Krakow

It was a 8 hour train ride to Krakow, and i struggled. i can't believe i considered taking a bus! i was reading a magazine called GOOD (click here to check it out). Mark, who i met in Vienna, gave it to me, it was a great read i totally recommend it, i think i'm gonna subscribe to it when i get back. anyway i finished reading it in the first couple of hours, i think now that i don't have any reading material it made it 10 times worst.

I got check into 'Mamas Hostel' and found myself talking to some English guys who thought they were hilarious, its just a shame I didn't think they were hilarious, not only were they tools they snored all night long. but they funny thing about there snores were they worked like a choir. there was a baratone and a soprano snoring two different parts. sometimes they even did call and response snores, quite clever actually. apart from them the hostel is pretty good. i badly needed to do some laundry but the dryer was out of action at my hostel, this turned out to be a great thing because they directed me to there other hostel that had one. so went down there and met a guy called Igor (i know, Dr Frankstein came to mind) who worked there. he was a great guy we chatted for hours and checked out stuff on youtube while my stuff washed and dried. he showed me some cool places on the map, in the jewish quarter, which turned out to be really cool full of great little bars with some great vibes, one of them was called 'Miejsce Bar' which was brilliant it kind of had a de stijl feel to it. Igor told me that that the area was really good for jazz but i didn't get to see it. one night he and a few of the staff at the hostel took me out to a couple of clubs. even though they weren't really my scene, it was still pretty nice of them to take me out. One thing that Igor and i talked about was wages. in the job he's in at the hostel he only gets paid 6 Zlote an hour (to put that into perspective a beer here is 8 Zlote) he was saying that a lot of Polish people go to the UK and work for a couple of months of the year and what they earn there in 2 months would be what they would earn in a whole year in Poland. i had heard about Polish people going to the UK from a guy in a tour a few countries ago, he was telling that they really undercut there rates and win heaps of work in UK becuase of there workmanship. plus the english have a reputaion of being lazy. by the way, Dad, i may have invited Igor to Australia, so if a Polish boy turns up at your place, you know who it is.

The food here is pretty good, the restaurants in the main square are pricey in the way of Zlote but not really when you convert it. I had some traditional food while i was here; some sour soup that had sausage and mushroom in it. it was quite tasty. I also had some dumplings with cheese and spinach in the middle. but the best thing to do in Poland is go to a Milk Bar. they are where the locals go to eat. they're pretty basic but you can pick up a good feed for more than half the price of the restaurants in the main square. there's no English menu so the old point and hope for the best seems to be the way to order in the Milk Bars but it seems to work ok, the food i've had there is pretty good.

Krakow is really a pretty little town. the main square is surrounded by a park called the 'planty' it was originally a moat for the town but was filled in. its quite easy to get around and see all the touristy things in the area. But what a lot of tourist come here for is to visit one of the more well known consentration camps, Auschwitz, which is about an hour and a half from town by bus. on the tour i was on a few people cried, and i can't blame them, it was pretty moving. i didn't realise that the Nazi's kept all the things the jewish people once owned to be reused again everthing from shoes, underwear, luggage, toothbrushes, clothes and even hair which they made into material for uniforms. which i found very disturbing. i went to Dachau in Munich but i think this one shook me a lot more. i couldn't get over the sheer size of the place and listening to how they would treat the prisioners was appalling. it really was run like a finely tuned death factory, everything was thought through even from putting flowers beds around where the gas chambers were to make the jews think that nothing bad would happen in there.
I think i might have said this before, but i'll say it again. I don't understand some people that take photos in places in certain places. i can't imagine how you bring up, as your going through your holiday photos with friends "this is me with the leaning tower or Pisa. oh, and this is me at Auschwitz". when i was there i couldn't think of anything worst than to take a photo where thousands of people had lost there lives. it just wasn't approapriate at all, i honestly believe some people don't get it.

As i mentioned earlier i went to the Jewish quarters which is quite well known because Steven Spielberg shot the movie classic 'Schindler's list' here. and of course of Oskar Schindler had his factory there, which you can visit. i didn't get to go because it was closed for renovations, which was a bit of a shame, i would've liked to check it out.

But i did check out the Salt mines here, which are really amazing. on the way there i met a guy from Sydney, Phil, who was over here meeting family so we took the polish tour and his cousins translated for us. you go down over 130 metres below the ground and there are heaps of really cool things down there carved out of the salt, churches, statues, halls, etc theres even a few lakes (which have higher salt levels than the dead sea). it was really quite amazing. one of the churches took 3 lifetimes to make. once one guy died another would tke his spot, and so on and so on until it was finished. it would've taken a lot of work becuase it was all done by hand. heres an interesting fact, all the profits that the mine makes goes towards Krakow's universities, to be spent on books for students. so essentially its a charity. another funny fact was when people had sinus trouble doctors would prescribe them to go to the mine because it helped people breathe.

Krakow is all i'm going to do of Poland, its capital Warsaw doesn't come highly rated, even from the locals, Krakow is definatley the pick. i'm off to Berlin on an overnight train which should be fun. i wonder how much sleep i get?