Kraków, Poland
22-23 May 2008
Initial plans for a ‘big’ eastern Europe trip never came to fruition. Exams were standing in the way of a longer trip. We left the night of my last paper. The first leg of the journey we embarked on brought us on a flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw, the present day capital of Poland, a night train carried us to Krakow, the historical capital of Poland.
We had no idea what to expect in Poland, but it was certainly not how modern Warsaw was. The Frederick Chopin Airport in Warsaw was bright and clean, and best of all – it had an orange colour scheme. It was so nice we didn’t really want to get out after collecting our bag. The city, whose skyscrapers peeked out from behind the heavy fog came as a surprise as well. It looked a lot like Kuala Lumpur somehow. We had all of 1 hour in Warsaw, and it was midnight. We only managed to walk around a bit outside the train station and snap some pictures.
Taking the train though, was a completely unique experience altogether. Armed with only a pathetic internet booking, we couldn’t seem to find the right train to take, as the timings on our reservation didn’t match the one on the schedule. But after some enquiries in broken English, we found the right platform. When the train finally pulled into the station, we hurried on, only to find a huge jam in the aisle. With a humongous bagpack, we managed to push our way through clumsily, only to find out seats taken. But the people who were occupying our seats were quick to vacate when we showed them the reservation with the seat numbers. We had booked 2 seats because the couchettes were too expensive. The seats were arranged such that there are 6 seats in each compartment, which had a sliding door that could be closed. Along the row of compartments in the carriage was a narrow corridor which can probably allow 1 person to pass at a time. But for some strange reason, the corridor was packed with Polish people who crammed and double-lined the corridor. They didn’t seem to have seats because whenever someone with a seat got up, they would rush for the seat. I couldn’t understand the situation at all – it was a night train, were they gonna stand all night? The conductor came by to check our tickets as well, and he squeezed through the sea of people, and didn’t seem to mind that they were there. Anyway, inside our compartment, we were starting to get comfortable and preparing to sleep, when the 4 other Polish women in our compartment started talking continuously. It was so noisy I wanted to just throw something at them so that I could go to sleep in peace. Good thing I was so tired that I was only bothered for a few minutes before I drifted off. The next time I woke up, it was about 4+am, and the corridor outside was empty. Apparently everyone there had alighted or taken over some seats somewhere. These poles are quite happening, I wonder where they went in the dead of the night. Most of them were young people too.
Corpus Christi in Poland
We arrived in Kraków at about 7am the next morning. (Actually normal day trains only take about 3 hours between Warsaw and Krakow, but we might as well save on 1 night’s accoms right. Heh.) Checked into our hostel and found that it was a public holiday in Poland that day. We have this uncanny ability to always arrive at a place on some public holiday. We were told that nothing was open, even Auschwitz, which I wanted so badly to go to, and that all we could do was walk around the town. It was Corpus Christi in Poland, a Roman Catholic celebration of the Eucharist (according to wikipedia). Poland is a religious country, so I observed from that day. Lots of Roman Catholics also make pilgrimages to Poland because it has quite a few holy sites. Pope John Paul II was also Polish who spent a large part of his life in Kraków before heading for Vatican city, so one could follow his trail and visit his school, home, monastery, etc. We observed a few processions of the sacred bread within the city, and the city’s landmark building, St Mary’s Basilica spilled onto the town square and there was an open air service. We wandered around, bought some American breakfast (also known as MacDonald’s) and hunted down the only tourist information office that was open. From there, we also found out that Auschwitz was actually open, so we caught a public bus there. The 1.5 hour journey, 70km west of Kraków, took even longer because there were many processions along the way and the bus had to stop. It was amazing that even in the countryside, there were small churches and hoards of people on the streets, dressed in their Sunday best, especially the kids in little suits and frilly dresses.
22-23 May 2008
Initial plans for a ‘big’ eastern Europe trip never came to fruition. Exams were standing in the way of a longer trip. We left the night of my last paper. The first leg of the journey we embarked on brought us on a flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw, the present day capital of Poland, a night train carried us to Krakow, the historical capital of Poland.
We had no idea what to expect in Poland, but it was certainly not how modern Warsaw was. The Frederick Chopin Airport in Warsaw was bright and clean, and best of all – it had an orange colour scheme. It was so nice we didn’t really want to get out after collecting our bag. The city, whose skyscrapers peeked out from behind the heavy fog came as a surprise as well. It looked a lot like Kuala Lumpur somehow. We had all of 1 hour in Warsaw, and it was midnight. We only managed to walk around a bit outside the train station and snap some pictures.
