four days of our time, partly because it was kind of a chore to get over there (a two-leg flight from Geneva).  We left Friday morning and were into Kraków that afternoon.  After a short train ride from the airport we made our way to the hotel which we were really pleased with because it was super cheap, attractive (it was a quaint antique-looking loft), and right in the middle of the old-town center.  

After dropping off our bags we decided to take a walk around Kraków and familiarize ourselves with an old town area that is nice and cozy – walkable in 15 minutes from one end to the other.  We quickly fell in love with this little town as we walked and saw the following highlights…

We started in the heart of the city - the huge square appropriately titled, Main Market Square.  When it was built in the 13^th century, it was the largest in all of Europe (and remains impressively large to this day).  It would be difficult not to walk through this square multiple times a day in Kraków and we enjoyed it every time we did, from admiring the picture-perfect buildings surrounding the square, to browsing the numerous street art vendors, and enjoying a handful of entertainers along the way. 

Inside of head

Giant head statue

There are a couple of large and noteworthy structures in the square; the first being Saint Mary’s Church.  The claim to fame for this church is the bugler that plays from the watchtower every hour to mark the hour.  While this doesn’t sound that interesting at first, the song that is played (known as the hejnał) is purposely cut short in an abrupt manner to honor a legend from the days of the first Tatar invasion in 1241.  Apparently a town watchman was playing the hejnał as a warning of the coming invaders when he was struck in the throat by an enemy’s arrow before he could finish.  The appointed bugler has played it the same way every since and this tune is so important that it’s broadcasted over the national Polish radio station daily at noon.

We also visited the inside of the church, which had colors unique to any church we’ve seen to date in Europe.  Just take a look at the rich hues and busy decorative designs—we saw more of this style in another church described later so it was clearly a Polish theme. 

The other large building in the square is the Cloth Hall, which was built in the 16^th century and served as the main market center for cloth vendors.  Today it is the place to go for all Polish souvenirs and we picked up several treasures from there later in the trip.

Outside of the Cloth Hall we noticed a large group of men dressed in red and white striped shirts and hats.  We were convinced that there must have been a Where’s Waldo? convention in town. :)  We got a little chuckle out of it and kept on our way…

We walked up to the best of the remaining city walls and also to see the Florian Gate, both which were built for defensive purposes in the 13^th century.  Unfortunately even though it felt like summer (80+ degrees everyday), it was still technically spring season so the walls were not yet open to visitors.

Just outside the walls is the Barbican, a large defensive fort that used to be connected to the Florian Gate via a drawbridge, over a moat that surrounded the entire city.  This used to be the primary way into the city, which explains how prominent it looks.

In the 19^th century, the moat surrounding the city was transformed into a pleasant park, know as the Planty.  While an ancient moat would have been cool to see, this park was really enjoyable throughout our time in Kraków.  It was so nice that one morning we were inspired to take a jog all the way around the park.

As we headed south through the city we stopped at St. Francis’ Basilica, which we eluted to earlier as the other church in Kraków with unique colors.  A more interesting note about this church is that is was Pope John Paul II’s home church while he was archbishop of Kraków (yes, the pope was Polish).  We learned that there was a lot of national pride around the pope, probably one of the reasons why we saw so many people actually coming to pray in this large cathedral (most big Cathedrals we see in Europe feel like they are simply shells of their past, filled with more tourists than church-goers).  Below is a picture of the bench that was the pope’s favorite place to pray (marked by the silver plaque).

Another side note about this church is that it has a replica of the Shroud of Turin, which we visited with NKk back in February.   Apparently since it touched the original shroud, it is also considered a holy relic (which goes to show you the extensive process it takes to become a relic). ;)

Just outside the cathedral is the pope’s apartment when he was the archbishop of Kraków.  After he became pope, it remained his residence when he would come home for a visit.  It is said that he would sit at this window and chat it up with the locals about a range of topics from spirituality to sports.  Sounds like he was a great friend to the people. 

We wandered further south and passed by some more attractive looking, but non-descript sites.  Here are some pictures. 

At the south of town we finally reached the pride and joy of all Polish natives - the impressive Wawel Castle (pronounced “VAH-Vehl”).  Within the castle grounds is the Wawel Cathedral, which can be thought of as Poland’s Westminster Abbey, housing the tombs of most of Poland’s great leaders.  There are a couple exceptions, perhaps one who should have been buried there and one who shouldn’t have – the first is Pope John Paul II who is still buried in Vatican City (a fact that most Poles would like to change), and the other is President Lech Kaczyński who died in a tragic airplane crash back in 2010.  From what we’ve learned he was a controversial choice because only about half of the country loved him, yet he was buried in the same structure as the most heralded Poles (think of Bush or Obama being buried equally alongside Lincoln or Washington). 

