Kraków

The old capital, with a long history.

Kraków (Krakoof - aka Krakow or Cracow), in the south of Poland, is the old capital of Poland, replaced in 1596 with Warszawa (Varshava - aka Warsaw). In its centre is the old city, with the old city wall and castle. Outside that is the newer city, which includes, amongst other things, the old Jewish and Christian quarters, and beside them, the remains of the ghettos where the Jews were confined during World War II, before being sent to concentration camps. Only a fragment of the ghetto wall still remains - the rest was destroyed by the Nazis to hide the evidence.

Kraków is sometimes claimed to be the most beautiful city in Poland, but that is probably based only on the old city. The old city is pristine, and beautifully maintained. The new city has basically been left to rot, and is in a very poor state of disrepair. It is in such a bad state that most visitors choose never to leave the old city. We ventured outside, then quickly retreated back into the old city again. The old city is well worth a visit, and has enough to entertain for a couple of days or so - more if you visit the insides of Wawel. It is commonly used as a base for British stag dos, easily identifiable by their pushing, chanting, swaggering, and other drunken behaviour.

• The Barbican; 500 year old gateway to the city, which served as fortifcation to protect the city, as well as a toll gate to charge taxes for entering the city.
• Florian Tower, a gateway that predates the Barbican by 200 years.
• The old wall attached to Florian Tower, with further towers. The golf carts are tourist taxis, just in case a tourist forgets how to walk.
• Base of the old wall, in the state which most of it is now in. It is surrounded by a garden that encircles the old city.
• The church of the Holy Cross. Poland is predominantly catholic, but they are not fanatics. However, it is said that the capital of Poland is Vatican City. I may not follow the religion, but I do like the architecture, which is lucky, because a large amount of the best looking buildings in Poland seem to be churches.
• Houses in need of some TLC. These may look dirty, but imagine putting about 10 times as much dirt, then peel off half of the plaster from random places, and fracture the rest, and you have the new city.
• Teatr Juliusz Słowacki (Te'atr Yoolee'oosh Swovatskee - Juliusz Słowacki Theatre), which also serves as an Opera house. Did you think I could manage a city visit without at least one Opera reference?
• Damer on the theatre.
• Sukiennice (Sookee'en'nitse(h) - cloth hall) in the Rynek Główny (Ri(h)nek Kwoofni(h) - Main Market Square) in the centre of the old city. This was taken from the window of our hostel room. Very low cost, with beds and our own shower. Can't argue with that. Anyway, the main market square is the place where all the restaurants are, where it seems the most beautiful women that Poland has to offer go out of their way to make you welcome. Enough of them also have a basic understanding of English for the struggling tourist. There are also horse cart rides (with painted horses, no less!) that go round in circles, for the tourists who have managed to get lost and can be conned into taking a ride that ends where it starts.
• Chimera on the Sukiennice.
• There is a problem with staying here. The night entertainment - mainly random street performers - lasts until the early hours of the morning. As well as these break dancers, there were bongo drumming, fire throwing performers, who would not shut up and let us sleep. Add the horribly hot temperatures and we could not open the windows because of the noise. Oh, and they collect the rubbish at 07:00 on a Monday.
• The results of watching too many horse cart rides going round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and square and round.
• St. Mary's Basilica.
• the two towers have just about nothing in common, except the building they are attached to.
• Commandment 11; Thou shalt not take photographs inside a place of worship.
• Mały Rynek (Mawi(h) Ri(h)nek - Small Market Square).
• Not-so-perfectly aligned houses in a fairly typical street in the old city.
• Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Oonyeeversi(h)tet Yagee'ellonyskee - Jagellonian University), at nearly 650 years old, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe (the oldest in Poland), and rated as the best Polish university. This courtyard clearly has Roman influence in its design, looking almost like a Roman villa.
• Arched doorway to the university.
• Fenced window.
• Decoration under the eaves. Notice the face on the bottom-left.
• Metal gargoyle.
