Krakow

After our one night in Warsaw we packed our bags one last time and headed to Krakow, for our last stop on Euro Trip 2008.

As a pre-note, after all of my travels and places visited, not just on this trip, but in my life, I have come to realize that my appreciation of a city is based on the following: the culture and people, food, the time it takes to get oriented, bars per capita, and shopping (not necessarily in that order). So when we showed up in Krakow, the city immediately shot to the top of my list of favorite places, alongside Istanbul, Amsterdam and Budapest.

Krakow’s old town and city center were a quick 10 minute walk from the train station and, after checking into our hotel, we followed a walking beer stein like the children of Pied Piper from our hotel to the main square, a block away. Once in the main square we were hit by the attractiveness of the town, cleanliness of the streets and number of bars in sight (one on every corner, as noted by our waiter in the first bar we found). It was also explained that Krakow is famous for its flowers, which apparently bloom throughout the city and make it that much more beautiful. Without the flowers, I was still in love.

Despite the amount of bars available (most which we visited during our two night stay), the initial draw for me to the city was the chance to visit Auschwitz, the largest of the WWII concentration camps, which has subsequently been turned into a museum, memorial and world heritage site. We visited this historic site on Tuesday and were blown away by the size and impact of it all, including the personal stories told by our tour guide of her family (both town residents and prisoners of the camp), the magnitude of the destruction as evidenced by the suitcases, shoes (40,000 pairs) and pots “left behind” by those prisoners and, more importantly, the element of humanity still maintained by the prisoners during the war (as told through the story of Maxamillion, a priest who gave up his life to save a fellow prisoner with a family). The tour walked us through the various barracks, over the infamous train tracks and into the first and only remaining crematorium.

Feeling heavy from the visit to Auschwitz, we managed to pull ourselves together for a final traditional Polish dinner, wine, shots of vodka, stories from the past two weeks and the only thing that helps when things are really down, karaoke. Seriously, there is nothing like Karaoke, especially in a foreign country, to put a smile back on your face.

Euro Trip 2008 came to a close the following day, with the departure of Neff to Prague and Joanna back to the US. And I, well I have determined that a pasta/wine diet does not work, nor does a meat/potato/vodka diet, and so detox it is for me.