Dragon, Creepy Polish Traditions and Naff 7D Cinema

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Our short trip to Krakow started in Yorkshire and until very recently I was completely unaware that there’s an airport at Leeds/Bradford, but there is and I think it might be bigger than Liverpool airport. The best part of it is that everyone up here calls you ‘lovey’, which makes being scanned by a lady in security very intimate. ‘Just lift your leg, lovey’, ‘turn around and raise your arms, lovey’, ‘bend over lovey’. Ok, the last line didn’t happen, but it wasn’t far off.
The two hour flight last night landed in a wet and dark Krakow, it felt like being home. The customs guy was all smiles, which isn’t that common for customs guys. The airport loos were clean and arty, a good loo at the airport is often a good indicator of what’s to come in a country. A twenty minute train journey, costing around £3 each took us to the heart of Krakow. From there we walked for 30 minutes to our apartment in Old Town, near the Jewish Quater. Here we saw some lovely old big buildings, and young ‘uns dancing and singing with a busker. The entrance to the apartment we are staying at is a work in progress, dusty with renovations taking place. I wasn’t expecting much, but my spirits rose upon meeting my first Polish cat in the courtyard. It was a very fluffy tabby, with a collar and looking well fed. A tatty lift took us to the third floor where we found the key safe. Entering the apartment , we were both impressed. It was spacious with East Asian decor, a few Buddhas, incense sticks and a book on how to chant. The shower head is so high, that even Glyn could fit under it. Parts of the floor are heated and there’s even a dish washer! And lots of electric sockets, this makes me happy as I always have lots of things to charge and at times we’ve have to share one socket. Nightmare. The alarm woke us at 8am as Glyn had pre-booked a walking tour with Walkative Tours and it was a 30 minute walk away. The journey was pleasant as there’s little traffic due to most of the area being pedestrianised, plus walkers have right of way and you only have to look at a crossing for the cars to stop. There were a few other tourists milling about (mostly British) and a few dog walkers. The meeting point was at the Barbican which originated from when Krakow was the capital city and was the main entrance. Nearby was one of the few remains of a city wall that once encircled the city. In fact, there had been two walls and a couple of moats. There have been so many wars over this area it is hard to keep up with who was where and when, but I know that at one point maybe over 125 years ago, there were invaders from Vienna who couldn’t believe that there were no parks or green spaces in the city. As the walls and moats had become useless, they were removed and filled in, then turned into parks. So now there’s a green ribbon of park life surrounding the Old Town. Around 30 people joined this tour, mostly British, the rest Europeans. Our guide was a very, very tall man, 42 years old, named Tomasz or ‘Big Tom’, with a big beard and eye brow piercings. He’d studied history at university and worked as a guide for 8 years. Tom loves his job and loves talking even more, he did even say it was ok to cut him short if his explanations were too long. His name is pronounced Tomashth because s and a together make a lisping sh sound. Krakow started as a Stone Age town on a hill and grew into a capital city until 1596 when the King decided to move to Warsaw. Before then, Poland was part of a bigger land that included Lithuania and bits of other nearby countries that eventually got ripped apart as often happens in history. To be honest, it was hard to keep up and remember all that Tom told us. But they had elected Kings which was apparently unheard of but I think is a great idea, if there were any decent kings about to vote for. We briefly popped into a museum that’s free to enter and displays a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, of some woman and her stoat. The stoat actually symbolises her lover who commissioned the painting, but didn’t want everyone to know he was having an affair. I never thought to ask why he wanted to be depicted as a stoat of all things. This painting is worth billions and Tom was proud that it’s in a Polish museum. Our next place of interest was a building where Nicolaus Copernicus had studied. He’s the guy that’s famous for discovering that the world is round and that we aren’t the centre of the universe (the Greeks had already sussed this but not so much proved it). But he kept it to himself until he was practically on his deathbed, to avoid being burned to death by the Catholic Church. People who subsequently carried on with his teachings were burned to death, so he was right to be cautious. Poland was invaded by the Nazis on September 1st, 1939 and 3 million Jewish Poles were murdered. The Slavic Poles had the choice of being slaves or murdered, so 2 million of those were also killed. You don’t get holocaust deniers in Poland because there’s too much evidence of it everywhere. However, there are descendants of Slavic Poles who get upset that the victimhood spotlight