• Gargoyle in shadow.
• Strange decoration. The building is not very well maintained, the back is generally not pretty, and yet they have gone out of their way to build a decorative walkway that doesn't fit in with anything. Still, the walkway is nice.
• In traditional costume for the town. There are plenty of these guys hanging around the place, for tourists to take pictures of. I hate feeling like a tourist, but I am one, after all.
• Symbolic of so many of Poland's former oppressors.
• Decorative buildings at the edge of the old city - a rare example of a newer building that has not fallen apart. Make the most of it, it will not happen too often.
• The first view of Wawel (Vavel), the fortified castle and cathedral at the end of the old city.
• Gateway to Wawel.
• Wawel gate, with the all-important parapets that make this a proper castle. See Norway, even Poland knows how to do it right.
• Into Wawel.
• Cathedral towers.
• The facade of Wawel Cathedral.
• The side of Wawel Cathedral, where no two towers are the same, no two domes are the same, and no two doorways are the same. As for the wonky tower, that's just a bad stitch of four photos, it's not actually a wonky tower. Don't complain, I don't care, just enjoy the photo.
• Gargoyle on the cathedral.
• Back alley.
• Archway to the courtyard, that for some reason has two security scanners in it. Not entirely sure when or why they would need those.
• The courtyard of Wawel castle. Clearly Italian influenced.
• Courtyard decoration.
• Arches and pillars.
• Damer. Need I say more?
• A window in Wawel.
• In the middle of Wawel castle is this folly, fake ruins used for decoration.
• The tower and wall, with wooden coverings over the parapets to protect the defenders.
• Covered parapets.
• Suddenly a military parade appears, consisting almost entirely of Highlanders, the people who live around Tatry.
• Highlander uniform. Note also the discipline of the soldiers; never moving, never blinking, always on duty. Ja.
• Then dispair; my camera screwed up. Everything looked like slimy green dribbling boogers. I tried various tricks, but it refused to return to normal. It had reached EOL. We had two weeks of mountain holiday ahead of us, and my camera had broken before we even reached the mountains. Would I be stuck without a camera? For now, we shared Moose's camera, since fortunately it took the same memory cards. I made the mistake of asking for the quality to be reduced to make the same filesize as my own, but it turns out the Nikon has far better picture quality for the same file size. A pity, but nothing I can do about it now. The rest of the photos (except one) will be with Moose's Camera.
• Wawel (Vavel), as seen from the banks of the Wisła (Veeswa - aka Vistula).
• Wawel.
• We spent a night out at various restaurants, to give me the chance to try various parts of Polish cuisine. Pictured here is bigos (beegos), stewed cabbage (not as good as it should be, apparently, since it should be boiled for a week, but this was only boiled for a day). We also had a rye soup called żurek (j(e)oorek), bitki wołowe w kaszy gryczanej (beetkee vowov'e f kashi(h) gri(h)chan'ey) or beef roulade stewed in buckwheat, and last and best; placki ziemniaczane w sosie myśliwskim (platskee j(e)emnyachan'e f soshe mi(h)shleefskeem) - potato pancakes in a hunter's sauce. Considering how much we Brits like to import food from other countries, I am amazed never to have come across this stuff before, because it is exceptionally good.
• A final test of my camera - looking towards the cloth hall. Clearly it was not going to work. The next day, we took a look for a replacement camera, but could not find anything - not even the next in the series - to replace it with. Then we tried buying extra batteries for Moose's camera to allow for the extra power we would need for us both to use it. We met with those really unhelpful ex-communist shop owners who were determined not to be helpful, so we were stuck with what we had. Not really enough, but it would have to do; we had no other choice.

Time to prepare for the mountains. We made a quick coffee stop at the station, and were faced with communist remnant number 2, who gave us the worst cup of coffee ever, without a smile, barely acknowledging the existance of customers. From there to the ticket booth, where remnant number 3 told us "I'm not going to sell you tickets to Zakopane because the train goes from Warszawa, and it's reservation only". O...K... So we tried another booth; "sure, here's two tickets, with seat reservations - enjoy your trip". There we go.

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