POLSKA!



So what does this shop sell?



Greetings from Poland! We arrived via LOT Polish Airways on a 767 that had ashtrays in the armrests. Not that smoking was allowed, but the plane clearly dates back to a time when you could. Nonetheless, we landed safely though sleep deprived. I can’t remember the last time I was on a plane with so many children, so many awful, noisy children. Seriously, most of the parents just let their kids get up and run around the plane. One kid was hanging over the seat playing some absurd punching game and screaming with his older brother while their mother slept! Then there was the toddler running up and down the aisles with no parent in sight. I guess he was an unaccompanied minor.


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The defender of Warsaw



Anyway… we managed to acquire bus tickets and made our way to our hotel, which happened to be on the bus line from the airport. The Hotel Jan III Sobieski was painted in the most wonderful shades of gelato pastel. Though we were desperately early for check in time, they gave us our room anyway. We deposited our very heavy bags and went over to the train station to get tickets to Krakow for the next day. I will admit that we did not even attempt to learn any Polish before coming. That’s because after attempting to learn some Russian we determined that we have no capacity for Slavic languages. The language barrier this created made buying tickets quite the challenge. There was much passing back and forth scraps of paper with numbers written on them. Eventually arrangements were made and we moved on to the subway station where we hopped a train to the old town.



Pooh would let Zada be in this picture because he was afraid his friends would think he's a baby



In Warsaw’s case, “old town” is a bit of a misnomer since just about all of it dates from the end of WWII. Between the Nazi bombings during the invasion and crushing the Warsaw Uprisings the whole city was in ruins by the end of the war. However, the center of town, the part inside the old walls, was rebuilt to look as it did before the war. It is all very charming and clearly, the restorers did an excellent job. After seeing Krakow (which is genuinely old) the buildings in Warsaw’s old town have the feel of replicas, something new made to look old. The day we were there happened to be a national holiday in Poland, so many of the shops were closed though all of the restaurants were open. Our LOT Airlines breakfast of fruit and a roll (which Zada treated like a Polish assassination attempt)was starting to fail us so we to lunch at Pizzeria UFO (continuing her unbroken streak of eating pizza in every country she has ever visited)which was wonderfully restorative and got us moving again.

We meandered through the streets admiring the precious and following a self guided walking tour ending up at the bell tower (LP failed to mention that it costs 5 zlotys to climb it) which offered stunning views of the old town with its beautiful array of decorative church spires. About this time the sleep deprivation caught up to us so we headed for a café in the old market square and ate decadent desserts (Sacher torte and Polish cheesecake) with excellent coffee. The centerpiece of the square is a sculpture/ fountain of a two-tailed mermaid with a sword and a shield. She is the protector of the city. Zada recounts the myth of how this came to be on her blog, so check that out.

After desert, which ended up also being dinner, we went back to the hotel and quite literally passed out after making arrangements for a wakeup call and a taxi to the train station.

Poland day 2- Krakow



Almost all of it is made of salt



As we rode the train to Krakow we began to think that it might not be possible to visit Auschwitz in the time we had available. We had been waffling back and forth on this being appropriate for Zada yet. Boy In the Striped Pajamas – yes, traumatizing, but it should be no matter what age you are, and she can #1 handle it, # 2 understand it. Then, Night – are you crazy? Of course 10 is too young. Indeed, after checking the train schedules upon our arrival, our soul searching was needless as we would have to skip everything else to get out there and back. So, Plan B, we dropped our things at the hostel and headed off to the salt mine just outside of town. It seemed somewhat crowded for a week day and indeed, it turned out it was a free day for Poles, so there were more than the usual number of locals there. The tour begins with the descent of 380 steps, “a few steps” as our guide put it. The crowds caused a bit of a traffic jam but never for more than a minute. First we learned that all the “security works” (which is how they referred to any safety related things, such as structures that prevent cave-ins) are made of wood in the mine. Wood does not corrode and the salt it absorbs actually preserves it. So, all the many tons of salt overhead are held up with tree trunks. This mine actually stopped production in the 60s but even before that it drew tourists. Copernicus and Goethe both came here back in the day. For many years horses were used in the mine. They were lowered in crates and housed in subterranean stables. There is an army of life size statues carved from salt. Carvings of salt miners, Polish kings, gnomes, saints, and other national heroes like Pope John Paul II and Copernicus abound. At the end of the tour we were spared the climb out by a ride in a claustrophobic mining elevator.

We bused back into town and made our way to the market square. This square is larger by far than the one in Warsaw. The cathedral and a large clock tower dominate the scene along with the “cloth building”. All the salt mining had worn us down, and we refreshed ourselves apple pie and coffee. Back on our feet again we took a carriage ride around the old town and gave ourselves whiplash trying to take in the historic and beautiful. Krakow seems to be in the process of renaming everything after Pope John Paul II. There are signs on every place he lived or even visited in town and his face is on many buildings. Even at the salt mine they were very excited to tell us that John Paul had been there three times in his life, though sadly not when he was Pope.

After more wandering though the twisting and fascinating old town streets we headed for yet another restorative dessert (black forest cake) and coffee combination is a beautiful little café in a boutique hotel on the square. We finished our day with a recital of Chopin pieces in a small salon at a hotel on the market square. The kid at the piano was probably in his 20s but he looked 15. Whatever his age he was very good and we enjoyed it immensely.

We crawled back to the hostel to rest our ankles for tomorrow’s round of cobblestone jeopardy.

Krakow Day 2

Up and out to the Old Town early for a walking tour and careful canvass of all the thousands of amber shops and tchotchke shops. We walked through the lovely Planty Park that surrounds the Old Town to the walls encircling the palace. It was an absolute mob scene on a Saturday – enormous tour groups moving across the plazas like a vast herd of caribou migrating. We (playing out the Animal Planet motif) were like salmon desperately battling our way against the current.

We shopped/café(ed) our way circuitously back to the main square, where I was determined after the previous day’s pizza showdown that certain people were going to try some Polish food or else. Lunch was not a complete success, but no one actually died. The potato pancakes were a big hit, but the pierogis – delicious buttery pan-fried bites of tasty wonderfulness drew the type of histrionics normally seen only in the last act of an Italian opera. The only thing wrong with the lunch was that it was so substantial, that with the best will in the world, dessert could not be eaten.

We had to jog to make our train; thankfully, we had started the day by dumping all the bags in a luggage locker at the station. We grabbed the bags and discovered that we had cracked a wheel casing! Our precious indestructible Eagle Creek switchback 20! Our beloved Christmas present from Mom Q the first year of our marriage! It has been with us for every trip we have taken together, so the wheel thing felt like a betrayal. Initially, only a small chunk came off, which made rolling no longer one of the bag’s functions. Enough train tracks and cobblestones later and the whole outer shell came off, so it rolls again – just unevenly.

Train to the bus station and then onto the overnight bus to Vilnius. We are very excited about that, as it is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. We’ll let you know in the next post!