is on the Jews and some feel neglected, as they feel their suffering isn’t acknowledged. And this causes friction. Tom gave us an analogy, he discussed the two atom bombings in Japan and asked, “what’s worse than being the first city hit by an A-bomb?” The answer being the second a-bomb city as they got less mention in history, apparently. There aren’t many Jews around because the remaining 10% of the Jewish population left Poland after the war as some persecution still continued and I can’t imagine wanting to stay. So Poland is a lot less multi cultural than it was. After world War 2, Poland was stuck behind the Iron Curtain and no one liked that. It was like Big Brother (not the reality TV show but the Orwell book) and sounded rather miserable. But in 1978 when the Polish Archbishop, John Paul became Pope, everyone felt some hope, because it was stunning a Pole could become so important. I couldn’t quite hear what Tom was saying at this point, but there was some rally in 1980 where 2 million Poles attended and got excited about freedom of speech. A Polish trade union, Solidarity was form and was the first Warsaw pact country union to be recognised by the state. The Poles don’t particularly love the Catholic Church, but they love Pope John Paul and won’t hear a word said against him. He was behind a lot of apologies from the church for various historical atrocities, including burning people to death for saying the earth is round. And they like Ronald Reagan too. They may not know or care whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, but they do know he and the Pope were buddies and he told anti communist jokes. These jokes didn't come across as funny, but rather poignant. Such as an American dog, a Polish dog and a Communist dog were chatting. The American dog says “if you bark a lot, you get more meat”. The Polish dog said “what’s meat?” And the Communist dog said, “what’s barking?”. The point being that the Poles have learned to bark. There was another one about a Communist not knowing what an opinion is, I forget how it went but I’m sure you get the point. Tom claims his jokes telling is lost in his delivery as English is his second language. We ended up at Wawel Castle.Poles pronounce their ‘w’s as ‘v’s, so think of it as Vavel castle. I asked what they do with their ‘v’s and they don’t have them. They do have a few extra letters though, including a Ł which makes a ‘w’ sound. It may sound confusing, but not as confusing as learning English if you are a Pole as our language breaks more rules than it makes and Tom’s children often complain about it. There are dragon bones attached to the wall that were found in the 16th century, legend has it that if they fall, everything goes to shit basically. No one cares that the bones have since been proved to be from a woolly rhino, a mammoth and a bit of a whale. Krakow has many dragon legends. One being that back before Christianity, there were caves beneath the hill where the city began and naturally a dragon with a Greek name, Holophagus (one who swallows whole) lived there. The King’s two sons went to kill this dragon and succeeded by feeding it a decoy cow stuffed with sulphur. Only, one son killed the other and told his dad the dragon did it so that he could be the heir to the throne. But the King had him sussed and the lad got banished. The King’s daughter, Wanda, became Queen and did a good job, being just and wise. Only some German prince wanted to marry her and she declined, so obviously they had to do battle. Wanda’s army won, the prince died and then Wanda killed herself. There is no happy ending. But the ravens ate the dead flesh of the dragon and made a noise like ‘Krakow’ with their beaks in the bones and this is why the city is named as such. Only that isn’t true because it was named after some Duke. And this, explained Tom, is why so many Poles are rather odd, because they grew up with tales such as this being the norm. They are told from a young age that to be a Pole is to suffer and suffering is to be a Pole. And with that happy ending, we all gave him a big tip, because that’s how he makes his living (he does pay taxes , he told us, and has to offer receipts, because he almost got into trouble with the taxman) and thanked him. We had thought about seeing more of the castle, but with not having much time, it looked like a lot of money for just another stately home. So we wandered down to the Jewish quarter, Kazimierz and found some food. The first thing was a pretzel on a street corner, that’s actually a twisted loop of bread and though a local delicacy, not that exciting. We then tried Perogi, which looks like Japanese Gyoza. Mine was filled with spinach and feta, Glyn’s with sauerkraut. It began raining at this point so we looked for something to do indoors. We ended up at the Ethnographic Museum of Krakow. Here they have many staff that followed us and told us off a lot. Apparently hanging up your coat in the cloakroom is not a suggestion, but compulsory, as is leaving your bag in a locker. There’s no signs telling you not to use a flash, but the staff quickly caught us. Everyone made us feel like naughty children, just by looking at us. I think we went around the wrong way on