Interesting hodge-podge of pieces that compose this
cathedral, each added during different centuries

Another curious fact about Wawel Castle is its unintentional present day tie to the Hindu religion (keeping in mind that most Poles are Catholic).  If you don’t know what chakra is, it’s a belief that a powerful energy field connects all living things.  Apparently this energy is most prevalent in 7 sites across the world in the likes of Delhi, Delphi, Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome and Velehrad.  You can add Kraków to the list, precisely in the corner of the castle grounds that you can see in the picture to the right.  People come from across the world to sit in this corner and soak up the goodness.  As you can see, we stumbled upon a couple people enjoying the chakra.  The thing is, the Wawel administration team doesn’t believe in chakra and it’s kind of funny how they try to discourage people from doing this by putting up signs that impede one’s view and by roping off the corner.  Quite bizarre.  :)

We spent a couple of hours wandering around the castle exterior, enjoying the nice weather and well-maintained grounds. 

There are a couple of quirky things to note, too.  You can see a large bone hanging on the left of this photo.  This dates back to times when there were no museums so notable items like these were used to lure people to the church.

The side of the castle you see below on the right-hand side is actually an illusion.  They built just a wall here (rather than actual castle interior) to give the impression that the palace was bigger than it actually was – and they would lower drapes behind the windows to block the sunlight so that important visitors wouldn’t call their bluff.  Clever.

Did we mention that Kraków was cheap!?  The exchange rate from Swiss francs to the Polish zloty was about 3.5 to 1 at the time we visited.  However, it was hard to remember this most of the time because the prices listed in zloty form were actually really close to what would be charged in Geneva in Swiss francs – and only at the end of our meal we would remember to divide by 3.5 to get the true price.  Imagine large delicious breakfasts for $10 instead of $35 or ice cold beers for $2 instead of $7.  Yeah, it was pretty sweet.  We tried this out at a fun Bavarian style beer hall called Pod Wawelem – a nice way to wrap up a hot day.   Afterwards we strolled back through town to our loft apartment and called it a night.

Saturday was a difficult day, but one we felt needed to be experienced.  As we mentioned earlier, the Nazi Concentration camp of Auschwitz is just an hour outside of Kraków and became the main focus of our day on Saturday.

 

The next section below is not for the faint-hearted…

WWII was no doubt a horrible time to be in Europe in general, but relatively speaking, Auschwitz was a place you did not want to end up.  It was the largest Nazi concentration and death camp and it is estimated that over 1.3 million people were killed there (90% of them Jews) through the infamous gas chambers or via forced-labor (which often resulted in death through exhaustion, disease, or starvation).  While we’ve seen a handful of WWII historical sites on our trips through Europe, Auschwitz seemed to be the pinnacle example of the horrible things humans can do to each other.  There are certainly too many stories to tell of the tragedies in this place - we will try to do our best and give an overview of our visit. 

We started off with a guided tour of Auschwitz I, the original site that was formerly a Polish military camp and barracks.  It turned into a concentration camp in 1940 and served this purpose before there were gas chambers of any sort in operation (it was mostly political prisoners who opposed the Nazi regime that were originally sent here).

"Arbeit macht frei" - another Nazi lie, meaning "work sets you free"

 Regardless of the type of prisoner, the place wasn't any less horrific – in fact the brutalities were shocking.  In one building we learned of three different torture rooms, with the intent (and outcome) of death.  The first was done through exhaustion by sticking enough people into a small room to where they were forced to stand all night long.  The second was a starvation room, which is self-explanatory.  The third was by suffocation, packing people tightly into a crowded room with little ventilation.  In the picture below you can see the “window” on the far left, which is connected to the suffocation room.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside in respect for those that died there.  Just outside these horrible rooms was a firing squad wall where it’s said the youngest victim on record was a 7-year-old girl.

 

Another building we toured had collections of different personal items of the deceased.  You can see examples below – one with thousands of eyeglasses and one with suitcases.  Another one was one of the most heart breaking displays – a stack of thousands of children’s shoes.  One wall had photos of prison inmates that eventually died here through the brutal conditions.

While Auschwitz I was not built with the intention of mass extermination, it did have a crematorium, which was built because the Nazi’s were running out of space to put the bodies that were piling up.  We were also told that the death gas—a cyanide-based pesticide called Zyklon B—which would be used at mass scale in Auschwitz, was tested here to see how many cans of it were necessary to kill a large group of people – you can see the stacks of empty cans below.

Gas chamber

Crematorium furnaces

Next we toured a second camp called Auschwitz II, aka Birkenau, which was built starting in late 1941 primarily for mass extermination purposes.  When you think of Auschwitz, you are likely picturing Birkenau as shown in the classic shot below.  