Taking the train though, was a completely unique experience altogether. Armed with only a pathetic internet booking, we couldn’t seem to find the right train to take, as the timings on our reservation didn’t match the one on the schedule. But after some enquiries in broken English, we found the right platform. When the train finally pulled into the station, we hurried on, only to find a huge jam in the aisle. With a humongous bagpack, we managed to push our way through clumsily, only to find out seats taken. But the people who were occupying our seats were quick to vacate when we showed them the reservation with the seat numbers. We had booked 2 seats because the couchettes were too expensive. The seats were arranged such that there are 6 seats in each compartment, which had a sliding door that could be closed. Along the row of compartments in the carriage was a narrow corridor which can probably allow 1 person to pass at a time. But for some strange reason, the corridor was packed with Polish people who crammed and double-lined the corridor. They didn’t seem to have seats because whenever someone with a seat got up, they would rush for the seat. I couldn’t understand the situation at all – it was a night train, were they gonna stand all night? The conductor came by to check our tickets as well, and he squeezed through the sea of people, and didn’t seem to mind that they were there. Anyway, inside our compartment, we were starting to get comfortable and preparing to sleep, when the 4 other Polish women in our compartment started talking continuously. It was so noisy I wanted to just throw something at them so that I could go to sleep in peace. Good thing I was so tired that I was only bothered for a few minutes before I drifted off. The next time I woke up, it was about 4+am, and the corridor outside was empty. Apparently everyone there had alighted or taken over some seats somewhere. These poles are quite happening, I wonder where they went in the dead of the night. Most of them were young people too.
Corpus Christi in Poland
We arrived in Kraków at about 7am the next morning. (Actually normal day trains only take about 3 hours between Warsaw and Krakow, but we might as well save on 1 night’s accoms right. Heh.) Checked into our hostel and found that it was a public holiday in Poland that day. We have this uncanny ability to always arrive at a place on some public holiday. We were told that nothing was open, even Auschwitz, which I wanted so badly to go to, and that all we could do was walk around the town. It was Corpus Christi in Poland, a Roman Catholic celebration of the Eucharist (according to wikipedia). Poland is a religious country, so I observed from that day. Lots of Roman Catholics also make pilgrimages to Poland because it has quite a few holy sites. Pope John Paul II was also Polish who spent a large part of his life in Kraków before heading for Vatican city, so one could follow his trail and visit his school, home, monastery, etc. We observed a few processions of the sacred bread within the city, and the city’s landmark building, St Mary’s Basilica spilled onto the town square and there was an open air service. We wandered around, bought some American breakfast (also known as MacDonald’s) and hunted down the only tourist information office that was open. From there, we also found out that Auschwitz was actually open, so we caught a public bus there. The 1.5 hour journey, 70km west of Kraków, took even longer because there were many processions along the way and the bus had to stop. It was amazing that even in the countryside, there were small churches and hoards of people on the streets, dressed in their Sunday best, especially the kids in little suits and frilly dresses.
Auschwitz-Birkenau WWII Concentration Camp
Arriving first at the Auschwitz I camp, I was actually quite disappointed because it didn’t look so bad from the outside. But the rest of the visit would leave me rather disturbed and (fill in the blanks for the kind of feelings that war crimes evoke). David was rather reluctant to visit Auschwitz as he had been there once before and felt that these kind of places only required one visit. He could still vividly remember all the things he saw some 8 years ago. But he was sweet to come with me anyway. We signed up for the guided tour that took more than 3 hours. A bit about Auschwitz: it was the largest Nazi concentration camp during WWII which got its german name from a nearby Polish town called Oświęcim. It was here that the largest number of people perished via gas chambers, executions or poor living conditions. The figure has still not been finalised but stands at more than 1.5million, more than 90% Jews. In other words, the place was a massive graveyard, yet without any proper graves. Prior to this, I had visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and the Yad Vasham Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem as well as other smaller museums documenting the sufferings of the Holocaust. But nothing compared to the magnitude of atrocities committed at Auschwitz, where people were treated like how the chinese would treat a pig – every part had to be used and none wasted. The exhibitions created a huge impact, with sorted whole rooms full of human hair that was used to made cloth in germany, shoes, artificial limbs and crutches, kitchen crockery, hair brushes, confiscated suitcases, children’s clothes, etc. All the inmates were basically stripped bare, after having been lied to about being relocated to a new place for a better life. Walking through the parade squares where roll calls which lasted hours were held, and the execution wall where many were shot, being surrounded by the barbed wire + electrocuted fence that virtually made escape impossible, visiting the ‘hospital’ where no one ever came out alive because it was never for treatment but for genetic experiments; the prison cells where punishments were meted out – such as having 4 people stand in a 1m x 1 m space at night after working hard all day- was more than heart ranching. It was a rather chilly day, and it was already Spring. Imagining the place in the bitter winter cold, and the people with only thin uniforms and no shoes to protect their feet made it unimaginable how anyone actually survived. That place was basically inhumane.
