The trip to Krakow was my first experience with international train travel, and there’s something to be said for having such an experience in Eastern Europe. The trains are all Soviet relics, and the lack of organization is at turns charming and frustrating. Our train from Budapest was packed, and we were unable to get seats for the first leg of our journey. Instead we had to stand awkwardly at the end of one of the cars near the rather fragrant bathroom. Luckily the train began to empty out after about two hours, and the four of us (Adam, Don, Jenn, and myself) were able to secure a cabin for the remaining eight hours of the trip. I still didn’t sleep very well, but it was certainly an improvement over standing.
We arrived in Krakow at 5:30 am, and we couldn’t check into the hostel until later, so we dropped our stuff off and went walking around the city. It was striking to see the town in the early morning while everything was still deserted. The bustling tourist square took on an almost surreal character in the pre-dawn gray. It felt like we had the entire city to ourselves. Unfortunately it was bitterly cold and none of us were prepared for it. It had been in the 60s when we left Budapest, and even those of us used to Minnesota winters were a bit shocked by the 20s and 30s we found in Krakow that morning. Since nothing was open we decided to walk up to Wawel castle to watch the sunrise (and to keep moving for warmth). Wawel castle and cathedral are the most visible monuments in the city they’re both the seat of Catholicism in Krakow and its most popular attractions. As with everything else, they were deserted at 6:30 am, and we got some great views of the wakening city.
Eventually things started to open and we stopped by a café to warm up and plan our day. Our first stop was the National Gallery – or at least part of it. The collections are distributed throughout several museums around the city. The one we went to included most of the paintings in the collection and was housed in what looked like an old house near the center of town. I’ve grown to appreciate art museums, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. The star of the collection was Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, which had a room (and quite a bit of protective glass) to itself. The museum was a nice size, and it was small enough that we could get through the whole thing without completely exhausting ourselves.
After eating lunch and checking in to the hostel we went back to Wawel Castle and Cathedral in the hopes of going inside. Krakow is definitely the most overtly Catholic place I’ve ever been, and it has a pretty impressive cathedral. It is extraordinarily ornate, containing an impressive number of elaborate chapels and some striking statues.
Unfortunately the castle didn’t work out so well. It turns out that you needed to buy tickets in a building by the entrance of the complex. We did not realize this, and so went into the castle in the hopes of buying tickets there. Instead of a ticket office, however, we found a menacing looking security guard who promptly showed us the door and who didn’t speak enough English to explain to us the problem. Eventually we figured it out, but by the time we found the ticket booth it was getting late and part of the castle was closed, so we decided not to pay the rather high entrance fee.
On Sunday we visited Auschwitz. We bought a tour package in Krakow that included transportation and a guided tour of the two main camps that make up the Auschwitz complex: Auschwitz I and Birkenau. I was really glad we did this because our tour guide was excellent. He knew his facts cold, but it was also obvious that he cared a great deal about the place and he gave a tour that was both informative and respectful.
We visited the Birkenau camp first. Though there has apparently been some debate as to how much it should be renovated, currently it has been left largely untouched since the end of the war. The Nazi’s destroyed parts of the camp before liberation to hide evidence of their crimes, and some of the barracks have collapsed in the following since, but those that remain look much as they did 60-some years ago. Both of the crematoriums were reduced to rubble by the Nazis, and now there is a memorial in between them proclaiming in over a dozen languages “For ever let this place a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe.â€
Unlike in Birkenau, most of the barracks in Auschwitz I have been converted into a museum. The exhibits are almost entirely comprised of the personal belongings that prisoners brought with them to the camps. There were literally thousands of shoes, suitcases, glasses, and even 3 tons of human hair shaved off prisoners before they were executed for use in the German textile industry. These exhibits were effective in showing the scale of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and an eerie reminder of how many individual lives were cut short in the camps.
It’s very difficult to know how to communicate the experience of something like Auschwitz. It was much less gruesome than I expected. There were relatively few images of the conditions suffered by the prisoners, and certainly nothing that any teenager would see in history class. Instead, the place was so terrible in part because it wasn’t gruesome. Auschwitz I was actually quite attractive from the outside, with stately brick buildings and lots of beautiful trees, and the hard part was understanding how such a “nice†place could be used for such horrible atrocities. Ultimately I think there are a lot of different ways to react to Auschwitz. Some people were there for historical facts, others for personal remembrances, and still others to try and understand just what went so wrong. I don’t think that last question can be answered in a day, or even a century, but the more people who ask it the better off we’ll be in the years to come.
Monday morning began as most mornings do, with a quest for breakfast. We intended to take a walking tour of the Jagiellonian University, so we headed in that direction to find food. Unfortunately, despite Krakow’s supposedly vibrant café culture, there don’t seem to be any eating establishments open before 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. Eventually we decided to just do the university tour and eat afterwards. Even that did not go as planned. We stopped in this sort of pub-looking place that had a picture of a luscious sausage on the front. Since Poland is known for its sausage, I ordered that. After an interminably long wait, they finally brought me… two hot dogs with garnish. Talk about authentic.
The university tour was one of these self-guided things in our tour book. Unfortunately it was the Monday before a holiday (All Saints day), so most of the buildings we were supposed to be able to go into were closed. I guess I can say that I’ve now seen the university where Copernicus studied, but I didn’t see much more than the outside.
After the disappointment of breakfast we found chocolate-covered solace in a pastry shop and went to find the poster museum that was mentioned in the guidebook. Regrettably this ended up being another flop when we discovered that the “museum†was just a tiny shop that sold posters and wasn’t even open.
Fortunately our luck improved substantially in the afternoon when we visited the Wieliczka salt mine just outside of town. I would not have guessed that a salt mine would make a particularly good tourist attraction, but apparently visitors have gone to Wieliczka for centuries. It’s actually not hard to see why. The mine is similar to a cave system but over the years miners have carved elaborate statues into the salt. We saw everything from gnomes to life-size depictions of Goethe and Copernicus, who were said to have visited the mines. There were even several artificial underground lakes reflecting eerily off the white salt-covered walls.
The most spectacular room was an underground chapel carved by three workers over the course of 67 years. Whereas most of churches have biblical stories pained on the walls, here they were carved directly into the salt. Even the floor and staircases were made from giant slabs of polished salt.
We finished the tour and got back to Krakow at about dinnertime. Tired and hungry, we decided to forgo searching for authentic Polish cuisine and stopped by a sushi restaurant near Old Town instead. It wasn’t the best sushi I’ve had, but it was the first Japanese food I’ve eaten since leaving the states, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Adam and I had graph theory early on Wednesday morning, so we left that night, while Jennifer and Don stayed an extra day. The train ride back to Budapest was a bit better than the train ride to Krakow had been because we got seats right away, but I was still very pleased to have Tuesday to catch up on sleep. Overall the trip was excellent, and I thoroughly the city, the sights, and the company of my traveling companions.
