Into the Dragon's Den

Well, another week of classes went by, and then I went to Krakow for the weekend! This time, I went with just one other person, a girl named Sarah who goes to Northwestern. The two of us had pretty much the best weekend ever.

We started off by taking the overnight train from Prague to Krakow on Thursday night, arriving Friday morning. (yes, we delinquents skipped Czech class.) The sleepers are an interesting experience, but overall a pretty good way to travel. Early Friday morning, we walked around for what seemed like forever before finding a place to have breakfast. It was fairly expensive, but delicious, since it was the first time I had eggs since being in Europe. We made our way to the Wawel Castle, which was extremely beautiful. We toured the Royal State Rooms, explored the grounds, and checked out the cathedral. We took in a great view of the Wisla (Vistula) river and descended a long spiral staircase into the dragon's den.

Yeah, you read that right. Rick Steves enlightened us about the founding of Krakow, which apparently coincided with the slaying of a dragon. Care to know how the daring young Krac killed this dragon? By smearing sulfur onto some sheep, which the dragon ate, causing the dragon to be exremely thirsty, forcing it to drink so much water from the river that it exploded. Those crazy Poles. But anyway, we did go into the cave under Wawel hill which allegedly housed the dragon.

After fun times at the castle, we went to Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of the city. We had lunch at a place called Bagelmama, owned by an American, and it was delicious! We saw some cool synagogues and a jewish cemetary. We went to a Jewish museum, the Schindler factory, and then to an awesome Jewish restuarant with a live Klezmer concert. The food was delicious: matza ball soup, honey chicken, and kugel. The music was fantastic, with a bass, a clarinet, and an accordion. Sarah's warning turned out to be right. We were the youngest people there by at least 2 decades, haha.

The next morning, we went to the Wieliczka Salt Mines, just outside of Krakow. The mine is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is known for the famous scultures and chapels carved out of the salt by the miners. Our tour began by walking 400 steps down a mine shaft. Then we explored the different passageways of the mine, seeing a number of salt scultures along the way. Finally we came to the part I had been waiting for, the chapel of st. kinga. This room is AMAZING, and even the chandeliers are made out of salt. There is a stunning salt reproduction of DaVinci's Last Supper, among other fantastic things.

After the salt mines, we went back to Krakow to explore more of the Old Town. We bought souvenirs at the Cloth Hall in the Market Square, and saw some points of interest along the Royal Way (the path leading from the Old Town gate down to Wawel Castle). We had some zmrzlina (czech word for ice cream)... actually, we had ice cream once a day, haha. Later we went to a great pizza place for dinner called Cyclop (yeah, no "s") where all of the pizzas were wood-fired. Thus ended a fun-filled day 2.

Day 3, Sunday, we took an hour long bus ride to Aushwitz. We saw Aushwitz I, which has the famous (and frequently photographed) gate that reads "Arbeit Macht Frei," or work makes free. There were different exhibits in the various barracks, and there was a movie shown in the main entrance building. We saw the hospital building, the cells where prisoners were kept, the main square where roll-call took place, and the crematorium, among other things. I want to say more about it, but it's hard to find the right words to describe it. Maybe it is best if I wait to discuss it with people in person.

Then we took a quick shuttle over to Aushwitz II, or Aushwitz-Birkenau. This camp is more typical of the mental image that one has of a concentration camp. This portion of Aushwitz was enormous. Barracks stretched as far as the eye could see. Electric barbed wire fences separated different sections of the camp. Railroad tracks ran through the middle of the grounds. Guard watch towers lined the main road through the camp. We were able to go inside the washrooms, latrines, and even some of the barracks where people slept 4 or 5 to a bunk. There is a memorial amidst the remains of the crematoriums that the Nazis tried to destroy to hide their crimes.

Overall, visiting Aushwitz was a chilling and important experience that is hard to absorb all at once, and even harder to explain via blog.

After we got back to Krakow, we had time for a quick dinner of pierogi on the street and one last zmrzlina. We went the train station a bit early, and good thing, too. Turns out, the guy at the travel office accidentally booked our ticket for saturday night to sunday morning instead of sunday night to monday morning, SO our reservation was not valid. This was not what we wanted to hear after an exhausting weekend of travel that had otherwise gone perfectly. Also, we had managed to spend all of our zloty (polish money), but we didn't have enough czech crowns to pay for our sleeper car. So, we had to run to an atm in the station and withdraw more zloty. The stupid ATM only gave 50s, so I got stuck with some extra zloty. Luckily, the other lady in our sleeper car was polish but living in Prague, so she very kindly traded my zloty for czech crowns. Crisis averted, we got on the train and slept our way back to Prague.

We got back to our dorm at about 7:15 am, and we had class at 9am, haha. So, needless to say, we were exhausted, but truly had one of the best weekends of my life. We saw basically everything that we wanted to see, and our hostel was amazing. Sorry that this entry has gotten so long, but I promise to go back and add some pictures to break it up a bit :)