But 5 minutes away, in the Birkenau campsite, things were much worse. The newer concentration camp, built from scratch by lay prisoners after it was evident that there was insufficient room at Auschwitz I had worse conditions. The buildings were mostly made of wood, with dirt floors. There was no running water and sanitary conditions were unimaginable. But what was different about this camp was the landing platform, where incoming prisoners were sorted like sheep according to their ability to work. After a 7 day train ride, weak prisoners are examined by nazi doctors if they were fit for work. Of course, if they were Jew, that didn’t really matter because about 90% got sent straight to the gas chambers anyway. If they were deemed unfit for work, they had to walk about 1-2km to the end of the platform, where the gas chambers awaited. We visited one at Auschwitz I, because the Nazis had destroyed all the newer gas chambers at Birkenau before the Soviets arrived in attempts to cover up traces of their horrific crimes. It was only a rather small room, and it’s hard to imagine that each time, 2000 people could die in 10 minutes, with just a little Cyclone B. The crematoriums were conveniently located next to the gas chambers, and the lakes beside them are still filled with human ashes.
We had spent longer than we had wanted to at Auschwitz, but it made such a dark period in recent human history so real.
a bit about WWII and poland: Of all the countries involved in the war, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: over six million perished, half of them Polish Jews. Poland made the fourth-largest troop contribution to the Allied war effort, after the Soviets, the British and the Americans. The main German Nazi death camps were in Poland. Of a pre-war population of 3,300,000 Polish Jews, 3,000,000 were killed during the Holocaust. (wikipedia.org)
Weiliczka Salt Mine
The next morning, we ventured out of Kraków again, this time about 30km south-east, to a mining town called Weiliczka. Its salt mine is one of the world’s oldest (started in the 13th century) and only stopped operations a few years ago. There are 2000 underground chambers and goes down 300+metres. The tour lasted about 3 hours and only covered 3.5km (less than 1% of the entire place). We descended 398 (thereabouts) steps before we reached the first level of the mine. It was a real experience. Apparently, the air is bacteria free because no bacteria can survive under such salty conditions (don’t know about viruses though, heh), and the wood brought down to help hold up the ceilings have been very well-preserved. Even paintings and sculptures have their colours preserved, unlike those we see around the cities in europe, reduced to white. You can even lick salt off the walls (it tasted like normal table salt- because they mine the salt for domestic consumption, when it used to be such an expensive commodity). There were salt lakes in the darkness, and even a beautiful cathedral (St Kinga’s Chapel) made of salt. The chandeliers were made out of salt crystals, and ‘tiled’ floors, and the works of art. It was awesome. The pictures didn’t turn out so nicely to do justice to the place but you’ll get a rough idea.
Wawel Castle and the Rest of Kraków
We had only budgeted 2 short days here, and apart from the trips we took, we managed to squeeze in some time to take in the sights of the city. Wawel Castle used to be the residence of Polish rulers. We visited the state apartments but were none too impressed with anything but were rather amused with the ‘Wawel heads’ in one of the rooms. On the ceiling of a particular room, there were about 30 wooden heads, and one of them has a gag in his mouth. Apparently one day when the King was passing judgment to someone, one of the heads started talking. It’s legends like this that make these places interesting. At the foot of Wawel Hill lies a cave, also known as dragon’s cave. Once again, legend has it that a dragon moved under the castle one day, and the king offered a reward of his daughter’s hand in marriage for getting rid of the dragon. So, one man killed a ram, stuffed it with sulphur and placed it outside the dragon’s lair. The dragon came out, ate it and was very thirsty, so he went to the river and drank until his stomach burst. Haha. How cute right.
The rest of Kraków was very pretty as well. The old town is very european, with its characteristic town square with a church towering over it. On every hour, a trumpet signal - called the hejnał (pronounced hey-now) - is played from the top of the taller of St. Mary's two towers. The plaintive tune breaks off in mid-stream, to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city. (wikipedia.org) Another interesting concept they had was the buggy tours. It’s the first I’ve seen so far, because it’s always the cliché horse carriages. We didn’t have enough time to visit Schindler’s factory, from the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Schindler’s list’ on the holocaust. We had to zoom off to Budapest! We were so happy that we got the overnight train tickets for half-price, which still came up to like S$70. dunno why tickets out of poland are so expensive K
Commuting from Kraków to Budapest
We had heard horror stories of polish trains, so we were rather scared at first. Previous SMU students have recounted experiences of being gassed in their compartments and then people breaking in and stealing their things. This time, we had beds. There were 6 beds in each compartment, 3 on each side. The whole time, we were just praying that no one else would come in, because it was a 10 hour train ride. We made sure we locked the door and closed all the windows. David tried to study for his exam, and I tried to read up on Budapest (having left CPH in such a hurry after exams I wasn’t adequately prepared for this trip). But before long, we started to get really sleepy and went to bed. The next thing we knew, the conductor was knocking on the door, waking us up, with half and hour to go. I love overnight trains with beds. Another night’s accoms saved. Haha.