Prisoners were brought in by the masses in cattle train cars.  Some of them died on the journey there due to extreme temperatures, lack of water and lack of air.  We saw photos like these below, which illustrate prisoners being separated between women & children apart from the men as soon as the trains arrived.  At this point most people would be sent directly to the gas chambers other than those chosen for slave labor until they (most often) died.

Those chosen for slave labor were sent through the following building to be striped of their clothing, belongings and dignity as they were “disinfected”, their heads were shaved and many were branded with a number that replaced their name.  We walked through this building and read about each of the awful phases each prisoner had to go through.  

All of their belongings were also disinfected (Nazis believed Jews were unclean) and then stored in warehouses on site until they were then sent to Germany to be re-used by German civilians.  You can some of these warehouses in the photo below as well as what it looks like today.

Prisoners chosen for slave labor were housed in buildings like these below.  All of the freestanding chimneys and the rectangle remains also used to be prisoner housing.  As you can see, the living conditions inside the buildings were horrendous.

As we tried to put ourselves into the tragic shoes of these people, we weren’t sure which situation would be worse—being led directly to the gas chambers upon arrival at Birkenau, or dying a slow death via slave labor.

It was very surreal to see the remains of the gas chambers (the Nazi’s destroyed them to try and cover up their tracks).  To give you some perspective, we’ve included pictures of models that clearly illustrated how this system was setup.  In the model below – you can see that the prisoners were led underground to the changing room, into the gas chambers (which they thought were showers), and then their bodies were piled in the last room waiting to be burned.  Afterward the ashes were dumped into large holes, which have now been filled naturally by water and look like unassuming ponds (except for the memorials that mark the mass grave). 

Here are some photos of the chamber and crematorium ruins.  It was really difficult to stare into the rubble and know that so many innocent people lost their lives within that very site. 

 

See this little info plaque below and the photo of people unknowingly waiting to be gassed.  It is heartbreaking.

 Here is the memorial set up in between the two main chambers / crematoriums.

There were a lucky few slave laborers who did survive Auschwitz; the Soviet troops showed up just in time as these survivors were barely hanging on.  You can see in the photo to the right how frail they were due to the conditions and starvation.  We saw many more photos and video footage like that - and can’t comprehend how they did survive - they were mere bones, many of them too weak to walk. 

We also saw this note written and posted by a survivor (you can see that she included her prisoner number).  It was an uplifting moment for such a heavy day.

We spent as much time as we could that day trying to comprehend the magnitude of death that occurred at this site and just pondering what it would have been like for the people back then.  Why would they not fight back with everything they had instead of walking into the camps and into chambers like sheep to slaughter?  Because they were lied to and led to believe otherwise and therefore couldn’t comprehend that such a thing would happen to them – would you? 

In the end we are glad we could visit the site and would encourage everyone else to as well – it’s important not to forget.

After an extremely sobering day, it seemed only fitting that we have a semi-strange evening.  The first happened as we were walking home from dinner – we did a double-take and confirmed that indeed the Chuck Norris was on a poster advertisement for a Polish Bank.  We looked it up later and he was actually in a couple commercials too (click here to watch).  Amazing. 

Also to our surprise, Mike Tyson was in town that evening.  We saw an excited crowd gathering around a fancy hotel and noticed this black car sitting outside.  It looked and sounded like he had just arrived and entered the hotel.  We waited around for about 10 minutes but then realized we don’t really care enough about Mike Tyson to wait around longer, so we left. :)  We read later that he was promoting a new energy drink.  All of that was enough stimulation for one day, so we called it a night.

We continued the semi-strange theme on Sunday by visiting the Wieliczka (pronounced “veel-EECH-kah”) salt mines.  We weren’t necessarily going in hopes to learn about the history of salt mining that started here in the 11^th century, but rather to see the renowned salt sculptures that they carved starting in the 19^th century.  The tour started us out by walking down almost 400 steps into the depths of the massive mine (over 120 miles worth of corridors).  At this point we started to learn about how life for the miners was back in the day – very dark and depressing in these caves all day.  At one point they began carving beautiful sculptures, which is the main draw of tourism today.

Salt crystal buildup on the rock walls

The most impressive part of the tour only lasted about 15 minutes when we were able to explore the Chapel of St. Kinga, which has incredibly detailed sculptures throughout, including this nice interpretation of the last supper.  Of course no Polish chapel is complete without a statue of John Paul II, who actually visited the miners here.  Note that even the chandeliers are made of salt!

 

One bizarre story we were told was that some soldiers actually drowned in the water shown below.  They were floating in a boat and apparently they were drunk – at one point their boat flipped over and because the salt in the water made them so buoyant, they couldn’t dive deep enough to escape from under the capsized boat.  “Safety first” as Ang would say.

