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Days 41 30th June Krakow
The drive from Zacopane to Krakow was swift as the roads here in Poland are top class compared to Hungary & Slovakia. The countryside we zipped through was beautiful, completely unlike the Poland I remembered from a visit a few years ago. It was the hills and valleys that run alongside the Carpathian Mountains, a green and hilly belt sloping away from the mountain range and running up towards Krakow. It seems that this corner of Poland has maintained its rural culture and traditional haymaking was in evidence alongside the road. Towns & villages were picturesque with timber houses and rustic shingled churches. Everything we saw indicated a comfortable well-to-do country with a good infrastructure – what a joy!
KRAKOW
Krakow Camping is only 4 kms out from the Krakow old town and having established ourselves on a nice HARD piece of ground we did our research. There were many gaps in my history of Poland and I wanted to make sure I understood as much as I could since understanding the people so often helps understand the culture. Indulge me, please, in a brief overview of Polish history…
Poland
is flat and this topographical fact has caused the Poles a great deal of problems – the path of least resistance from northern Europe to Russia leads right through a nice piece of flat ground: Poland. Many invaders have taken advantage of Poland’s strategic location and she has been invaded by Soviets, Nazis, French, Austrians, Russians, Prussians, Swedes, Teutonic Knights, Tatars, Bohemians & Magyars. By the early 20th century Poland was a melting pot of Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and an enormous Jewish minority. The Poles suffered terribly in WWII with 6 million deaths in 6 years; then the Allies shifted Poland’s borders, not only were there millions dead but millions more were displaced from their ancestral homes. All this and more has made the Polish people strong and proud, they often rose up and protested – remember Lech Welesa, the Gdansk shipyards & Solidarity? In 1989 Poland finally gained her independence & in 2004 joined the EU. This is the kind of history that has shaped the Poland we see today and as the sixth largest of the 27 EU member states she has risen like a phoenix from the ashes to take a role in the new Europe.
As in Budapest we took advantage of the local transport; one short bus ride and an even shorter tram ride brought us through the suburbs into the old part of Krakow. Whilst the total sum of Krakow is huge the Old Town is a tourist’s delight – small, mostly pedestrianized, extraordinarily easily laid out and very pretty. Krakow was for some time Poland’s capital and the seat of the Kings & Queens that ruled Poland and the Old Town harks back to those heady days. Luckily Krakow emerged from WWII virtually unscathed and today we are still able to enjoy the grand architecture and many churches.
Old Town Krakow is surrounded by a green belt park that stretches 2.5 miles around the entire perimeter; it was the old moat which they filled in back in the 19th Century. Il P and I were dropped off by the tram on the outskirts of the park, we made our way through the city gate and up into the main Market Square which conveniently sits in the middle of the Old Town. The square is huge and all of Krakow seemed to be here. We compared it to the squares we had
visited already in Florence, Venice, Pisa and Budapest. None came close to this bustling, colourful, fun filled place. The flower market took pride of place in front of the Market Hall, musicians busked on every corner, and tourists were mixed in with young students and business people. In the entire square, which was double the size of most, we could only see 2 very small touristy stalls selling kiss me quick hats & paraphernalia – we had been very struck by how very many there were in the Italian cities. Café culture was very much in evidence and it was extremely hard to believe that in 1989 there were no outdoor cafes as the communist government had shut down all but a handful of businesses. Apparently, accordingly to our fantastic guidebook, the communists didn’t want people to enjoy themselves as they should be at home resting for “a rested worker is a productive worker”. Clearly they had never heard “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.
A few weeks ago, I had forgone the gondola ride, the essential romantic Venetian moment; somehow I just couldn’t get the ‘just one cornetto, give it to me, delicious ice
cream…… ’ out of my head! Even as I write I am inclined to giggle. So, when we saw the polished harnessed horses and their carriages in the corner of the square we could not resist – this was to be the BLT romantic moment!
And so it was – the carriage took us on a wonderful 30 minute tour of the Old City and environs. Flushed with the romanticism of it all we decided to take a ringside seat for lunch and watch the natives go by in the square. I enjoyed some Polish soup while Il P decided on a small pork dish (see photo) – yup, he managed to eat it all!
Post ‘pork knuckle’ we walked to the end of the Old Town where the Cathedral and Castle sit raised up on a small hill (Wawel Hill) – not quite like Edinburgh Castle but the principle is the same. The Cathedral is to the Poles what Westminster Abbey is to us – it holds the tombs of nearly all of Poland’s rulers & national figures but, unlike Westminster Abbey, it has the most extraordinary exterior –over the years bits have been stuck on here
and there reflecting the architecture of the time – renaissance, gothic, Romanesque – you name it they are all here in the form of chapels. It was outside the Cathedral that we saw the statue of the late Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul II was born not far from Krakow and became its Archbishop. He was the youngest cardinal ever in the Catholic Church and the first non-Italian pope in more than 4 centuries. Above all he was Polish in a country which is devoutly Roman Catholic – he was their hero. In none of the cities we had visited had we seen so many churches, convents & monasteries. Nor had we seen such Christian devotion; every church we had been in had shown active Christianity: prayers, confessions and masses.
It was time to wend our way back to Big Bess and as we headed off-piste down a few side streets away from the Old Town, we came across an extraordinary spectacle. A man dressed in a wizard-on-a-horse costume was leading a band of men, some were playing instruments and others were carrying stakes on the end of which were long strands of horse hair. All were
dressed in bright, very homemade, outfits. The wizard-on-a-horse kept dashing into shops and then touching people with a sort of wand! We will never know what they were doing!
Tomorrow we visit Kazimierz. Lying outside the city walls this was the large Jewish quarter where some 65,000 Jews lived at the start of World War II……….
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