the first floor too. However it was interesting. The ground floor had replicas interiors of old wooden homes and mills. The second floor had clothing, nativities (the first one ever made) and some very bizarre masks. There’s a tradition of carolling that’s NOTHING like carol singers as I know them. Men and boys would dress up like animals and marginalised people such as Jews and Roma people, then barge into farms and homes making noise and mischief. Eventually they would sing (at some point in history, Christian carols were sung) and everyone would have a jolly good laugh. The photos from the 1920’s were like something out of a niche horror movie and if they ever barge into my house, I’d leave, never to return. It was still raining when we left and walked back to the main square where there’s a basilica that was shut due to services happening. Every hour the bells ring and a man in the tower plays a horn then waves out of the window. Tom had said earlier that if he didn’t wave, he wasn’t doing his job properly. People in the square waved back. I bought some silver and amber earrings, as that’s the thing to buy around here. Other popular items included ceramics and cakes. Obviously I bought fridge magnets. Now the Krakow pavement level is a floor higher than it was a few hundred years back. This is because the waste was always buried under rock and sand, so it grew and grew. Back in 2005 the area was excavated and medieval buildings where found. The area is now covered but there is an underground museum and this is where we went next. The museum was dark and also had scary staff who ensured we didn’t dare use flashes or video. The area was a mix of old excavations, bits of iron work, coins, pottery and movies projected on the walls of actors pretending to be medieval. It included mock ups of blacksmiths and other craftspeople. Not all of it had English though, so we didn’t always know what was going on. By this time we’d been on our feet many, many hours and I declared that I was going to sit and watch some screens, no matter what was on them. It was very immersive and worth the £6.50 each entrance fee. We left around 6pm and went to a vegan cafe for food. After eating , we were both bushed and decided to start the 24 minute walk back to our apartment. However, Glyn spotted a sign for a 7D cinema and I couldn’t just walk past that without going in. What are the seven D’s? I had to know! It turned out that this door to a knackered old building was an ‘entertainment centre’ and we were upsold the full package of seven exciting things to do, the poster on the wall was very enticing. So we paid around £15 each and were sent up some rickety old wooden stairs where a boy, and I mean a child, sent us up more dusty stairs to an upside down room. I’ve seen this before in Brighton, only done better. The furniture is stuck to the ceiling, then you photograph yourself pretending to be hanging from it. Later on you rotate your photos for comedic effect. There was a living room and bathroom. We were worried that things wouldn’t get much better. Next was the 7D cinema where we were given old fashioned 3D glasses. The 8 seats were mounted on a mechanical device that rattled and jolted us about throughout the duration of a dark and blurry Japanese 3D cartoon. So if the movement was the fourth D, what were the remaining three? I’m not entirely sure, but bits of plastic tape flapped around my shins and there was a bit of water squirted. But the excitement didn’t end there! Next we stood in a room, were given Oculus Quests and played a game where we were archers defending a medieval village. That was fun, but I have my own Quest at home, so not new. More thrill seeking was found in another room that was a dark maze with multiple canvas ribbons hanging down to disorientate us whilst a track of bongo drums played. There were buttons on the walls that we had to press within a certain amount of time, we don’t know why or if we did well, the child didn’t tell us. I don’t know if we fared any better in the laser room, where lasers bisected the room as though protecting and expensive artwork. We had to duck and dive through to press various buttons. Nothing happened when we finished and we don’t know if we were any good at this. The boy said we could have another go in the 7D cinema if we scanned the QR code on the wall which took us to Google reviews - so this is why the reviews are better than they should be! We did it and watched another blurry movie as we got thrown around again. A few doors down the street was the mirror maze where we were stuck for a while and I only walked into glass once. I’ve seen similar in Blackpool, it’s silly fun. Then was the 3D roller coaster which meant wearing another Quest on a slightly moving floor while leaning against a padded wall. Finally we ended up in the Infinity room, which was another dark room, but with mirrored walks, floors and ceiling and tiny lights, and weird sounds. It was all a bit naff, like a travelling fairground, but we had fun. It was around 8pm when we headed back, stopping at the shop for some snacks for Glyn and Polish beer for me. It’s been a long day, but a good one.

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