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Published: November 9th 2009
After returning from Auschwitz, our spirits were pretty low...especially Destinee's whose family had been Hungarian Roma (gypsies) that we learned were just all killed one day in a brutal execution. Nevertheless, as it wasn't extremely cold outside, we decided to go trinket shopping for our family. We wandered in and out of the alleyways, around the market square a couple times to find the best deals on little Polish trinkets, and I got some great gifts for my friends back home. And then after a nice dinner at Yummies where I had an awesome Jamaican chicken sandwich, we headed over to St. Mary's Basilica and went in to see the largest Catholic altar in all of Europe.
It was a 6zlotych charge to go in, 5 more to take pictures. Not bad as the inside was absolutely gorgeous. Now I am not a woman of Catholic faith, but the intricate designs, the architecture, the beautiful altars dedicated to the different saints, and the golden glow from the soft lighting and the candles was just breath-taking. And as I walked around, D wandered off to go have a moment of prayer while I read about the altar, quietly snapped some photos,
and admired the ceilings and the paintings. And the large altar depicting St. Mary was just astounding. It was made of carved wood by a Polish man named Veit Stoss in the last 1400s. It told a story, each scene depicting a major point in St. Mary's life - the nativity scene, her coronation, the resurrection of Christ, etc...It was very beautiful and Kraków is very proud of this altar.
Well after the peaceful moment within the cathedral, we took back to the streets and did some more shopping before returning to our hostel to shower, write in my journal, and get some sleep. The next morning, we took our time getting ready, eating our free breakfast of cereal and bread with different spreads (no toast...they don't really use toasters in Europe). Around 11am, we went down to St. Mary's and met up with the Free Walking Tour group. These tour guides work only for tips and take you on a 3 hour walking tour of different sights within Kraków. It seemed like a good way to go see the sights so we joined up with them. In our group were 4 Brits, 2 Finnish girls, 2 German girls,
3 Americans (including us), an Australian, and our Polish tour guide, Peter. He first apologized for being late, saying how one of their comrades were sick so they were all trying to fill in for him. And then we headed off to the other side of Market Square.
Our first stop -- the Boner Palac. Now this palace was founded by, go figure, the Boner family only apparently, a lot of drunk college Brits wandered in there and kept asking for "service" thinking it was the name of a um...well, an "adult" establishment. So, the owner changed the name to Bonerowski Palac, a more Polish-like name and apparently they don't have any problems anymore. Next we headed to the park where there were some old tours, a little castle-like structure called the Barbakan that used to have a moat, and the Glory Gate. This Gate is where the royalty walk through every year. It's actually a giant arch and we walked through it to head down the cobblestone back towards the square.
Then Peter took us to the statue, the Adam Mickiewicz Monument on the side of the Sukiennice Hall. He told us of the four sides and
what each meant and how one side did not seem to fit and was actually a Polish joke that many tourists never noticed. The sides were: Motherland, Science, Poetry, and Bravery only Bravery is the polish word for "an excited man" and when you stood down the square, looking at the statue perfectly, well...you got the image. Of course this brought a lot of giggling from my group and Peter loved telling everyone about it and how it must be a poetic reference in the statue. And as he stated, "it's not dirty, it's poetry." Then we saw another church that used to be on a hill, but the market square had been built up from its original level 7m lower so now the church was on ground level. Then we watched as the trumpeter played his tune on the hour from the tallest tower in St. Mary's Basilica. But as Peter explained, this was a ridiculous tradition that some tour guide made up, some gullible American fell for, wrote a book about, and it became a legend. Apparently everything in Poland has a legend that has some truth and some falsehood. This legend was that a trumpeter saw the
Mongols coming and warned the people by playing his tune but was struck in the throat with an arrow halfway through his song. So now they play half the song, every hour. But the cathedral was built in the 14th century and this so called Mongol attack was in the 13th. So...is the legend true? Who knows, but it is now a book published by an American - The Trumpeter of Kraków by Eric P. Kelly.
After hearing the "trumpeter's song," we headed off towards Kazimierz, a more run down but important area of the city. This is the "Jewish area" is leads to the Jewish ghetto where many Jewish people were confined before the invasion of Poland in 1939. It used to be really dangerous and run down before the restoration. As we walked along, we saw the Pope's Palac and guess what, Pope John Paul II. He seems to be everywhere in the city and there was a picture of him greeting the people in the window. Then we saw some Jewish synagogues, walked right by Wawel Castle (pronounced Vavel), and wandered to some areas where Schinder's List was filmed. We saw the staircase where the young
boy hides the old woman in the movie and we wandered past Isaac synagogue, hearing of some famous people that were raised in the area including Roman Polanski, the film director who did Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and The Pianist. Then we go some advice about a local pub where the locals dance on the tables on Saturday nights because there is no dance floor. And we got some advice about where to pick up Polish cuisine. Then our tour sadly ended and Peter left us in Kazimierz after telling us how to find our way back to the square.
After our tour, we went back to the square and freshened up in the hostel. And while D went to go shop some more, I wandered a few blocks over the small aquarium to get my marine life fill. It was a cute little aquarium, a little smaller than I thought but still kind of impressive for being entirely indoors. There were some awesome fish, this huge spiny lobster, a cool moray eel, a wrasse, some creepy reptiles upstairs including a certain lizard that tried to attack me through the glass (he threw himself against it twice), lots and lots
of snakes including the puff adder, the type which killed Kuki Gallmann's son (the author of I Dreamed of Africa which is one of my favorite books), lots of turtles which reminded me of my best friend (took pictures of them just for her), some creepy little monkeys, a cool fossil display and casts of a Woolly Mammoth, and the most impressive fossil and rock collection ever. There were fossils of fish, echinoderms, molluscs, trilobites, some corals, and so many more marine creatures. It was just amazing and I was in total awe. And when I hit the rock room, I totally thought of Vicki again and how much she would've loved that. Maybe one day I'll actually see my best friend again! It's been way too long.
