Krakow

We went to Krakow over the President's Day weekend - and we went without Madison. Woohoo! Madison got dropped off in Holland and spent the weekend with Aunt Tracy and the kids. It was definitely nice to have a weekend to ourselves so we were very grateful that Tracy offered to take Madison. While we were in The Netherlands over the holidays we couldn't find any martini glasses so that my dad could make a proper cosmo. So Shelly and I picked up a set of cut crystal martini glasses, and some vodka, to repay The Ballards for their willingness to give us a weekend away.


Here is a shot of the main city cathedral - Saint Mary's Basilica. There is a story about two feuding brothers explaining why the right tower is shorter than the left, and that one brother killed the other then jumped to his own death out of remorse. How this explains one tower being shorter than the other is unclear. The real reason is that the left tower was built as a watchtower while the right was built to support the church bells.

There is a true, or at least somewhat true, story involving the church towers: In the 13th century, legend has it, the town bugler was felled in the middle of his warning call; it is for this reason that to this day the bugle call stops abruptly during the hourly ritual.







Ahh, a warm mocha (we were in Krakow in February after all) at Tribecca just off the town square. We escaped into the coffee shop often to warm up and plan our next stop.







The square, called Rynek Glowny, is one of the largest and nicest we have seen in Europe. Rynek Glowny is ringed with shops and restaurants, and in the center is Cloth Hall; built in the 14th century for cloth merchants (go figure) and today houses a variety of stalls.



In this shot you can see Saint Mary's on the right and on the left is Cloth Hall. This picture doesn't capture it very well, but the city was still decorated in the holiday spirit.

The old town, and the immediate surroundings, were very nice. As we would find out later, some of the other areas of Krakow have not recovered from Communism as quickly.




We took a day-trip to Auschwitz and hired a private tour guide that was recommended by a friend. Going to the camp drove home the horror of the Nazi regime more than any movie or book could. You don't enjoy the tour, you take it in and say "how can people do this?"













Three displays at the camp are particularly shocking: the piles of hair from prisoners that the Nazi sold to make clothes, the piles of confiscated shoes, and the rows of prisoner photos indicating the date of arrival and date of death - many prisoners lived less than 3 days once they reached the camp.







Auschwitz is actually two camps: Auschwitz and the sister camp Birkenau. There isn't much left of Birkenau, however the great size of the camp gives the visitor the realization of the scope of the Nazi's crime.

This photo captures about 1/4 of the camp; it is massive. If for some reason you don't know about Auschwitz-Birkenau, visit the link above for a brief history lesson.






Here I am back in Krakow in front the the Schindler factory. I mentioned before how some areas outside the old town were still struggling to shake off the gloom of Communism; the Schindler factory is in just such an area. This part of town felt a bit scary; I don't know that we had reason to be ill at ease but we were. Once we found our way to the factory a security guard let us and three Japanese tourists in for a short tour.











This is how Communists think you should catch a train: in complete darkness, on a crumbling platform with no route map or schedule indicating when, or if, a train will stop. Nice. We came up to the platform once and were convinced that this stop was no longer in use, and of course as soon as we were a couple hundred yards away a train came. We returned, not wanting to repeat our long walk to this area of town, and after 20 minutes a train passed and actually stopped. Woohoo, civilization - sort of.