Once we finished the tour we were escorted to the exit waiting room that took us a good hour to get through.  If you are claustrophobic, think of this – we were in a crowded room, 450 feet below ground, waiting for elevators that could only take a handful of people up every few minutes (we’re glad there wasn’t an emergency!).   It gave us enough time to ponder the tour more and figure out that we probably got shortchanged on a few sites within the mine according to things we researched, things our guide told us would happen that didn’t and things we saw in a promotional video while waiting to exit.  Kind of a bummer.  Actually, it was so crowded that day that they had to use the service elevators to keep up with the number of people wanting to leave.  We were lucky enough to experience this fun ride – picture a clown car and you’ll get the idea of how crammed we were in this elevator going back up to the surface. :)  You’ll see what we’re talking about in the video below…

Once back in town we found some delicious Polish pierogis (yummy Polish dumplings).  

As we wandered the streets we also started to notice the funny language that the Polish have if you were to think in English terms.  For example, sometimes they seemed to just put a “y” on the end of everything in order to make it sound cute. :)  Check out the sign for toilets.  Also, the “W” and “V” sounds were easy to confuse…

That evening we had a date with the Rynek Underground museum.  This museum was basically the medieval guts below the main market square where we could learn more about the culture from centuries past.  In the black and white photo you can see the excavations they did, exposing old town walls a couple stories below the surface (to put it into context the large building toward that top of the photo is the Cloth Hall, described earlier).  The two things that stood out for us were learning more about the medieval guilds (aka unions) and how they would work in that society (not much has changed). ;)  We also saw actual skeletons of men and women who were bound in the manner that they would be if suspected to be a witch or a vampire.

We ended the night back at Pod Wawelem for some delicious pub food and cold beers… yum!

We spent Monday, our last day, soaking in some more WWII history – specifically the Jewish history of Kraków.  To get an overview of the WWII Jewish Ghetto in Kraków one can watch the movie Schindler’s List – and to round it out with more detail and historic facts you can come directly to the that part of town, known as Kazimierz.  We rented bikes and rode out there late Monday morning.

Surprise, surprise, the history there is heart-breaking as well.  We visited a couple of Jewish cemeteries - both of which were defiled by the Nazis during WWII.  Take a look at the walls and the large monument below – these are all made from the broken gravestones that were either purposefully destroyed or sold off to stone cutters and used in construction of concentration camps and other Nazi buildings.  Those returned were repurposed into these really neat mosaics.  

Further south in the neighborhood called Podgórze (pronounced “POD-goo-zheh”), we visited a couple other Jewish sites.  The first was Ghetto Heroes’ Square with a monument of empty chairs that is supposed to remind people that the Jews needed to carry all their belongings into the Ghetto (even their furniture). 

Looking out over the square is the Pharmacy Under the Eagle, which was owned by a Polish Catholic pharmacist who voluntarily remained there when it became the Jewish ghetto.  He risked his own life by providing a trusted location for Jews to meet, exchange information and hide.  The pharmacy is now a nice little museum devoted to how the Kraków Jews were treated before the war, their transition into the ghetto, and the liquidation of the ghetto (which sent most of the Jews into concentration camps).  While small, the museum had a great audio guide about this local hero and his attempts to help out the Jewish cause.

During the time of the ghetto, Jews were literally walled into this part of town – a piece of the wall still remains just south of the square, which we were able to track down and take a few pictures of.

Of course the most interesting site in this part of town is the Oskar Schindler Factory (now turned museum as of 2010).  To be honest the biggest draw to this site is to see the classic scenes from the film that were shot here – including the uniquely-shaped gate and large staircase.  Unfortunately we couldn’t locate the staircase, however we think that it might have been turned into this covered stairway of the museum (see below).  Actually the museum was less about Schindler and more about the Poland Jewish story so we breezed through most of it having just learned quite a bit at the pharmacy museum.

Schindler's Office

Running short on time, we returned our bikes to the old town center and had one last meal at a highly rated Polish restaurant (we figured we should eat out nice when it’s actually affordable). :)  We were rejected a couple of days prior because we didn’t have reservations so we showed up in the late afternoon and were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant.  The food was good and the highlight had to be eating this lard spread – we just told ourselves it was bacon-flavored butter and went for it!  It was a great meal to wrap up our time in Kraków. 

Oh, just one more thing to share – we saw the group of Where’s Waldos again as we were walking through the Main Market Square on our way to the airport.  It turns out that they were all in town for what we’re guessing was a soccer match, although if we didn’t know better we would have guessed it was the start of a riot!  Check out the video below – once we heard the large cannon fire and saw the smoke, we decided it was our time to exit and made our way to the airport.  :)