Well after an hour of so in the aquarium snapping pictures and looking like a kid in a candy store, I wandered over to the Wawel Castle that was situated on top of a hill. It was absolutely gorgeous and one of the few castles that I've ever been in. Sadly, I got there right after they stopped selling tickets so I just snapped some pictures of what the inside looked
like in the tourist office and wandered around the inside courtyard. I ended up out on the towers and saw the sunset over the Vistula River. It was absolutely gorgeous and just a great sight to see. And I even saw a large hot air balloon floating over the city, probably showing some tourist the sights. And while I stood there, I just took a deep breath and thought of how lucky I was to be in Europe...to be in Poland, watching sunset from the tower of a castle. And I was kind of surprised when I heard, "Unnskyld" beside me (the Norwegian word for "excuse me") and low and behold, there was Destinee who had given up her shopping to come see the castle also. And we both watched the sun and just enjoyed our last afternoon from atop a castle.
We eventually wandered over to the courtyard on the castle grounds and were just amazed at how big it was. It just made you feel so small, standing in the square, looking up at the towers all around you. And after taking some more pictures, we wandered back out by the cathedrals, ran into the Pope again,
and headed down the walkway back to the ground level. I snapped another picture of the horseman waving goodbye while Destinee decided that since she couldn't find the actual location of the supposed chakra of the Earth located at Wawel, she would just touch a wall and have a "centered" moment before whispering "namaste" (the hindu words for "i bow to the divine in you"). She looked kind of funny just randomly standing there touching a wall. We were joking about it when we came upon a Polish painter smoking a cigarette, trying to sell his art. His pictures were absolutely gorgeous and he offered us quite a deal - 50zlotych each or 2 pieces for 70zlotych. So we split the cost and each got a picture. And he told me his name was Joe T. Forest and he had been to America once, to Michigan and caught a huge trout, he was so amazed. And then after saying that his country was very nice, he waved his arms around and bounced around as if to say "yay, us!" We walked away smiling and with Joe shouting "Goodbye, thank you, have a good trip!" in very good English.
Our
last night was a little sad as we didn't really want to go. But we packed up our stuff and then wandered out for one last dinner and to breath the night air. We ended up at a Georgian restaurant (the country, not the state) and got a huge plate of food for about 15zlotych (5USD) and walked out with very full bellies. We did a little more shopping and then went back to the hostel to get some sleep. That last night resulted in no sleep as there were loud, drunk boys that bombarded our room and one had a cell phone that kept going off about every 30 minutes playing the song "Angel" which I will never listen to again now. Destinee eventually gave up the fight at 6:30am and wandered out to the couch while I tossed and turned forever. Then we got our stuff, went out to eat breakfast at a nice little restaurant serving scrambled eggs, and then checked out our of hostel. We arrived at the train station just in time to catch it to the airport then waited around for our flight. We landed in Oslo around 4pm and had to wait until
11pm for our train. We checked into the earlier one and even flying but everything was way too expensive. So instead, we entertained each other, ate, studying Norwegian, wandered around, watched people, read, played cards, and just sat there thinking about everything. Thankfully, our train finally came and we started our 18hour train ride home. It was tough -- the trains. And when we pulled into Bodø at 5:30pm the next night, we were pretty thankful to be back in town. We got back to Hog around 7:00pm, guzzled a LOT of water since we were kind of dehydrated since you couldn't drink the tap water in Kraków, and just enjoyed a relaxing Saturday night.
Well it is now Monday afternoon and I'm sitting in the library, thinking of my trip and how much fun it was. And there are so many more to come. Here's a short timeline of my life for the next 2 months: classes end a week from Friday (the 20th) then the 21st it's off to London on a solo expedition until the 25th, big Thanksgiving on the 26th where we're going to come up with stuff to make depending on what we can
Absinthe...oh my sister would love this
A little unleashing of the green faerie anyone?find here, first final (Norwegian language) on December 2nd, then off to Denmark on the 3rd until the 6th, then Stockholm until December 9th, my second final for Peoples of the Circumpolar World (online) from Dec. 9th-11th, then my third and last final on December 14th (the tough 3 hour oral exam in Fish Physiology), then Oslo from December 15th-18th, then back here to Bodø to pack up my room and checkout. Flight back to the states on December 21st, a week and Christmas with my beautiful family in Idaho, then back to Juneau on December 29th and ringing in the New Year with my friends. Whew, it's going to be busy. I can't wait!
It's kind of bittersweet though, thinking of my last semester at UAS. It's WAY exciting, but...bittersweet. I just registered for my final semester of classes, 5 classes before I graduate on May 9th. Wow, it's going to be here before I know it. Well better get to studying, only 9 days of actual classes left here in Norway!! =)
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Marsha
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Kari, thank you so much for keeping me in the loop. I'm loving your blog and reliving the excitement and feelings of exploration of my study abroad through your travels and adventures. (You make me feel a bit younger than iI am.) I'm glad you are taking advantage of the opportunities around you! I am looking forward to seeing your smiling face and offering you a big hug when you do return!