Weiliczka Salt Mine
The next morning, we ventured out of Kraków again, this time about 30km south-east, to a mining town called Weiliczka. Its salt mine is one of the world’s oldest (started in the 13th century) and only stopped operations a few years ago. There are 2000 underground chambers and goes down 300+metres. The tour lasted about 3 hours and only covered 3.5km (less than 1% of the entire place). We descended 398 (thereabouts) steps before we reached the first level of the mine. It was a real experience. Apparently, the air is bacteria free because no bacteria can survive under such salty conditions (don’t know about viruses though, heh), and the wood brought down to help hold up the ceilings have been very well-preserved. Even paintings and sculptures have their colours preserved, unlike those we see around the cities in europe, reduced to white. You can even lick salt off the walls (it tasted like normal table salt- because they mine the salt for domestic consumption, when it used to be such an expensive commodity). There were salt lakes in the darkness, and even a beautiful cathedral (St Kinga’s Chapel) made of salt. The chandeliers were made out of salt crystals, and ‘tiled’ floors, and the works of art. It was awesome. The pictures didn’t turn out so nicely to do justice to the place but you’ll get a rough idea.
Wawel Castle and the Rest of Kraków
We had only budgeted 2 short days here, and apart from the trips we took, we managed to squeeze in some time to take in the sights of the city. Wawel Castle used to be the residence of Polish rulers. We visited the state apartments but were none too impressed with anything but were rather amused with the ‘Wawel heads’ in one of the rooms. On the ceiling of a particular room, there were about 30 wooden heads, and one of them has a gag in his mouth. Apparently one day when the King was passing judgment to someone, one of the heads started talking. It’s legends like this that make these places interesting. At the foot of Wawel Hill lies a cave, also known as dragon’s cave. Once again, legend has it that a dragon moved under the castle one day, and the king offered a reward of his daughter’s hand in marriage for getting rid of the dragon. So, one man killed a ram, stuffed it with sulphur and placed it outside the dragon’s lair. The dragon came out, ate it and was very thirsty, so he went to the river and drank until his stomach burst. Haha. How cute right.
The rest of Kraków was very pretty as well. The old town is very european, with its characteristic town square with a church towering over it. On every hour, a trumpet signal - called the hejnał (pronounced hey-now) - is played from the top of the taller of St. Mary's two towers. The plaintive tune breaks off in mid-stream, to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city. (wikipedia.org) Another interesting concept they had was the buggy tours. It’s the first I’ve seen so far, because it’s always the cliché horse carriages. We didn’t have enough time to visit Schindler’s factory, from the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Schindler’s list’ on the holocaust. We had to zoom off to Budapest! We were so happy that we got the overnight train tickets for half-price, which still came up to like S$70. dunno why tickets out of poland are so expensive K
Commuting from Kraków to Budapest
We had heard horror stories of polish trains, so we were rather scared at first. Previous SMU students have recounted experiences of being gassed in their compartments and then people breaking in and stealing their things. This time, we had beds. There were 6 beds in each compartment, 3 on each side. The whole time, we were just praying that no one else would come in, because it was a 10 hour train ride. We made sure we locked the door and closed all the windows. David tried to study for his exam, and I tried to read up on Budapest (having left CPH in such a hurry after exams I wasn’t adequately prepared for this trip). But before long, we started to get really sleepy and went to bed. The next thing we knew, the conductor was knocking on the door, waking us up, with half and hour to go. I love overnight trains with beds. Another night’s accoms saved. Haha.
click here for photos or view the small version below:
woah.... you seem to have visited most part of europe. your detailed commentary (description) of each place is indeed beneficial(saving of time) for us or whoever might been keen to plan a visit to Europe in the near future. will definitely look you up for advice if we do plan for an Europe trip, hopefully next year.....
ReplyDeletehey carol. i like reading your travel journal (:
ReplyDeletethanks for the encouragement, i have been inspired to continue doing a back-log of the places i've visited. haha it'll be up, eventually.......
ReplyDeletemaybe i should just start a travel agency for people on all budgets... :p
Auschwitz... Haven't seen it up this close before. Its always been a subject of books and movies... Oddly enough, I think I'll probably cry there.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I sort of got all emo and weepy at Yad Vashem. Which happens to be one of the most architecturally beautiful buildings I've seen..