A rainy weekend in Krakow

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As i always had a weakness for Eastern Europe i always wanted to discover more of this part of the old continent. Since the Low-cost airline SkyEurope has very cheap tickets to central and eastern europe i decided to give my boyfriend a long weekend in Krakow, Poland. From all the eastern european countries Poland has always been the country that least appealed to me. Since from the cities offered by SkyEurope Krakow was the cheapest i decided to read a bit about the city. The image i had of Poland as a grey, east-block country still is true but Krakow seemed to be one of those cities which had kept its old beautiful historic center. It is often reffered to as the second Prague.

I decided to book this trip and end of october we flew to Krakow Balice Airport with SkyEurope. It was a surprise for my boyfriend and only told him the destination when we were at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport in front of the ticket counter.
Upon arrival the language problems started, it was very difficult to find anybody that spoke english, but eventually we got a taxi cab to our Guesthouse called "Friends" the only gay guesthouse in Krakow and one of the 2 only gay guesthouses in Poland.

The owner was very helpfull, showed us the appartement, gave us the keys and on a map showed us the main points of interest and some nice gayclubs we could visit at night. From the guesthouse we started to walk in direction of the center of the Old Town... as we were hungry and didnt wanna do the McDonalds thing we decided to look for something typically polish and we passed a small former soviet style cantina which in Poland they call Bar. The menu was in polish and the employees didnt speak english so we looked on the menu which was up on the wall and ordered the only thing which we recognised, which was Kotolet....so it had to be meat! The way of serving was like in a prison, the food was in big iron pans and she put meat on our plates, scooped mashed potatoes on top and some very greasy gravy. The surprise came when we had to pay, less than € 5,- for those 2 plates and drinks, a water and a coke! thats the price we pay for one sandwich in holland. Here you shouldnt judge food by the looks but by its taste and to be honest it tasted quite ok, except the fact it was very greasy. And it all added to the eastern europe experience.

We continued into town and reached the main central point in Krakow, the Rynek Glowny Central Square. This is an amazingly beautiful square with the 16th-century Renaissance Cloth Hall right in the center and the 13th-century Gothic Town Hall Tower, the magnificent 14th-century Gothic basilica of the Virgin Mary’s with its astonishing Great Altar and the tiny church of St. Adalbert's whose parts date back to the 11th century. Here you will also find a lot of café's and small restaurants.

Around this square there are a lot of shopping streets and we decided to do some shopping as we expected to find cheaper things here but that wasnt totally the case. local products and crafts are cheap but western brands like clothing and perfumes are just the same price as in western europe, so we ended up not buying much but had a look at the many churches which are spread all throughout the city!

After having gone back to the guesthouse for a quick nap and refreshing somewhat we headed back into town and looked for a good restaurant this time. Since food was so cheap and we wanted to celebrate my boyfriends birthday we looked for an expensive restaurant, we found one of the most expensive ones with a good name and still, for us, it was cheap! We had an excellent dinner in the splendid restaurant Pod Aniolami (address: Ul. Grozka). Its a very busy restaurant so best is to book in advance. They have a great menu with a variety of choice and you will eat within a beautiful polish setting as this restaurant is nicely decorated.

After dinner we tried to find one of those bars that was pointed out to us by the owner of the guesthouse. We went to a couple of them, all very hard to find as they dont have clear signs stating the name, you really needed to know the addresses and ring a bell before entering those gaybars. Most of them were underground in the cellers of old buildings and quite small. There was a young crowd but as we tried to talk to them we soon found out that also not all youngsters speak english or german. Still we danced and drank quite some as drinks here are inexpensive. Highlight of that night was a drag queen show in club 7 which was hilarious, it was a badly dressed drag, performing a horrible playback, you could see that she didnt know the lyrics in english, and all the polish guys stood around her as if she was an international star dancing and applauding. It was funny to see as we gays in Amsterdam are pretty spoiled with cool gayclubs and beautiful dragqueens.

The next day we decided to do some short tours throughout the city...First stop was the huge beautiful castle of Wavel which looks like a fairytale castle on a small hill, built in different eras with different styles and a golden church tower roof! Underneath there are some tunnels and the legend even involves a real dragon.

After we walked in the city center where we saw the old town walls where beautiful art wasbeing sold, lots of paintings and other crafts. We walked furter to the opera house, a beautiful building like you can find so many in eastern europe. Then we read in an information brochure about a Shindler's list tour that we could do, so we decided to do that walking tour which took us through the old jewish quarter, across the Vistula river, past the old ghetto walls towards shindler's factory, which unfortunatelly we weren't able to find. This was on a quite rainy day and as we got cold we decided to go back to the guesthouse to clean up, dry up and have a rest.

These were dark november days with a lot of rain, and my shoes were soaked and i didnt have others with me...luckely enough they dried up a bit and after resting we went to the most expensive restaurant in krakow, a french restaurant called La Fontaine (address: ul. Slawkowska 1). This was a superb restaurant where even the waiters, being polish, spoke french with eachother. We had a great dinner and the highlight was the dessert table on wheels which they would put next to your table and you could choose between loads of delicious looking cakes and pies! After the restaurant we went out again and visited a gayclub which had its last night, reason why it was being closed we didnt find out!

On sunday we decided to visit concentration camp Auschwitz. Auschwitz is one of those locations you have to have seen once in your life, it will help you to understand better the older generations and our history. We took a bus for a ride of 50 minutes for less than € 2,- for 2 persons through small villages all the way to Oswiecim (Auschwitz). We visited first Auschwitz I, the example camp, then Auschwitz II (Birkenau) which was the horrible extermination camp. Words cannot describe the intense feelings that come up there, especially when walking through gasschambers and seeing the cruelties that were caused there. This place left a mark on us and the whole way back to Krakow we were silent and thoughtfull. In the evening we decided to stay in and have something quick to eat in town.

Monday was already time for leaving Krakow and we decided to go into town to see if we could spend some money and ended up buying an Adidas shirt and not much more than that, guess we weren't too inspired. Then we got our stuff from the guesthouse, said goodbye to the owner and headed for the airport to go back home.

In the end it was a great weekend where we saw a lot, were impressed with the history, especially the recent WWII history and where my image of Poland was partly changed due to the beautiful city of Krakow!

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