Krakow, Poland

I am going to blog first about Krakow and then about our visit to Auschwitz so that if you don't want graphic details you can choose which post to read...

Our train from Berlin to Krakow was brutal not in the physical sense but it went SO SLOW the entire way there. We travelled roughly a little more than our high speed train from Avingon to Paris (which was right at 3 hours) and this took us 10 hours! Not a lot to say but we had an entire cabin within the first class car to ourselves, that's how many people travel through Poland, at least first class. It was nice though so we were able to just be and not worry about bothering other people. One random thought both Randy and I had travelling from Berlin to Krakow was that there were probably many prisoners transported for longer and in extremely worse conditions to the same place not knowing where they were going or if they were going to return, surreal. The train ride was ok other than it was long, they checked our tickets the most ever since being here in Europe (like 4 different times). When we left Germany everything over the PA system was in German and then English. As soon as we crossed the border everything was in Polish with NO English.

Our hostel is in downtown Krakow and all the roomies were great except one annoying guy who turned the light on every time throughout the night he came into the room: 11PM, 12 midnight, 2AM, 3AM...Who knows?!

Visited Auschwitz (more in the next post) via a tour starting at our hostel which was great and less stressful than trying to figure it out ourselves.

Came back and visited a few churches, the castle and of course...ate at Hard Rock Cafe? Hahaha, no joke! Who knew? It was actually reasonably priced. I ordered chicken strips! Num num but guess what it was not 2 or 3 or even 4 chicken strips it was SEVEN!! Holy crap! I don't think I've ever got that many in an order anywhere! The waitress had excellent English and after some convincing from Randy asked her where she learned.

She said that in Poland you have to learn Polish and English but that the third language you can choose...she chose German but doesn't know why because it's harsh and not very useful, she said. We asked here where to go to see more of Krakow and she gave excellent advice and stories. The first is the church right next to the Hard Rock has a "trumpet player" that plays every hour on the hour but stops half way through. The story goes that he would play a certain hymn from the tower to warn people there was possible danger coming. When the Turks invaded Poland the story goes that he was in the middle of that hymn when he was shot through the neck and stopped playing. Then we visited the Jewish Quarter seeing old cemeteries and synagogues. Most of which stopped operating in 1939 when Germany took Poland.

Back to the hostel to grab our bags and take another night train to Prague, Czech Republic...